001And our um next item on the agenda is our work session item. And Mr. Sheroki is coming forward. Thank you. You got to get around the obstacle course. So, good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board, uh Dr. Tricson guests. Um, it is my pleasure to be able to present to you uh a study that has been a long time coming uh that goes back uh to August of last year where we started the discussion of a hypothetical school closure and we ultimately you at your board retreat had some discussions about moving forward with next steps based upon uh information that we had received as a district. ultimately asking district staff to come back to you uh with the criteria uh that either was u mandated by uh state statute or that you had predetermined.
002So tonight uh what I would like to do is to provide you just with a framework in starting of the presentation of what the study is, what it's not. Uh walk with you a little bit about how we went about the study and the goal of the study. Uh but then uh I'm not going to sit here uh and and walk through the entire report. It's over a hundred pages. But I do want to explain especially for folks who have not had an opportunity how it is structured and and so that people have the right lens when they're looking at it uh because there is an abundance of information uh and it is uh very specific in some cases. Uh but at the same time I do would would like to provide you with an
003overview uh of one or two items that are within the study for each of the criteria. things that I think are relevant or possibly new that should be brought to your attention. Uh but by no means I want everyone to know that um there are there's plenty of information that I will not cover unless you bring it up with questions at the end. Uh so that you have the information based upon the requirements that you had. Uh so in starting with that I just want to start off what was the purpose of the study and again I will tell you there's a lot of reading tonight. This is a very textrich presentation and with charts versus uh you know graphics and things that you see in the past but the study is to provide information
004to help you as a board of education to make an informed decision about our district's future and that has been a theme that we've been using for several months as we've been working with the community and Dr. Trice and you as a board. Uh the goal is to evaluate the key factors around the three schools that are being considered for closure this evening. What this study does uh is it does provide you with additional data that you have asked so that again you can make an informed decision and be able to uh understand some of the dynamics because a lot of information you have heard from me over the past two to three years in some cases but you've also heard a lot of information from public comment and from input that you've received. So,
005a lot of this information here will be affirming to what you have heard in many cases, but it's a matter of just putting it all in one location so that you have the ability to be able to compare, contrast, and to use the lens that you need to in helping to make that decision. Uh, but it does provide factual information uh along those public comments that I've talked about and it does fulfill the the legally required procedural step. Uh, the step does not say that you have to use this um as part of your decision-making. the the the legal requirements, but you do have to discuss it. You do have to be aware of it and be informed by it. But again, when we talked about the criteria and all the factors that went into
006that, there was no requirement that you had to be preset with it, but we do have to cover it. So again, I do separate what is statutoily required versus what you as a board have asked uh in this report as well. What the study again does not do is it does not weight, prioritize or score any of the criteria of closure for any of the schools and it does not propose specific recommendations or judgments on any school. And I will say if there's anything within this study that presents that way, it is not intentional. We have strived to be as objective and fact-based as possible. And if anything, it does make the study a pretty dry read as a result because it does not provide any opinions to the best of our ability. Um, to
007kind of give you an idea, this study, as you look at it, and and I know you've had an opportunity to see it as the public will, it's really a snapshot in time, but it's multiple snapshots in time when you're trying to pull data to be able to provide you with the information. It could be that we used the principal's monthly report number two as the data set, but it's whenever that data was available in order to provide you with the information. So, I'm going to give an example. Enrollment counts. We have Carolina demography. We have Walpert. We have uh ultimately you're going to see some work from NC State. You're going to see um snapshots in time when we looked at the number of children in a program at a school. It's going to
008be what was the number at that given moment because enrollment does fluctuate. So, what I I want you to know and for the public to know, use that as an approximation, but just if you try to match this number with that number on enrollments, they're going to vary, but they don't vary enough to make it uh significant in my opinion. Uh but again, I want people to understand that as they're looking at the report. The report is broken into four sections. There's an introductory section that kind of gives context because there are people who are just getting into this conversation today. There's other folks that have been part of the conversation from its inception. Uh but then it's separated into three other sections which pertain to the individual schools. And we chose to do that
009so that if somebody was interested in only reading about one school, we did our best to ensure that that chapter could stand on its own and that you would not have to read the remaining pages. So there is some replication when it comes to some of the criteria that's being evaluated because it's consistent for the evaluation of all three schools. So you do see repetition in some cases or you may see repetition and then you'll see something very specific about the school. But that was done so that people didn't have to read an entire 100page report and they could choose to read the 20 pages that pertain to the school that they're most uh concerned with. The other piece is to understand that though we have separated the criteria in each of those chapters, if
010you want to call it, it doesn't mean that that's the only thing or only place where that information is provided. And I'm going to use um hardship, which is an area that you're supposed to discuss. We focused on um equity and student groups in this section, but throughout the report there are examples of what people might perceive as hardship such as a bus ride time, a cost, a program. Those are things where that could be very subjective in nature or it could be a, you know, a hardship that most people would recognize. But hardship is is blended within the entire report and that is within the eyes of each of the readers to be able to determine what they believe is a hardship is greater or not. Uh but that's an example of where if
011you just read it in a linear fashion, there are blends that are in there and you have to be able to pull that out yourself as the reader. Again, trying to be objective and not trying to to prioritize one thing over the other. And then I talked a little bit about the enrollment and data points about how they vary. So the majority of the information um it came from multiple places, a lot of involvement from uh district staff uh but specifically we pulled reports that were public facing reports to the best of our ability such as the uh Carolina demographies report, the 2025 SAFO report from last year. Uh facilities capital needs information from either Walpert or studies that were conducted by our district staff. When it came to transportation, you know, we have a
012partnership with the town of Chapel Hill, specifically with the safe routes to schools committee, and we work with them in their report, uh, as well as using information from North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, and then our transportation staff, uh, who understand the the detail and the true, um, potentially challenges or hardships that could be faced within these scenarios. So, they were most helpful. Uh when it comes to inconvenience or hardship demographics, we worked with the office of research assessment and student information to be able to show you information about achievement uh performance, attendance, student groups. Uh and what we did in that is we worked to show the individual three schools but we also showed all schools because we ultimately and you're going to hear this throughout my presentation. This is the first step
013but ultimately if a decision is made to close a school and students have to relocate when we go through a district-wide redistricting process children throughout our district at the elementary level are all going to be impacted. So a lot of the stuff that you see, it's impactful in looking at closure, but it's broader in scope when it comes to how it's going to impact the general elementary community as a whole in the future. So a lot of it is we'll talk about it, but we really can't make decisions until you get to the next step or you can start here, but you're going to have to continue that conversation when you get into redistricting because the same impact in closing a school in many ways occurs when you redistrict students out of their existing schools
014as well. the program capacity analysis. That's something that I've talked about in length with you when it comes to educational adequacy and how we actually use our buildings. Uh we worked with uh NC State uh to be able to help us develop uh a comprehensive analysis of how we're using our schools today. So they contributed to this as well as we've used our board council Smith firm in order to assist with the legal requirements to ensure that you are compliant. So the timeline for the school decision closure again we are presenting uh the study this evening uh and for your review and discussion but ultimately there will be a public hearing at the next monthly meeting on May 21st. is still anticipated that we would uh ask you to make a decision by June 4th
015at that meeting and then ultimately uh through the the middle of this year through early next year we would do the post-decision redistricting process which would be a communitywide process uh even more so than what we've done with school closure because it involves everybody within our district as well as ultimately making some some form of a decision. The goal would be fall of uh for fall of 27 so that that could take effect and it would give our folks enough runway to be able to prepare for that process. So the school study criteria uh the first uh four are mandated uh by state statute to just give an overview a very broad overview of geographic conditions any increase or decrease in enrollment uh inconvenience or hardship to pupils affected and additional facility costs. And then
016you as a board asked for some additional information with respect to recent and projected capital improvements, building adjacency to middle or high schools, transportation costs, and then site adequacy. And that's where the NC State piece falls into play to see what do are our sites actually adequate to be able to serve the needs that we have instructionally for our students and staff. So with that being said, um I want to start off with the first criteria and some of these I'm going to go over very quickly because it's very basic information and I I don't foresee that there'll be a lot of questions, but the first one was with geographic conditions. Um and uh there was an emphasis to to look at any wetlands or flood planes if there was any type of impact to
017the site if there was any uh climate issues that would cause uh concerns for future use of the buildings. Uh and looking at all three schools, uh what I will say is we have some schools that have wetlands that are on them. They're very small in portion for the schools that are under the study. Uh but there was no uh significant impact with any wetlands or flood planes on the three schools. We did look at uh EPA air quality and what we found is in in that study u two schools be it uh Ephesus and SU were in the good range on the EPA air quality status. Uh, Glenwood was moderate. I suspect that's because you got 15501 and 54 kind of right there, but it was right on the edge. So, it wasn't as
018if there was anything dramatically different, but it there was a rating difference there with the increase in decrease in enrollment. This is a piece that I I would like to spend a little time with you on. Uh this criteria really focuses on uh the work of Carolina Demography and Carolina Demography was hired by the county to be able to look at the projections and to be able to make a determination. We asked them to get involved with the why or how did we lose our students? When did it start? And what Carolina demography came back initially and told us is that up until uh this past year uh we have lost uh from 2016 through this year over 1,200 elementary students, 259 middle school students and 220 high school students. So that's kind of where
019we started and this is what got our conversation moving because we needed to gain more information to see knowing that the pandemic was at you know close to the tail end of that or in the middle of that and to be able to make a determination when do we think that that decline was going to either continue was it going to stabilize but we really sought uh outsiders help as well as the county needed that because they are responsible for not only the maintenance of our schools the capital investment in our schools they're responsible for building schools. So them having to understand the projections helps them plan on from a budgetary standpoint what type of funding capital funding they need to provide for new schools or replacements or or uh maintenance work. So with that
020being said we kind of we stop there and this is information that you had up until December and in this why uh Dr. Dollar at that time when we got the primmer in December at the board retreat housing was the piece that was not part of that story yet. That was the part where he believed rather than just looking at what people were projecting on paper, there needed to be a very extensive process where they actually met with the towns. They ground truth is what Dr. Dollar called it where they actually went on sites to actually see the number of units that are being built, what type of activity there was. They conversed with developers, uh, real estate agents that were marketing the developments to really get an idea. though we may have had a
021projection of a certain number of students. What's the reality and the timing of that? Because in the past that's something we did not have is the timing. We just knew that potentially there could be something but we needed something more accurate because you as a board obviously had to make a decision about closure and we have to be able to make sure that we understand to the fullest extent possible and with the greatest amount of information what we are working with based upon current projects that are within our community. So, Carolina Demography then came back and they used all of that information and including the housing and this is the report that you were presented with uh just about a month ago from them uh where they came back and it was very impactful the
022housing analysis uh and you know they had told us that it it could be impactful but they really had to again ground truth it and the lesson here uh or at least the the point that came uh to our attention is that he was able to show a projection for elementary of 111 students less over a 10-year period. And that's based upon the housing uh that projections that were done. Uh and I want to focus on that first because this was a uh for us to receive this information as as staff and for you as a board. This was an aha moment for myself because it was a matter of where the demographer was now saying that that hemorrhaging or that decline potentially it appeared as if it was going to stagnate and losing 100
023is still a lot of children but it's not at the level that we've been losing in the past. So basically the message from Dr. dollar was that we need to continue to monitor because you will notice that if you look at uh the housing and you look at what is uh five years out or 10 years out, the majority of the increase or decrease we hear it's decrease is be uh resulting in the first five years. It's not in 10 years. And you've always heard me say you got to focus on the five years because that's what's more relevant than projecting out too far into 10. But we know that we will continue from the county to get this update. But that was something where it told us if we're going to focus on closure,
