001The next item on our work session agenda is an update on future planning considerations for elementary schools. And I see our superintendent, Dr. Rodney Trice is coming to the microphone. >> So, thank you, uh, Madame Chair, uh, members of the board, cabinet, and the Chapel Hill Cararborough community. Um, I've prepared remarks that I'd like to read to help set the context for tonight's discussion and to connect it to the broader conversation uh we have been engaging in as a community. So, this past fall, uh, I led approximately 15 community and staff briefings and listening sessions to share in a transparent and straightforward way the fiscal and enrollment headwinds our district is facing. These are challenges that quite frankly we've been building for I'm sorry that have been building for the better part of a decade.
002Uh