024we need to focus on the students that we have lost, but we should not plan on looking ahead for more students as part of our closure plan. That opened it up. So it doesn't determine how many schools we need to close. It just tells us that whatever that number is, we don't need to increase the number. Now aside from that and again tonight is about elementary schools. The decline of a 280 students or 679 students between middle and high school that is something that we need to pause and we need to monitor over time because that is the fact of where the children have that we uh have not enrolled in our district that that decline is metriculating into middle and high schools. So we know that potentially we could be having to monitor enrollment
025in our middle and high schools down the road. Now again, I say that not to say that we may be considering doing something with a middle or high school in the future. That's not what I'm saying tonight because Dr. Dollar has always said that we have parents through market share who are choosing to put their kids in other forms of education outside of K public K12, but many of them are returning at the secondary level. They've also talked with us about if affordability continues to be an issue within our community that there are middle and parents who have middle and high school age children. Many of them are at a point where they can afford to move into this community. Uh and you know the demographers are saying you just have to understand that dynamic
026of what affordability is at the time within your community and who is able to to add to your community or not. So you just don't want to look at numbers and say that we need to either consider consolidation of other schools down the road. We're not there yet. you need to monitor those numbers and I think we have plenty of time to do that and when I say plenty of time we're talking four to five years before I think we should even have that discussion if the trend continues but that 111 students at the elementary level that was the aha moment for us. So, with that being said, um, Carolina Demography also created a chart for all of our schools and it showed what they are projecting based upon, uh, principles monthly report number two
027for this year and then what they're projecting, uh, over time. And what you will see is I I have arrows beside the three schools uh, that are under the study. But you also see that uh again the the the the rate of the decline is kind of like the I'll call it almost a stoplight approach but the red is a greater rate the green is a growth and then you kind of got in between but you can follow the numbers as you go from 2026 to 2036 and you can see uh where we have in some cases a decline in students we also have a increase in students and I want to walk through that a little with you and just give you some feedback on this. So for Ephesus Elementary, uh it shows that
028over a 10-year period, uh that there is a potentially an 80 student increase at that school based upon the current boundaries that we have, not new boundaries, but the current boundaries that we have. Uh and that Glenwood Elementary increase uh of about 24 students and then uh SU Elementary is a decrease of 52 students. The one thing I want to say about this uh and you look at Glenwood, we know that Glenwood is a program school. It's the program, we control the size of that program. So when you see an increase at Glenwood, it's not an increase in their program. It's an increase based upon developments that are within the Glenwood area that the demographer looked at and believes that there could be some growth from people moving into that area or that community. That's
029what that's showing. It's not showing that the program is going to grow by 52 because it's pure lottery based uh and that size is capped by what we determine not by what uh the residential area determines unlike uh Ephesus and Wasul where those are residential schools and you know unless the zones are modified or changed it does show that though we may be seeing an overall decline of 111 students over 10 years at the elementary level we see that two of the three schools are predicted to have uh gain in that. So again, what do you take from that? The fact that if any of if those two schools were closed, there would be other students that would move into that area that would have to be going to other schools as well. It's not
030a huge number, but it is impactful. And my my word of caution with this, and I think Dr. Dollar would probably say the same, is that he's predicting say 80 more students at Ephesus. It could be less. It could be more. But if it's more, it's something we really have to take heed to. And you know, I've always said uh we need to correct but not overcorrect because you just can't pivot when you make a decision to close a school and to to make a decision to reopen a school if the numbers were to change. So, I just don't believe I almost feel like we should take a feet first approach versus a head first approach if you're jumping into the water. We got to be careful with that because again, you can't turn that
031ship as quickly as you can with other things uh out there. At the same time, uh, I want to use an example just as a comparison. Uh, McDougall Elementary on this chart, you see that McDougall is at 469 today and that they could go to 495. That is our one not residential school that does not have any programs that is maxed at this point and they it can it continues to demonstrate that that school is going to grow. So ultimately, I I put out there that we may have schools that have capacity. There are schools that are over capacity and we're actually if we redistrict, we're going to have to relocate or redistrict students out of those schools just to give the school relief to the to the ability because uh when I get into
032program capacity, that's where I'm going to talk about at McDougall where they have very limited access to flexible spaces to do things that are school centric that are essential to the fabric of what we do within our instructional programming. they just don't have the space uh you know literally compared to some of our other schools that have the capacity now and do have the ability to use that extra space uh for that. Uh but you know again we'll get back to this uh this chart here because I think what it does is it just kind of lets you be aware or informed what schools you may have additional capacity in over time and which schools you may not. And again, we're not going to make those decisions tonight uh or or by June 4th. All
033of that would be the next step when you hire a demographer to look at the redistricting because you would want them to take a quantitative analytical approach to determine where is the best positioning of students and communities that allow the schools to be balanced not only for the year that it's done but for future years to come. You know, they will continue to look at these numbers that are projected out in their scenarios because though the school may uh be losing students today, in three years they could be gaining students and we have to plan for what we believe is a gain or a loss. So criteria three uh and this is where uh inconvenience or hardship to pupils affected. Um we as an administration we took an approach uh to really create a framework
034that you know in the absence of finalized attendance zones it's very difficult for us to identify the number of students that are affected by any school closure because ultimately you're going to redistrict and other children are going to be impacted as well. So we took the approach of let's provide information for what we know. So in the report you will see uh the lay of the land is what I call it when it comes to student groups uh economic factors you will see attendance grades performance things that you could look at but what I will say is we purposely are not making any judgments or opinions when it comes to that it's basically if there was anything that I could take from it is if you have a school that has a greater percentage of
035students than another for a certain student group that school would be impacted more if that student uh that school was closed. because there are more students that would be impacted. But I don't believe that we're at a point where we can actually break down and let you know how those children would be impacted because we're going to have to work with that uh with our community when we do the full redistricting process because the impacts will be the same. But if anything, they're going to be greater in magnitude. And this is no different than what you as a board have done in the past uh and previous boards have done when we've gone through a redistricting process. You've got to look at everything in a totality. Uh so again, we've decided again not to make
036assumptions, but to focus on understanding the potential risks and then setting clear equity guard rails to guide future decisions. And that's a recommendation that we're making to you to ensure that you do keep equity in the forefront. Uh because again, all we know at this point are the demographics, the outcomes from academics, the attendance. Uh but all of that we need to take into a broader context uh before we do school assignments. So again, I'm not going to read through this. You've got it, but just showing some examples for the general public to see. And in the report, we again we do show uh when it comes to the student groups, not the school performance. We do show though um all of our schools as it pertains to the student groups. So you kind of
037get an understanding of where our students are uh and uh where they're not if you want to call it that. So again uh our recommendation would be uh that the the next steps in dealing with uh equity as it relates to inconvenience and hardship is that you got to go into the redistricting process. But we are recommending that you stay grounded with the student experience and that universal risk factors they they should apply across all schools. And I've listed here the primary ones that we believe should be in consideration when we go through redistricting. And that is the importance of stable relationships with peers and teachers. That connectivity that's part of the fabric of what makes our schools be successful and for children to be able to flourish is having those relationships uh the ability
038to have them between peers and teachers. the continuity of instruction. You've put a uh you've talked about programs and how you want programs to remain uh intact and that uh you do not want to have those impacted in a negative way. Again, you have to continue because we're looking at all schools and we have to ensure that all of the programs that we have have continuity and then access to programs uh in some cases at the elementary level extracurricular activities. uh that transportation is reliable, that it's looked at, and that our transportation folks working with the demographer can ensure that they are coming up with the most efficient ways so that those routes can be done with the greatest fidelity as possible given all of the challenges that we all face with transportation. And then
039the timing of the transitions. We got to make sure that we understand uh not all student groups transition at the same time and do it successfully. We have children with special needs where transitions may take a lot more time for them to be able to have those relationships, those routines, the familiarity of the surroundings that they're in compared to other students. And we just have to look at that. It's not one-sizefits-all when you look at transitions for students, especially at the primary level. So again, our our next step here would be um to reflect upon those impacts with students. And again there's a an entire section that talks about uh ensuring uh equity and services for ex uh our EC children and ensuring that th that is kept in the forefront and that those services
040are are uh provided. Much of it is legally required but at the same time you've got to take that into consideration. Uh but again it's the central principle that we're recommending to you is just to keep equity rooted in the actual student experience and not just assumptions. Go by what they're actually experiencing. And that would involve community feedback, student feedback, and really understanding, getting first-person feedback in that process, which is something that is not new for our district in participating in. Uh, and again, this would be a phased approach. And the study talks about a three-phase of how what we would recommend at least use as a guiding or a north star and helping follow facilitate that process. Uh, because when we get into redistricting, it's not going to be just me standing up here
041talking about the redistricting. It's an all-out effort for a lot of departments within our district because it impacts anyone and everyone. So, it's a it's a total team effort when we get to that point, especially with the magnitude of what we got. So, criteria number four, additional facility costs. This was kind of an easy one because it's not gerine though it is required. You have to talk about it. It's not germanine to ours. Um the examples of where this is required. I've said this before. There are many districts in our state where they have two schools that have say lost 50 60% of the students in both. They are combining the two because the building conditions are not ideal and they're building a new school. So they're closing two schools, building a new school and
042then putting the populations of the two schools into one. Generally, it's a two-prong approach. It's because the building is in poor, terrible condition, but their enrollment has also gone down. And you see a lot of this in many of our rural communities. That's why this is this statute is in there because that's really what has started uh school closures in the past. That's been a predominant reason. Uh you know the whole idea of low birth rate or lower birth rate what we're experiencing nationally that really hasn't been happening as much in the past as it as it is today. The diff the reasons are different. Rural schools may have a primary uh business that was within their community. That business may have left. it changed the population and it forces them to have to make
043some really tough decisions uh that generally are always financial in nature as well of what drives them to be uh considering this. So criteria number five uh and this is one where I will say I started off this process when we we introduced the schools to put under put under consideration for dis for discussion. I took a fiscal approach with you and I said if we're if we have to close a school we have to look at the operating and the capital expenditures and we have to look at ways that we can reduce those expenditures. Uh because again we wouldn't close a brand new school. we we would want to close a school that has reached its age and has been identified uh by our the county who also recognizes that we have to try
044to replace or and fix our schools. Uh so in doing so um we did two things. Uh we asked our staff, our facility staff to kind of give their assessment and in the report it kind of gives a breakdown of mechanical, electrical, plumbing, infrastructure type projects of what they thought uh are projects that would be needed within the next 10 years based upon life cycle, age and condition, even living uh experiences of what's happening in the buildings today where there are larger amounts of work orders for sewer pipes or for the uh uh air conditioning or roofing issues. where we know that we have infrastructure that has to be replaced. U and what we did is uh what I show you here is you asked for recent and projected and so you see the recent
045we we captured the past five years from 2020 to 2025 and it shows you that uh Ephesus about $678,000 worth of investment. Glenwood at about $770,000 and then SU had 2.6 million. And we've been very open. It's not as if SU was the bread winner for whatever reason. they unfortunately they had a fire and we had to put sub a substantial amount of reinvestment in a building that is a very large amount of square footage on their on their school site. Uh so we know that if anything that building the Lawler building uh is in really good shape at this point. It's been inspected structurally. Uh everything had to be checked after after the fire. Uh and we just know so we've put that money into it. So you do kind of see that one
046is higher than the other. Uh and we we referred to this earlier this year. This is these are sunk costs. This is something we've already done. And for any of our schools, you know, if we are not stopping doing work in our schools because we're considering school closure, we have to continue to maintain our buildings uh no matter what we decide. So, it's not a matter of us just avoiding things. It's a matter of replacing as we have to because, you know, through the CIP, we only get about $4.2 million right now in maintenance funding annually. So, our needs are far greater than our means. So there's very little preventative maintenance on a capital level that we are doing in our buildings with the maintenance funds that the county provides to us at this point.
047Uh so it is just in time type repairs. So then when you look at um the capital projected expenditures you know we did show this uh say 2025 numbers but then we did uh uh compound that uh or escalate that at 4% which right now 4% is about the escalation. Um, you know, if you pay attention with Wake County, you know, they just recently talked about having to uh add more money for school construction because the their escalation factor, they need to increase it. So, we believe in working with our project management group, 4% is a good number at this point to use. And again, we we were steady with that across the board. But it does show that in 10 years, if we had the funding, the amount of equipment and infrastructure within those
048three schools, there's about $70 million worth of work that you could do. But I have to tell you upfront, we're not doing that evaluative of work unless something changes with our funding. So what I will say to you tonight is my epiphany where I will say my position has changed just a little. I can't exclusively tell you that if you look just at the fiscal need of the building that that should be a sole determinant or or as strong of a determinant that I started with you on in December because it's a projection and I know that we're only going to repair what we have to repair. So to put that out there and to say that one number is higher than the other and that that should weigh differently for you. I'm telling you
049now I don't believe that it should because if something breaks at any of these schools, we're going to have to fix it and that's how we're responding. So I just kind of say that with a grain of salt. At the same time, I will tell you and I there there are different numbers that you're going to see from the Walpert report. Um, honestly, if something is 15 million or if it's 21 million, it's a difference. But in our world, it doesn't mean it's not different to us because it's still a lot of money. So, I don't want you to again I can't say that enough that do not use this and weight it in your mind at least because you're not using weight but to say that one number is more impactful than the other
050because again we could have a school that's not on those three that something fails and we have to replace and that's where that money is going to go. It's going to go where it's needed with the portfolio of our schools. So, the Whooper report, again, this is just to kind of show you a comparison. Uh, when they did, uh, the scenarios that the county had asked them to do because they didn't the county didn't give them a scenario where it's like, "We're going to give you a blank check. Tell us everything that we have to fix across the board." They said, "Well, it's a billion dollars, right?" Uh, that's what they said. They they didn't walk and give all of it. But what they did is they they had a category which they called comfortable
051and safe and they listed it for all of our schools of what amount of money would it take for the major capital investment if you didn't do anything else in the school but just fix stuff that needed to be fixed. They estimated uh Ephesus about 28 million Glenwood at 16 million and SU at 23. What I want to share with you is that's 2023 numbers for the study. I did not escalate it because again I think the numbers are big enough you can escalate or not. It's not going to change the impactfulness, but I wanted to show that to you because that is in the report. As I've already told you though, the report is from really it's almost four years ago at this point. Uh, but it's already it's an antiquated report when it
052comes to maintenance because we have had to do things that they have identified and fixed, but we've also had to fix things that they did not identify that failed. So, it's a good northstar as I've said in the past, but it's not the turnkey. And we've already had some discussions with the county uh to talk about possibly doing uh another facility assessment just on the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing uh between us and Orange County because we know that that report already needs to be revamped, which is not uncommon to do that every 3 to 5 years. So, building adjacency to middle or high schools. Um you know, again, I want to put out that for our district, we have three campuses that are comprised of two or more schools. We have the McDougall Elementary Middle
053School campus. We have the Estes Hills, Phillips Middle Schools, and then we have Soul, Smith, and I'll say Chapel Hill. That's the only school site where we have three that are adjacent. Um, so neither Ephesus or Glenwood have a middle or high school that's contiguous uh with the school. Uh, but at the same time, SU uh does have Smith and Chapel Hill. What I want to tell you is um presently uh in working with um our student information folks uh that there are no school uh school students that are enrolled in courses at the elementary level at Smith Middle or Chapel Hill High School. There have been some isolated cases in the past, but that's not something that is common is what I found. uh but however there are cases where there are students from
054Smith and or Chapel Hill that may come to SU and take advantage of uh shadowing opportunities and collaborative opportunities working with the students in the classes with their respective classes. So you do have that synergy. But again, I just we looked into that. We we wanted to share. I think realistically the only the strongest case after a school has been built because if you build a school and they're adjacent to each other, there are efficiencies with the cafeteria, with the parking, uh with the gymnasium that you can get from a capital investment. But from an operational standpoint, the the greatest advantage of having schools that are adjacent boils down to the parents. uh parents who are able to drop their kids off possibly an elementary and a middle school at the same time. There's activities
055after school. They're close to each other. But again, what I'll say is we got plenty of schools that are not adjacent and they're all within the same distance and it I don't believe it serves as an advantage or not. But it is a nicity if you have it, but I just don't believe it's it's compelling enough. And there was nothing that in my opinion with the district staff's evaluation that really made it stick out more than the fact that it's a very big convenience for parents at times. and with certain situations. So, transportation costs, um there's two things in the report that transportation focuses on. It looks at schools that are adjacent to the schools being uh recommended or at least studied for closure. And it gives you an approximation of how much time it
056might take to be able to uh move students from let's say Ephesus to Estes Hills if that was if Ephesus was to close or if Glennwood was to close and it was to you know um well Glo was not a good example but was sold to close and how close is Estie's hills or Morris Grove. So it gives you kind of an approximation. The thing I want to share is just to remind everybody our school district is about approximately uh 30 square miles. That's the size of our district. You know, our schools, they may seem far apart, but they're really not geographically far apart. In no way, shape, or form would we be ever consider moving students from the west side of the of the district all the way over to the east side in
057a redistricting. It's going to be a domino effect in essence is what happens. So, it's not like you're going to be moving somebody all the way across town unless a program or something was to be moved. The adjacency schools are the one. So, we focus on time and it's there's nothing really revealing in that. the average of the time it's what we anticipated on average it could be uh eight to to 12 to 13 minutes it just depends upon the disclaimer again I want to give is we give a an estimate of the time but at the same time when we redistrict bus route zones are going to change and what I will tell you is there are major inefficiencies that we currently have when it comes to routing uh in our school district and
058I'm going to use just one example to kind of give you an idea There are times where we know that in transportation, if we close a school that's a residential school, that every child that's within the walk zone, not every child walks. And you'll see that in the report, but we know that we have to take the responsibility of being able to transport any of the students that were in the walk zone of the school that possibly could close. So, we take that number and we use that and we multiply that out uh by what DPI states is the average cost per student and we give you kind of an approximation of what that would cost. And you see that on the chart. Uh but at the same time though we may have to add
059a driver if you close a school. We have examples where there are students uh and I'll use an example who live up near East Chapel Hill High School that every day a bus goes up there picks the children up and drives past Ephesus and Estes Hills and takes them to Rashus because that's where they're zoned. If you go by Carbor High School at BPW, there are students that live in that community that go to Rashus every single day. So there are the demographers call those satellite pockets and it's where you have schools uh neighborhoods that are outside of the contiguous school zone that you've zoned students to. Well, if we go through the redistricting and if we determine that there are ways in which we can minimize that or improve it, that driver that's going
060to some of those pockets that we have, that driver could be used for a school that potentially is closed where you had to hire a driver for the walk zone. So, I say that to say even though we're saying you may have to hire another driver, in the big picture, there may not be additional cost if we're able just to improve some of the inefficiencies that exist out there today. Because again, it's been a long time since we've redistricted. It's been over 12 years. Our lay of the land has changed and and we clearly see that communities have aged out and they have changed to where we have capacities in some schools where we don't have capacities in others. You know, hindsight, uh what I will tell you is if we could have if we
061could have redistrited, we probably should have done it 10 years ago and we should have done it five years ago. If and if we as a district had done that, uh the imbalance that is there wouldn't have be as uh pronounced as it is today. But again, we're going to make that right in the future. But it is one where that would have helped a little as far as the lay of the land and the balancing that is out there. Um, this DPI report uh is something that every school district uh submits with their mileage uh and the number of student counts that they have. It's out there. It's public. You can see the history of what we have paid per student per year. You'll see that during COVID, especially um when students return, transportation
062was a lot higher because there were more uh transportation pieces and contract driving that we were providing for. So you you see a variance if you go actually look at the chart on the state page. But again, the other takeaway for transportation uh knowing that we're saying that for SU and Ephesus, it's about 112 to 117,000 additional dollars for the students that we would have to transport that we're not transporting today. Uh Glenwood Transportation has basically said that they do not believe that Glenwood would be added cost. When they look at the history of the number of students that ride the buses to Glenwood versus the parents that drop them off and they compare it to FPG, which is also a program school and the number of parents, that number really doesn't sway. So, in
063their mind, they they believe that that would probably kind of negate out because there might be different parents that are driving their kids to Glenwood uh if that school was to close, but it would still be about the same number because they have seen that consistency with the programs over the time that the programs have been there. So, we've put that pretty much as a neutral cost. But in the report, we do show what the actual cost would be if you had to transport everybody because our program schools, we provide transportation to all students that participate in them. So, you'll see the big number in there, too. But realistically, our transportation department felt pretty confident from historical data that Glenwood would not change. So, criteria eight, and this is the one uh the final one,
064uh but I want to be able to spend a little more time because there is some new information here uh that we've got as far as how we are using our buildings. But I just want to remind everybody there have been three types of reports or analysis that have been done that we've used. First is the Walpert report. It was not just a facility report. it was an optimization report. Uh and then we have the SAFO capacities which have been the historical way in which our county has been able to decide if we need to build more schools because of enrollment increases in years past. SAFO was ultimately created at a time when developers many years ago either had to pay fees or if the district saw that the development that was being proposed created
065hardship where they didn't have the seats, they could deny developers at the time. The laws have changed and you cannot stop development by the basis that you don't have seats in your schools and you can't charge them profers or fees that occur nationally. Those laws have changed. But SAPO was a document that ultimately was created in a very conservative level to be able to tell a developer yes or no. And if they told a developer no, they had to be able to be a little more over the top with them to say even if we had this many seats in our school, we don't have enough for what you were proposing. So those numbers, we call them legacy numbers and you you will see that uh discussion in the analysis that was done. That was
066really used. Safo was used when our district was growing and we're not in that state where we are growing. We still have a net decline over the next 10 years and we actually have to look at what how do we manage a decline in student population. Hence, program capacity is very important at that point because it's how you're using your buildings with the children that you have today. And that's the uh the program capacity piece you see here. So again, I just want to walk through uh what each of these reports did. You know, the Walpert report, they utilized the square footage per student to evaluate the size and adequacy of the school facilities for the bond support. Their job was to come in to show where our needs were and if our schools were
067adequate or not when it came to current instructional standards. And the case was that they were not. And that the board of county commissioners said that we should be replacing schools. We shouldn't just renovate schools. We need to make the spaces that are necessary so our schools can be up to current standards for the next 50 years knowing that they've been open for 50 to 70 years at this point for the first ones that we were looking at. the SAFO capacity uh it really looks at legacy capacities but I do want to say that it is um irrespective of community and academic programs like it doesn't talk about the ECAC classroom settings doesn't talk about prek uh in a whole uh gifted programming um multilanguage programming resource spaces all of those things that allow our
068schools to be able to have the flexibility to do what they need to do working with our kids that the SAPO was about getting as many kids into our buildings as possible, maximizing the building without looking at the instructional needs because we know when you have instructional needs that's going to lower that capacity. But that's what we have to do in the business of education. We've got to be able to provide those buildings because we are not creating offices that businesses would have. We're creating learning environments with children that all have different learning abilities, different stages of learning and we have to be able to address those with our staffs. And then the program capacity is basically where uh it's what I would call the ground truthing just like we did ground truthing with Carolina
069demography going out on the job sites and looking at the developments. NC State uh who works with all of our K12 districts in this capacity. Uh they actually went and we inventoried all of our elementary schools initially. We looked at all of the spaces that were being used. We sized them up. We matched those up with current North Carolina DPI standards as well as best practices. And then we went and met with all of the administrations at those schools, primarily the principles to better understand how their buildings are working and not working. What what needs do they have when it comes to world language space, AIG space, resource rooms, calming rooms, sensory rooms, any any type of room of that nature. And what we found is our newer schools, if they were at capacity, they
070were doing okay. Our older schools, if they were at capacity, they didn't have the flexible space. And then our older schools that didn't have the students in them, they were able to use that extra classroom space to offset those other classroom needs that we have that are non-instructional. Uh so in that uh we kind of ground truth and really looked at. So what you're going to see is basically SAPO has a high number for capacity and as you get into program capacity that always lowers the number and that's what I really want to talk with you about today because that's where if we go through a redistricting process we can't just say that we're going to turn the world upside down move our entire district around and then put them into spaces that are not
071flexible and do not give them the supports that the schools the staff and the children need. We've got to keep that in mind because again I've used this phrase before. I believe that that is one of the the tenants of what makes the fabric of our district is how we address the individual needs of our students and we have we take advantage of the spaces that we have to maximize that and we can't allow that uh because districts that are growing in size they are very limited because they just have to put children in seats and we if we have the ability to hit the reset we've got to do it right because we know that if we do turn into a growing situation in years to come you know we all keep our fingers
072crossed for that uh we may have to pull that space back in time, but we shouldn't start that way from the beginning. We need to get back to where where we were 20 years ago. So again, I I do want to share because I think this is an important part. One of the the biggest things um that Walper did in my opinion was they determined the level of educational adequacy in our schools. And I've already said that to you. Our older schools were lacking. Our newer schools were not. Uh and there were three questions that they asked. And they asked uh do students have all the necessary schools? Do they have all the necessary rooms? Were the rooms appropriately sized? And then do the rooms have the right equipment? And and you remember when I
073presented the Wolver report, I basically said we were horrible when it came to do we have all the necessary rooms? And we didn't do well when we had are all the rooms appropriately sized. But we did fairly well. You know, 83, 86, and 88% with do our rooms have the right equipment. And I've always said in our district, we are resourcerich in many respects. It's resourceri not on a capital side but on a human resource and with materials and supplies of that are appropriately placed in our schools and they acknowledge that they saw that there was the appropriate equipment in all of our educational spaces and at the elementary level these the three schools here under the study it demonstrates that. So that was really good because that opened our eyes that we really need
074to look at the program capacity because they're basically saying our spaces are not sized appropriately which means that you may not have those supports. So we really had to go meet with the principles and inventory their schools to learn that since we had not redistricted in quite a while. So the analysis that they did and I don't want you to think there's not a huge report that NCC did for us. They've got a basically a database of best practices and they help us facilitate by taking all the information and putting it in to help us determine what that percentage of utilization is. That's what it is. So in the end this chart here that is like the culmination of all the work that they did and what it does is it shows you uh the
075difference in capacities between Walpert Sappatho our program capacity uh and then taking what we've determined is our program capacity and then looking at the current enrollment from the PMR2 and then coming up with a utilization rate our utilization rate Dr. dollar would would probably say that with his using the SAPO number, our utilization rate was probably about 74%. Because of the most recent decline we had this past fall, he said 80% to us a year before. When we look at the program capacity, we look at what does it take to get all of our children out of modular units back into our schools with a minimum number of flexible spaces for schools to use for C school- centric needs. We're at 81%. Now, ideally at the elementary level, uh 85 to 95% is really a
076program capacity range for an elementary school. When you get in the middle and high school, those numbers go up because children are taking electives. They're moving around in the building and you have the ability to pack the spaces more. But again, we have class count max sizes by the state at certain grade levels. our children uh are not born in those sizes to where some schools you may have three sections of a kindergarten one year, two sections the next year and those cohorts move through the school. So those are examples of where you got to have some flexibility in the building to be able to accommodate that. So taking all that account, if we were to redistrict today, we would probably add about 80 from 81% to be able to ensure that all of our
077schools have that flexibility for the future. we'd probably add about three to 4% to that number. So, we would take you to I'll say 84%. Um, now what they came in and said is that uh in doing so, bottom line, if you were to close one school, they believe that it would take our rate without the flexible space, that 3% that I'm talking about, that uh it would take it up to 87 to 89% with just closing one school. If you close two schools, you're pushing um past 95% range. And that does not include providing schools with the flexible spaces that they need. And this is where I got to go back two slides or one slide. If you look at McDougall Elementary on this chart and you look at the far right, they're at
078118%. That's an example of where if we only allow them to use, they have one flex space in their schools. What we found, they've got prek in trailers. They have put all their core classes in the school and they have one flex space to use for calming, sensory, resource, world language, AIG, whatever they need that for, which means they're putting all that stuff into the regular classrooms because they don't have the flexibility. That's where you get that extra two to 3% that I've kind of talked about where you need to be able to give schools because that would reduce or increase that number from 81. it would raise it higher than 81 if you did that at McDougall. So, it's not just that you have schools that are under capacity, we do have some schools
079that are over capacity. Uh and again for the study here, you see Ephesus Elementary uh is at 100% utilization rate predicted in five years. Um SU Elementary is at 81% and then Glenwood is at 100% and uh that's including the dual language program. No, when NC State looked at uh Glenwood, they did not use Dr. Dollar's housing projection. They used the fact that what is the what is the class the cap that we have on the program. That's why it shows 100% because our the goal would be to always have that program at 100% utilization to the best of our ability. Not that every year it's at 100%. you know, it's based upon how many children and families choose for their children to apply to it and then it's lottery based upon that because we
080know that there have been some years where Glenwood has had cohorts that are a lot smaller than other cohorts. So, it does vary, but we shot that to show 100% there. So, with that being said, uh this is the other epiphany. I kind of started with Dr. Dollar in the beginning saying that hemorrhaging or that decline, it's really slowing down. It's it's occurring at a a lesser speed. And I'm ending it with saying that if based upon our diligence going through the school criteria for closure, uh, that if I was to recommend the number of schools that you could consider, I would only be able to recommend one school to you, not two. So for your your consideration, it's either no schools to close or one school to close. But I I and our staff
081cannot recommend that you try to pack the closure of two schools within the redistricting and and the process when it comes to program capacity. If there is, you know, there are districts that have to do that when they're they cannot make payroll for people and they have to do it. I don't believe that we're in that position. We've had to make a lot of tough decisions with you and Dr. Trice in the district. Um, and I think that we're at a point where I don't believe we're at that stage where we have to do that for survival or necessity unlike a lot of our uh colleagues in other districts that have had to make those difficult choices. But for me it would be one school and and again I can't reiterate that enough. So with
082all that being said, uh our next steps uh obviously the board's going to be having a public hearing May 21st. Uh and that you as board will continue to engage in discussions about making those informed decisions. Um so you know with that being said, I'm happy to answer any specific questions that you may have on what I've presented uh or if there's anything within the report that you may need clarification with as as you deliberate. Thank you, Mr. Sherro. I know this is just a highle summary. We didn't go um we didn't do a page turn. So, thank you for not not doing that. We would have been here all night. Um I know board members, this is a a big study that we we just received, you know, yesterday kind of to help us
083do at least a pre-eread for this meeting. The community just saw it today. So, um I don't know if anyone has any initial thoughts, comments, or questions or anything you want to share right right now. Obviously, we've got some future meetings as well. Go ahead. Um Meredith. >> Yeah, I just jotted down a few questions um while I was looking at the um the report and listening to you talk. I wrote down a couple more. So um you might have given this number but I may have missed it so apologies if I missed it but do you know what percentage of utilization and that accounting for the program utilization not just the straight up and down building utilization is considered the best practice for an elementary school. Yeah, I I think that when you look
084at utilization, I would say where the rubber hits the pavement, it's got to be program capacity. Uh, and what I what I will say is that you need to be somewhere. I think 85% if just straight 85 is on the low end. Uh, but I do think that when you start getting 92 94, >> there may be some discussions that we have to have in redistricting. And and I'm not here to tell you that we're going to get every student out of modular units. That is the goal. But we may find with say prek requirements that maybe only one has to be in a trailer or two and not four in one as an example. Um or that there may be a decision because there is a cohort where a class may have to be
085in a trailer for one year but they know that they're not going to be in there. But program capacity and I would say I would not go higher than 93 94. I think that's pushing it. school districts that are able to hit 95% at the elementary level. They my experience has been that they don't the children only go to those schools and they don't travel with programs where there's transportation that takes them to a dual language program or a magnet program or an AIG program that's held at a different school. It's very fixed because then they're able to keep everything focused and under tight control. And I I know I've mentioned to you in the past, all of the opportunities uh and choices that we provide to our students, the cost of all of that
086on an operation side is always inefficiencies, especially when it comes to transportation, but that really has an impact on our program capacity. So I it would make me very nervous if we if we're in this process, if we're hitting 95%, I would want the demographer to be able to demonstrate where based upon the enrollment that they see at specific schools that it's not creating a problem. But if it could be balanced enough to where you can hit 95 is where you'd want to go. But I don't think I don't think we'll get there. >> Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. Um I mean I I take that as very good news. Like I'm glad to hear that recommendation of one school versus two schools. I think that that is a less painful outcome. So I'm happy
087to hear that that's where the numbers seem to be trending at this point. Um I also wanted to ask about criteria one. Does that not encompass geographic distribution across the district? >> In what respect? >> Like whether you know we have looking at whether we have an absence of schools in like a certain quadrant of the town. >> Uh it doesn't but when you get into criteria number two where it has an increase or decrease uh that is really where uh you can see where there are pockets of student capacity currently within our schools. uh you know the geographic conditions. I mean when you redistrict you're your goal is going to be to balance that. Um so it does not cover it under geographic conditions but it does cover your question under criteria 2. And
088when you look at the chart you can see where where we stand uh with schools where let's say their capacity is 390 kids but they have 280 kids in the building. >> You know they may have pockets where we have schools where there's 150 180 seats. Other schools there might only be 30 seats available at this point. Um, but that's where you'll see that geograph the distribution of where and you know what I will tell you is that's all about I called the life cycle of communities where communities will age out and then they will regenerate and they will start again. So when you're looking at it from a redistricting balancing standpoint, you have to keep that in mind because you know that if there's a community that that is not yielding as many kids
089in the future that could change over time. and you know planners out there you know they've got a lot of knowledge on the number of times that communities can kind of regenerate or recycle uh to help us uh facilitate that but that would all be part of the redistricting process. I mean, I guess my concern is more um would be more pertinent if we were considering two schools versus one school because you don't want to close two schools that are like right next door to each other leaving a pocket of town without a school is I so that was my concern. But if it's only one school, I feel like that may be less of an issue. >> Right. Right. No, you know, in this case, uh and again, I'm just going to use examples.
090If we well if we were to close um Sul and Ephesus we know that there are pockets of space uh and I'm just going by memory tonight you've got uh Rashus Estes Hills Northside so in essence if you were to close a school that's adjacent to schools that have capacity uh that ultimately could create more movement of students because you're going to have to move students from an an a not the adjacent school but beyond the adjacent school. >> Uh so yes, it does improve if you only have one school with that respect. But again, that would be knowing that our districts and our schools are so close. >> The redistricting process I think would address that because we do have schools that could use some relief that could also balance that out. So, I
091don't see that as a problem in this case, but it could um if those pockets of vacancies or capacity were not in the right spots. >> Got it. >> Yeah. >> And then the last thing I wanted to raise is just can you describe a little bit like more about what the public can expect with the public hearing? Like is it going to be that options will narrow and then that's what's going to be the subject of the public hearing or will it be that that we're going to just discuss every option that's on the table? Like I I'm just getting the sense from some of the public that like it's a little unclear kind of what what that evening will look like. >> Yeah. Well, I think a lot of that's going to depend
092upon what uh you and the board here deliberates and decides. I mean, it could be uh that potentially there is trending to one or two schools or it could be that we leave this meeting tonight and there's discussion to where that public hearing could be for all three schools. at at this stage. I mean, you guys have not been able to deliberate. Uh, but I think you can plan on it could be that there are three schools where the community would need to come and continue the public hearing process if there's uh no further discussion that comes from uh you as a board collectively uh because we're not making any recommendations tonight uh as far as staff. >> Okay. >> So, that's how I envision it. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Go ahead, Barb. Thank
093you very much. This is obviously a lot of work and you did it very quickly. So, thank you. Um I have several questions, but I just want to ask one first. So, criteria five, that chart um about recent and projected capital expenditures. >> Um I think you explained it, but I just didn't get it. So, so like Ephesus between 2020 and 2025, $678,000 were spent, right? And then why does the number become 16 million in 2025 and 20 million? Like just explain that again. >> Yeah, absolutely. Okay. >> So the first chart is what we have spent between the years of 2020 through 2025 and in the report it shows you the types of projects that were done. You see the categories. What it's showing beyond that are projects that we are projecting based upon
094life cycle, age and condition that the school would we would ultimately have to plan to replace over time. So we show that over over that time and we show the escalation of five years and 10 years so that you can kind of get the magnitude of though you may only have to invest if we were able to get the money to do all of that work in the first five years it would be less than what it would be due to escalation rising costs in 10 years. So, it's just a two-year escalation, two period escalation that you're seeing, but those are for projected projects. They are not projects that we've done. But you'll notice in the report, you will see things like uh again, sewer replacement, storm sewer replacement, domestic water piping, roofing, air conditioning.
095Those are things that we know we're going to have to replace in those buildings within the next 10 years. But what I tried to say is with the level of funding that we have, I can't tell you that we're going to do all of that work. We're only going to do what we have to do unless our funding ability from the county changes for our maintenance. So I I didn't it's a risk. It there's a need out there but it's going to be responding as just in time as things are need to be replaced if that makes sense >> related then the same criteria. So that chart the numbers are pretty different from the walpert chart and I think you explained this but could you just explain it again why? >> Yeah. So, our staff
096went and looked at the the the basic systems within our within our schools. Warpert went in and they looked at what information we provided, what they grabbed, and it's they're not the same. The methodology and what they chose, it's just not the same. And I've always said not to focus on the Walpert report, but I showed both because there is a disparity. And I just want you to know it's somewhere in between. But Walpert has already demonstrated that what they identified for us, they didn't hit the mark because we've had things that they didn't even identify that have failed or things that they said we probably had 10 more years and they were low priority and they have failed. So again, that's the nature of uh working with mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems and you
097just have to be able to respond just in time. But I wanted to show that as a comparison that they're both they're both up there and I you know we have other schools uh because the Wolver report you've heard this but the public may not you know it showed East Chapel Hill with a huge amount of money that was needed and that's not one of our oldest schools but the school has reached an age where all of the major infrastructure systems have to be replaced. Uh Carbor High had infrastructure systems that need to be replaced. McDougall Elementary and Middle was very high on cost because there were systems that are hitting that age. So, that's really what they were looking at. Um, but they are different. They are. And I I could tell you right
098now if the county was to hire another company to come in, their number is going to look different than that. But I feel pretty confident though what our team has come up with that those are things that we really have to look at from a a hard level just to be sure because that's what they're monitoring with our facilities. Yeah, I have I have a question. I think one of the things I found really interesting was looking at the the new developments and kind of the estimates about number of students. How confident are we are about those numbers? I mean, I know they're estimates. >> Yeah. >> So, I can only go by what the demographer tells us, right? I mean, I'm not the one that created them, but you know, again, the demographer, Dr.
099Dollar said that he felt very confident in the five-year but again that's a very subjective approach and you know other demographers might look at it differently um and have a different number so I think we have to take best faith effort uh but but in my mind there was more diligence done by them at the request of the county to be able to again that ground truthing because that had not occurred before and we know that the previous SAFO reports they would show numbers that developments would yield certain number of kids and uh I can always tell you I've told people but our buses aren't going there. They're saying that they're going to yield this many kids but we only have maybe one kid coming out of it or our bus is only picking up
100one. Now there could be parents that are taking kids but then when you look in the system and you and you see the addresses of where our children are and they're not in some of those developments. So the ground trroofing at least brought it to what I believe is a more realistic expectation. But again, that's where for me, I think you have to take that with a grain of salt and you have to say it could go either way. And that's why I that's part of my rationalization. Program capacity is not taking that prediction into account. It's looking at what is there today and then what are they saying? But it's got to be we just have to monitor that. And I that's why I kind of use that analogy of head first versus feet
101first versus head first because again if we close two schools and we find that in three years we didn't have to that's problematic for everybody in our community and that's not a place that I think we need to put ourselves into. At the same time it it does validate some of the housing and maybe some of the housing changes and policies that may have occurred possibly but time will tell on all of that. I just don't think we should go. That's why I showed fiveyear and 10year because the bulk though the demographer said the changes were in the first five years not the 10 years. So that's why we've got to monitor that and I think that's why we have to be cautious because that greatest amount of fluctuation could occur between zero and five
102years. >> Mr. Sheri, I've got a question while other board members think and ponder. um when we're looking and this is kind of I guess aligned with what Melinda was asking um on criteria 8 that site adequacy. So as we're going down this path of discussion and we're considering number of schools it feels like one is is is bubbling up based on some of this information. I'm looking at any receiving school, right? So, we've got a number of schools that are not at that um capacity, I guess, sweet spot that you mentioned, right? And so, how much, you know, how many students like what's their capacity to receive students? So, I'm looking at I think it's the it might be a couple more down from there. Let me see. Yeah, it's further down. Um, we've
103got, you know, schools like Rashus at 55%, North Side at 60, >> SCROGS at 62. >> Yep. >> So, if you look at the program capacity where it has CHCCS program capacity, that's the capacity that >> NC State is saying. And I just use an example if you could see what's on here. We just use Carro Elementary. It says Walpert said they were at 543. Safo said 518. The program capacity that um NC State is saying it's 520. So if you go down and let's say look at SU it would be a program capacity of 416 kids. That's what they believe that SU can hold today. What that number is not taken into account is any modifications we make if SU needs an additional flex space based upon something that's school centric. And that's where
104I kind of added to that number of of program utilization because you got to have a little extra there to meet the needs of some of our individual schools. But that chart right there uh shows you where the program capacity is. So you can look at that and you can look at where we're projected and you can kind of get a feel trend-wise because again I I think with this report you can't lock yourself into specific numbers and say oh it's 520 >> you know the enrollment is is a certain number because that enrollment changes number of people moving into the neighborhood might change. Uh so you got to you just got to take that into account and use this as a from a broadstroke perspective. But clearly you could see where the other chart
105that's in the presentation, we do have schools that have the ability to accept new students. Uh and where we've talked a little bit about we know when that time comes, there's going to have to be a lot of work that's done to preserve the culture of that school, but also to allow the school to embrace cultures of of other schools that are kind of blending in with it because you are kind of changing that recipe a little. But you want to try to preserve the best of both. and we've talked about that as a need, but there there are schools that um through the redistricting, depending upon what decisions are made by the board, um could have substantial numbers of students coming into them, if you want to call it that. And I think right
106now the the biggest three uh are Estes Hills, Northside, and Rashus uh would be the three that probably have the greatest capacity, though there are other schools like Boris Grove has some capacity. Uh but you again that chart is just an approximation to kind of give you that ballpark. Um >> okay. All right. Thank you. >> Yeah. I'm I'm curious. I mean I'm I'm going to keep going down this red redistricting rabbit hole a little bit because obviously that's something we have to think about in parallel to this decision because it's like we make a decision And then we have to kind of immediately think about redistricting. And so, you know, thinking about like um we've got three schools we're considering and we've looked at information on like transportation. You know, I just asked the
107question about capacity of some of some receiving schools. So we do have some capacity at a number of our schools to receive significant number of students not a whole school right at any one school without being disruptive. And so my question is as we're thinking about disruption because I think for me that's like a goal like if we can disrupt as little as our communities we can with this. And then also I think you've hinted at we've got some redistricting things that we probably could clean up as a board that'll help give us some efficiencies as well that you know have have bubbled up over the years as as our district has changed. Is there something or you know I think a a path that we should consider in your opinion in terms of like
108the least disruptive option for us to think about as a board that we should probably just kind of think about over these next few days and weeks. The one thing that we continue to talk about is, you know, we always say what is the least disrupt? What could you First of all, closing any school is disruptive. >> Yeah. >> I I want to be very clear. I don't want anyone to think that that's easy. It is one of the toughest decisions that any school board could ever make uh and staff to make for a community, right? Um, but if you're thinking about what is the least disruptive for the for students, for parents, for staff, for staff, because literally staff, a lot of staff potentially could be moved. >> You want to you want to
109try to do things that mitigate that movement if you can. Meaning, if you close a school that's far away, real far away from the schools that have capacity, then you're going to have to have a domino effect. You're going to have to move kids. The kids from one school that closes is going to have to move to another school. That adjacent school is going to have to move to the school that has the capacity because again, we're not going to take kids from the west side of our district and move them all the way over to the east side and say you're just going to be on a bus for 45 minutes every day, guaranteed. That's not what you're going to do. So, anything that you can do to prevent that movement because if you
110can mitigate the movement of masses of kids to the best of your ability, then you are moving less families. You're moving less staff. So, then you're not taking I'll just have to make up a number. You're not taking 150 kids out of a school and moving them into another school and then moving a hundred of those kids out to make room in in a third school. Then those staffs have to be moved accordingly. So if you can make it to where one a small pocket of students and a small pocket of staff move versus a large pocket of staff and students that helps. Um and I and I think that you know there are there are opportunities that are out there uh with some of those scenarios that will allow that. It's just you guys
111just having to figure out um which ones you prioritize and which ones you believe have the least impact. then you know I can I can help and other staff we can help answer those questions. Um our transportation staff were very very helpful for me when I worked directly with them to understand how they operate and how that all how that all works and how we get children from point A to point B. And it's it's pretty amazing. We provide a lot of not just general bus stop pickup and and drop off. We provide a lot of individualized uh transportation because of the program offerings that we have. And it really it has opened my eyes to that even more so of how we have used that to leverage opportunities for our students here. So I
112always say inefficient transportation is actually a good it's a healthy sign of a school district because it means that you're providing choices to your students. If you have the most efficient transportation department in the in the state, it means you're probably not offering those choices because choices mean inefficiency. It's just a reality. Go ahead. Go ahead, Ronnie. Um, Al, Mr. Shroi, thank you so much for all the data. There is a lot of richness in the packet, so I know the public will likely spend some time digesting it. I know I was took me some hours to get through it, but there's a lot of good stuff in there. Um, I am particularly glad to see we are now just thinking about whether it's one school or zero schools because I think I've always had
113concerns about our ability to logistically manage closing schools and all the accompanying changes that that would require. Um, I do think, Risa, as I ponder your question about minimizing disruption, and I think that is sort of the the the key question of um, it really makes me think about um, how do we preserve programming? How do we think about what sites would impact transportation in the least way? And so that leads me to Glennwood as a potential site for school closure. Um, and so my question is how do we think about redistricting in a way that preserves our commitment to programming? And so maybe one question is like is there an opportunity to convert another school to a magnet school and take at least some element of the programs that exist at Glenwood to that
114site, that location? >> So you like for me to use Glenwood as an example? >> Sure. >> Okay. Uh so what we determined with with Glenwood, Glenwood is a program school. Uh there are no children that just by residential address attend Glenwood. You you uh you move to that area, you go through a lottery system. You if there's availability, you get in. If there's if there's no there's a waiting list, you don't get in. And then for people who live in that community, they then have other schools that they can attend. Um you know, up to four schools that they have the ability to attend. the what we've determined is at least that you know and I know the community has said that you know they have desired to keep both programs together uh but
115from a structural uh human resource standpoint program delivery standpoint from staffing and teaching the two programs they are independent so you know we've put out there that you could move the school as a whole or potentially you could separate the dual language the world language from the dual language bander components we that's been out there it's been in community meetings Um, if you were to move the entire program, you know, we have two schools that are in that boat. It's FPG and and uh Glenwood that are full program schools. FPG is far greater in uh size and capacity in comparison, right? They're close to 500 kids there. But either way, if you move a program, if Glenwood was to move, you're gonna have to move an entire school that you move it to out of
116their school because you it's not designed to have a residential component and then to have those other two programs. That's just too much for a school to have three tracks if you want to call it is what you know we it's been communicated with us. Uh but that would be a challenge. I mean, obviously, if you were to move an entire program, um, then you have to work with that community, decide which school that would be and which community those children might be displaced. And of course, you could pick a school that has the the least number of students in it right now, meaning they have the greatest uh unused or underutilized capacity. So, you would be moving less kids in that case, but you would be again taking away that that residential piece where
117people have walkability. You know, you're taking that component away as well. Um, you could also, if you were to split a program school, if you have that ability, um, at Glenwood, it's pretty much, I'll round at 200 kids in each, you could move 200 kids into one of the schools that has capacity, especially if the data is showing that it looks like that enrollment is even going to continue to go down. It'll give greater flexibility. uh because you know that if you move the students and there were other students that moved into that residential area that where it now became a program, those students would still have the ability to go to that school because you would have two tracks. You would have the the Mandarin program that's there and you would still have a
118residential program very similar to what we have at Carro Elementary. So you could take those pockets of vacancies with Glenwood as the example and you could put, you know, I'll throw it out there, put one at one school, put one at the other. Then when you come to redistricting, if Glenwood is the school that was selected, if you go to the redistricting, those schools have been filled. So we're now you're not moving masses of children to backfill to balance. So when it comes to moving le less movement of students, moving a program school, you're going to reap more benefit from doing that than you would if you chose another school. And again, I'm not saying that that's the reason to select a school, but it is a big one when it comes to uh reducing
119the movement because you're filling those gaps. So then you're not forcing more and more kids to be moved to able to balance that. You know, the the downfall is if you don't do that, let's say we didn't close Glenwood and we closed another school, you might have to make a decision to have a school that maybe doesn't uh that you don't fill the capacity. You don't balance it with compared to the other schools because you decide that you end up moving more kids and that's more disruptive to fill that school. From an efficiency standpoint, you you need to do something to fill your schools. If it's putting programs into them, if it's redistricting, you got to find a balance. But, uh, Glenwood, as the example that you've asked, I mean, that would that would fill
120the void of possibly two schools if if that program was to split. But, you know, if you kept the program as a whole, you're just going to have to determine which school you would put it in and then have to work with that community as we've gone through this process with multiple communities uh, this past year to be able to work through that as well. Um, both can be done. >> Yeah. So, I just I guess thanks for that. That's super helpful because again like you try to minimize disruption in one place and maybe unwittingly create it in another by you know changing a eliminating another walk zone. But the one thought I had is if we converted another school to a magnet you could potentially allow those walk zone families to become part of
121that magnet program. So that you might have you are probably going to lose some students who are currently in the program who may go back to their home schools. And so you could imagine a scenario where you might um have an additional 100 schools students or so 200 students who are already at that school who want to then continue to stay there but they would join the magnet program >> in the scenario where you split the where you split the programs not moving the entire program. >> Uh it's moving the entire program and allowing current students to join the program. So they wouldn't be able to join the dual language, but they could join the world language, for example. >> The only piece that I think about in that scenario is if we had a
122school that was that large, >> I think if you move 400 students out of Glenwood into another school, you'd have to have a school that's got, you know, 500 to 550 capacity so that you've got students that can choose to stay at that school and it just doesn't fill it. Or you'd have to say, well, it's a I'll make this up. It's a 460 student capacity school. There's 400 kids from Glenwood. There's only 60 seats for the people who live in that area that can get into it. All the rest would have to go to another school. So if if you had a school that was large enough that had way extra space, I think the model that you're suggesting that could work >> and you could I think when Glenwood ultimately when the steam
123program was added, you know, there were legacy students that were there that were residential students and there was uh ultimately I believe in the beginning there was some weight that was given that allowed them and then that that waiting changed and it's no longer part of the of the factor. But you could put some kind of waiting that gives them priority if you were to do something like that. >> Yeah, I I'd be interested in continuing to think about how to not eliminate walk zones. I think that's like a high priority for me >> and that's love to hear from other board members. Any other >> I'll just say that's a big one in your scenario that it's a that's a negative impact because it would be >> I mean you could think about how
124to do it creatively, right? Like we talked about offering, you know, >> because it would only be the kids that within the walk zone that go to the program that could benefit from that. everyone else we would still have to transport. >> Yeah. Okay. Thanks. >> Thank you, Ronnie. Any other questions or comments or thoughts? >> Go ahead, Barb. >> Um, Mr. Shi, is it We did start Am I right to say that it it's less dire than it seemed when we first started this process. I mean, it it kind of seems not as terrible. >> It's it has uh simmerred. >> Okay. And that's because >> it started full boore because we saw the decline, >> right? Uh the piece that was missing was the program capacity. We were using legacy numbers and I
125think it started the conversation and it got us moving in the right direction. But I think that that's probably one of the best things out of the diligence process is that we we have to do program capacity no matter what because we have to redistrict, right? >> And by including that in the initial study, I think it is allowing us to make a very better informed decision so that we didn't overdo what we thought we were going to do. >> Okay. And the other it's there's new information that we didn't have when we first started, right, about the the enrollment not being the decline not being as steep as we thought. >> The two big factors that have come to you have been to Dr. Dollar when he brought back with the housing component that
126the county had part of his contract and he told us that that was a big piece and then the program capacity was that's really new to you. Uh, and that really just I'll say sealed the decision for staff in their recommendation because we were kind of on the line until we really started looking at not taking away from our schools for the things that have allowed them to be successful with respect to programs. >> Okay. And you said initially we were all talking about this through almost purely a fiscal lens and that you've shifted you've had an epiphany and are we basically saying that the difference in projected capital expenditures in the three schools it's just too hard to tell and that it's not a meaningful >> the differences between those numbers is not a
127reason to make a decision one way or the other. >> I don't think you can put all your eggs in that basket. Okay. >> But I will say this we as a district and you've heard me preach about this. We have tremendous risk, >> right, >> when it comes to the the condition of our buildings and the fact that at any given moment we could have an air conditioning die that may take weeks to get a wired and a portable chiller into to get a component replaced. We are at that risk and the longer that we do not receive that funding, the greater that risk becomes for us. And you know, we could give examples of where we've had some failures, but so it's real, but when it comes to actually being able to say
128that >> we're going to spend that money, right? >> Unless something changes, I can't tell you that. So it would be hard for me to say use that as your exclusive reason because you got to put children first and instruction first because we know that our buildings are used differently than way most people use buildings and you just got to balance it. >> Okay. And so I know the answer to this, but I could see somebody writing in to say, "Why don't you just close the smallest schools? That's the least disruptive thing to do. If we can't really figure out the projected capital expenditures with the level of precision that we'd like to, then why don't we just close rash?" I mean, I'm not You know what I'm saying? Like that >> and I So
129could you just help us? >> Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think I think if you have any school that is 50 to 60 years of age that has not had any major capital investment by its locality are all schools that are probably under consideration to weigh closure or not. And when we worked with Walpert, I always say they were given targets to develop their their recommendations and they worked with us, our staff, I mean directly. It wasn't like they just created something and didn't talk with us about it. But if they were given the blank check, they would have recommended replacing all six elementary schools, not just the first three. But they were told they only had a certain amount of money because the county was trying to sell a bond and they had to
130go with what they felt they could afford. And so that we had those numbers that were set. So they were asked to build scenarios based upon targets. That's that's where that originated from. But again, u our schools, they do need to be replaced. I mean, we can renovate them, but people are going to go into the buildings that are going to say, "Yeah, you got new lights, you got new plumbing, but that wall was there in 1952. It still looks the same, or it's not meeting the flexibility and the space requirements." Or we could spend a lot of money and we could move the walls around, but then in the end, you're still in an old facility. Um, and I think that we're at a point where we, you know, ultimately the ma mantra has
131been fewer, newer schools. And I think that we need to leverage that when we can just because the funding is not there. And we need to be fiscally responsible uh in that respect. But that need is it is there. I I don't want to I don't want to dismiss that. It's just the fact that if you don't have the money, it's kind of hard to say that that's the case when you don't have the money. You don't have the money to fix it. So, you know, closing a school reduces that investment because if you get any money, you don't have to put it into a building. You can lower your uh your denominator to where you have less buildings that you have to focus on. That's the gain. So, closing one school in this scenario,
132if that's all we can do, that helps us helps us tremendously. It also allows us potentially to look at options for that space that could be used. And I've thrown out there, and again, I'm not saying we're doing this, but we may need a flex space, a swing school space if there was ever something catastrophic. It just gives you that ability. But again, that building that whatever building is chosen, if that's the decision of the board, that building only has but so much more life to it before you'd have to invest the millions of dollars because something will fail. And then you're going to say, do I put56 million into these two investments at that school when we're only using it as a swing school or not? It's a it's a tough predicament. Uh but
133again, we could have failures at any of our schools. Doesn't have to be our oldest, you know. Um and we you know, we have examples of that. >> Go ahead, Becky. >> Um uh thank you for the report. Um there is a data point that I would actually be interested in if um someone might would be able to get it for me. The um under criteria three the inconvenience or hardship to pupils affected and where um and I'll read the the reasoning that I'm going to ask the question where it's saying to stay grounded in student experience universal risk factors exist that should apply across all schools. These include the importance of stable relationships with peers and teachers. Um, I would like to know I would like to be able to get the data points
134for the three schools in question. The breakdown that we have of our students, I would like that for staff and teachers that in that same way. I'd like to see those numbers. >> So, so the breakdown for student groups for staffs at the three respective schools. >> Yes, I I would like to see that. I can work with uh human resources to see if we have that data or not. >> I will say we do have the on our website we've got the school profile site. I use it all the time. And so if you go to CHCCS school data profiles and search that and pull it up, it it gives you that Vicki. So you can >> I've seen it historically. I want it to date. >> This that is it's Yeah, it's updated.
135Updated. >> Mhm. And so when you click on it, you can see um the the the faculty right beside it. So for Glenwood um you've got the ethnicity side by side and then sorry I just lost I can't go back. You got it. And then Ephesus similarly. Um, were you able to find I were you able to find that? >> Okay. >> I'll go through and look at it. just wanted to be able to have it. >> Okay. Yeah, it's under for the public. I think the way I get to it and I'm looking at the path, it's under academics, assessment, and research. And then it's CHCCS, school data profiles. And then what you're going to need to do when you do go to that site, you're going to click at the top where it
136says school profiles web application. And then it'll open it up. So, I I use that a lot. So, that's why I know where it is. Somebody pointed it out to me a couple years ago, and it's it's really handy. We've got a great team that keeps it up to date. So, okay. Any other comments or questions or thoughts? Right now, it's not going to be our last time. George, I was waiting. I kept looking. >> Well, it's been a it um Al, it's been a great presentation of the of the thorough report and I've been listening with interest to all of my board colleagues. I mean, great points and good questions. Um, very helpful. One thing Miss Dossi said that really uh kind of resonated with me is and and the question was I think
137from Meredith about what's the context of the public hearing in a couple weeks. And we set it up as I recall to give the community a time to comment on what we're talking about tonight as opposed to asking them to react tonight or do something like that. And I also know a public hearing is a public hearing. So you can't put any parameters on what the topic is really or what people say other than what we've done. Um but Ronnie's comments about the future have really resonated with me because this whole discussion is going to be more important. What's our vision and where are we going in the next six to 12 months with our redistricting and our planning? You know, can we have some new programs? Can people start to offer some things into
138the discussion about what are we going to look like a year and a half from now when we redistrict all of our schools? And when I say all, maybe it doesn't mean all 11 or 10 schools, but maybe it does. I mean, maybe every school has x number of students or are affected by redistricting. And I so I don't want to have the three schools that we're talking about tonight feel like they have to it's all or nothing for them. Um so I'm just proposing I'm not asking for anybody to say yes or no or anything but I would like to start to hear from people what can we look like here? Um it sounds like we need to make some changes. So what can that be? And this I just wanted to kind of
139put that out there. Thanks. >> Thank you George. We we do have a retreat next week. So, >> we make we'll be talking about some of that. So, >> great. Any other thoughts or comments or questions? All right. So, Um, at this point, um, this is a work session topic. I know we have one person who signed up in advance and they asked to be moved to to work session. So, um, we can have them speak. Um, let me let me just go over work session public comments. It's the same as our our general public comment section. Um it'll be three minutes. Um I think many of you have heard the rules. Do you need me to repeat them? Okay. Thank you. It's long. Okay. So we will start with Liz Vale. And I if
140you do see your name as next speaker, why don't you go ahead and make your way and I'm just I'm going to look at Miss Holloway just to for her to give me the number who signed up so far. Just Tamara, can you just give me a number? How many have signed up? >> Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. So, >> Hi, Liz. >> I'm Liz Vale, and I come to you tonight wearing multiple hats. A former classroom teacher in this district, a formal a former central office staff member, a current substitute, and a parent of a future Chapel Hill Carbaro City Schools student. While I am not employed full-time by CHCCS, I've been closely following the board's discussion about the future of our schools because I care deeply about our students, our families,
141and our district's future. A close friend and mentor of mine, Kretta Sharpless, always says, "We are in the business of serving children." And that truth has to remain at the center of every decision made here. I'm not here to recommend or defend which schools should stay open, but I do want to name what I believe is the most important piece of this process and the piece that has not yet fully been centered. What happens after the closure for everyone? Because closing a school is not the end of the decision. It's the beginning of new ones. How will you intentionally design and redesign the absolute best schools possible from the inside for the students who remain? The kind of schools families move here for. the kind of schools where every child feels known, challenged, and supported,
142and where access to those experiences is intentional and not accidental. If this is truly about becoming a smaller, more sustainable district, then it must also be about becoming a stronger, more innovative one. I know Dr. Trace, and I know that innovation and bold thinking are core to how he leads. This is a moment for that calls for exactly that. So, thanks for mentioning that, Dr. Griffin. This is an opportunity not to just consolidate, but to rethink programming, strengthen community, and build schools literally and figuratively, that are not simply maintained, but intentionally designed for excellence. And that thinking cannot wait until June 4th. I urge you to begin building that vision now so that when a decision is made, families and staff can see the outline of what comes next. No one expects a fully formed
143plan in three weeks, but there should be evidence that a thoughtful student centered vision of what's to come for the entire district is already taking shape. Because students deserve more than a decision about what's closing, they deserve clarity about what is coming next. For families, this process is hard and is deeply personal. And I hope we can begin shifting some of our energy toward the collective future of all students in this district. because how we show up now will shape the schools our kids experience moving forward. So my question to the board and staff is what is the plan to ensure on the other side of this CHCCS has schools that are stronger all stronger more cohesive more innovative and truly designed to serve all students well because that's the long game and that's what
144our students deserve. Thank you. Sorry. Next is Carly. >> Hi. Um, I'm here as a teacher at SUL. um also a parent in the district for 11 years now. Um looking at all the different schools and everything that's going on. Um I was looking at the data before I came and some of the things stood out to me that didn't seem like quite as clear-cut as the numbers on the page. Um we're looking at the walking the number of kids walking specifically to SU. Um, I know for a fact from before I was at SUL, friends talking about how their kids should be able to walk to SUL because it's right there, but they're in a different district. So, really looking at like the full district map and where the neighborhoods are and where those
145kids are actually going, I think is important. Um, I know there are neighborhoods that back up right up to SU School Road and those kids don't go to school. Um, and I know, like I said, I had friends in those neighborhoods who were questioning why, like I moved here because we were right down the road and they couldn't walk to school. Um, another thing I was looking at that really stood out to me was looking at um, like the test score data. We have transfer portals. Teachers are switching schools all the time. the teacher retention is it's one of the highest turnover um jobs um and so we know that teachers are moving between schools and when a teacher moves from one school to the other their effectiveness goes with them um this is my
146first year at school but I've been in the district for a few years and each year I've shown growth in my schools but that doesn't mean that my growth didn't come with me and I can't do the same at another school so when we look at that we have to keep in mind that teacher retention in each school whether through the district or to other districts or to other jobs is not consistent from year to year. I think when you were talking Dr. Trice when you were talking to us were saying something um maybe it was not you maybe it was HR that there's about 40 new teachers each year being hired because of the turnover rate. So looking strictly at those numbers as one of the criterium I feel like is not as clear-cut
147as what it looks like on on paper in the graphs. So I think all that should also be considered while you're looking at it. And I do appreciate what um you were saying about the satellite neighborhoods, those ones with Yes. their neighborhoods in where I live where the kids are going to rash and some kids are going to Ephesus and some kids are going to Estus. They are some strange district lines but it should all be taken into consideration on when we are moving the kids and where they should go and what makes most sense for them. Thank you. >> Thank you. Those were all our speakers who signed up. Sorry. Those were all our speakers who signed up in advance. I do see some people who would like to speak. Can you guys um
148Emily, thank you so much. And if you don't mind introducing yourselves, >> try. >> Hi, I'm Emily Kiter, U PTA president at Glenwood Elementary. My comment tonight is mainly about the May 21st meeting. I've reached out to several of you about having a better space for capacity and parking. I think it comes down to equity and access and also optics is who can get here early to get space in the room. It's going to be the parents that have the ability to stay at home uh have child care options. So, I think we just need to be really mindful of like preparing our communities for success. So, we can't expect our community to show up well if we're not doing the best for them. So, I would love for us to consider options where we're
149not just in the same building together, but we're under in the same room together and we're able to um support each other that way. So, it's not quite as divisive because I understand that there's I understand high schools are out, but middle schools are still option. Um, and the problem with rooms here is that it's if we're trying to come together as a community, we're already divided if you show up late because you had a work meeting and you're in a separate room. So, I would just love for you all to think about how we can best serve our community in that way. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Hi, my name is Rachel Rossi. I'm a parent of a Glenwood student. I just kind of had a question for you guys to ponder and
150maybe a scenario that might help make things more clear. That utilization chart to me is inefficient because it's based on what you've said is outdated redistricting. Correct. So what is the true utilization based on redistricting scenarios? I think would be interesting to see what is the true capacity of this school once you redistrict. Is it less than it was? Is it more than it was once you redistrict? Like how do you balance that in those scenarios? Would that help the board understand where the true capacity is? Because you're saying McDougall is over capacity. Well, where would those students then metriculate once you redistrict? Does that actually take away from McDougall or does it put in a place that is then going to be over again? Like how how does that shape how you guys feel
151about who to close based on like proper redistricting based on new numbers, not what was done more than 10 years ago or so? I I think that might be enlightening for the decision. So that was just my thought. Any other public comments? Good. There's anyone else who'd like to make a public comment? Why don't you go ahead and head over? We've got that wonderful first row over there to the left of Andy. He'd love some company. All right. Hi there. Uh Sarah Ibrahams. I'm a CHCCS alum, PTA board at SUL, GPAC snack rep, and a parent of a current second grader at SUL. Um I wanted to speak very briefly about some of the material presented in particular um collocation about SUL and its unique profile in relation to Smith and Chapel Ohio. And I
152I want the board very much to really look closely at what analysis was provided because it really isn't only about convenient drop offs and pickups. Um having a prek through 12th grade campus is very rare and has incredible value. Um I can say personally just my child's class and many classes in SU we have two students who come from Chapel High School who support the class twice a week every week of the entire school year and that's not minor that's significant and it adds real value in meeting. Um, so with that in mind, if the criteria requires consideration about academic impacts, cross school collaboration, and long-range planning, that campus connection piece really deserves serious analysis. Um, I'd also like to note that the report only really gives minimal attention to SU's non-portable assets. The critter
153corner is mentioned, but the garden and the adjacency to Carolina North, the outdoor learning environment, and the campus design are not meaningfully assessed. And I want to note that these aren't generic features that can simply be moved to another building. As you consider your decision, please do not ignore what has been omitted from the report. that SUL has unique and highly valuable features that are worth preserving for the future of the district's portfolio. Thank you. Anyone else? >> Sorry. >> I'm um I'm Hannah Murphy, a parent and teacher at Ephesus. Um, I've been following this process closely and it occurred to me tonight sitting here that um, May 21st is coming up really quickly. We haven't seen any formal scenarios proposed related to this process and I'm wondering if it's possible to make some sort
154of scenarios um, that were discussed tonight available to the public in a clear way before May 21st. Um, especially since there are what Mr. Sherokei called receiving schools that could be deeply affected by this process and who should be involved in the public hearing. Um, I think there's still some confusion about May 21st. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comments? All right. Thank you everyone for coming out. Go ahead, Ronnie. >> Excuse me. Yeah, I did want to um sort of maybe have Excuse me. A conversation about the meeting on the 21st. Sorry. um locationwise if we expect a lot of people should we consider a different site >> I know that the team has been working on that I I know some of the PTA leaders they have PTA council emailed us we've
155been looking all of the high schools are booked I know I um because I even did an outreach for one of the high schools too I did not I did not I was not successful so um so we we are looking um but I I think I think right now obviously we have this space but the team will continue to to look and see in terms of options. I know we're we continue to work with the PTA council on this and so I think for those for the three schools we'll continue to work with them give updates in terms of what you know what the team has comes up with. attended. So if there's people in advance like all three schools are going to talk about other schools coming as well. >> Yeah. And Yeah.
156Yeah, and I know other schools are interested. Obviously, we won't until until the board makes a decision one on whether to close a school, number of schools, and which schools. Obviously, we're going to have a lot of people interested, but we got that that's like the first first step, and then then we'll be able to do that. Again, I think the team is working really hard. I keep asking um so um we will we'll keep you guys up to date on that. Okay, thank you. Ronnie, did you have >> Yeah, I was just going to say, is there any um opportunity to think about a different date because I agree. I think like it will be important for this to feel inclusive and be a space where everybody can hear the same conversation. >> I
157I can't speak for that on the fly. I know it's not just the community, it's also the board. It's it's hard enough at times to get us there. And so we want to make sure this is a date that's a standing board meeting. We want to make sure that we have all seven board members. I think my board understands that whenever we have big decisions, I like to have all seven of us here as best we can. And so I think that's I think Ronnie, that's the tricky thing. I mean, we can look at it. I can ask board members. Um, and I will be candid. My schedule is really really tight. So >> yeah, I appreciate that. and mine is as well. And this is one of the biggest decisions we're ever going to
158make. And so I think to the extent that we can be more flexible, you know, if it has to shift out a day or so, like I appreciate how tight schedules are for everybody, but >> I'd love to. My job would beg to differ, you know, every day, right? >> So, um, but we'll Ronnie, we'll we'll look at it some more. I'll work with Dr. tric Andy and and our clerk just to see if we can put a feeler out there if we have an alternative day. Also, I think because we have publicized this date, I think the community is anticipating it too. So, I think people probably have moved things around themselves as well, but we we will look very quickly um over the next couple of days to see what we have available
159to us. Meredith, I think Mid. Yeah, I just wanted to point out for the public's benefit too that, you know, it's not just a matter of moving the board meeting to a different location. There's a lot of things that have to be in place in order to have a successful board meeting. And, you know, you'll notice that we have all these cameras and and mics and other things that are set up so that we can project this out on to the internet so folks who can't attend in person are able to watch it. And so, you know, just picking a a middle school, like I we don't, you know, the board members don't know offhand like whether they're equipped to handle that. So, I just wanted to point that out. It's not just as simple
160as it might seem at face value. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Go ahead, Melinda. I see you down there. >> Two quick suggestions. One, I wonder if we could talk to our friends in Orange County schools about barring one of their high schools. Um, and the second thing is one of the things I've noticed at a lot of our meetings, there's been a lot of public comment. There's been people who've come forward and read statements from people who could not be here. I am wondering if I'm guessing that will probably happen again. There's some people who be will want to be there can't because of child care. I wonder if we would consider either reading out loud statements that they send to us as a board or something like that to accommodate those folks. >>
161Thank you, Melinda. Anything else from board members? Go ahead, Vicki. I >> I would like to say that just while we're all thinking about ways to try to um help build capacity and space as we're trying to have a community conversation, we do also need to make sure that while we're trying to solve certain dilemmas, we're not creating others because while we may not have people who can get here early, we still may have people who can't come at all because they're still at work. It may not just be a childcare issue. It just may really be that they can't get here or they may not be able to get here because they're not on the bus line. So, we're still then even talking about the other side of the county, that could be even
162more of a dilemma. But even just when we're in these spaces, if we're going to be looking at thinking about our community as a whole, whether we're all in one room or we're in multiple rooms in different pockets, if we're going to consider each other as a community, we need to consider the ones who are in the space and who are not in the space. It doesn't matter or or it should not matter if we're physically the ones here or not because it takes a certain level of privilege to be able to be here anyway. Just like when we're talking about high school students to have the opportunity to go into elementary schools, we have to realize that if you're a high school student and you can go into elementary school in the morning to
163help volunteer, that also takes a little bit of privilege because if you're a bus rider, you're not going into an elementary school before you go to school to be able to volunteer whether that school is next to you or across town. These are things that are wonderful and I appreciate being able to do them and I'm thankful that we have high school students. I think the ones that are going into the elementary schools and middle schools are awesome. But we still have to be mindful that no matter who's literally in the space, we need to be cognizant of the fact that we can't be dismissive because they're not here and think about elevating and uplifting their voices for them. that builds community and that's what we need to be responsible to be doing for each
164other no matter where our meeting is. >> Thank you. All right. Any other comments or questions on this? We will we'll continue to work. We'll continue to make sure if anything changes, you will hear something from um Mr. Jinx. It won't be me. It'll be Mr. Jinx via all of our communication channels. Okay. Thank you.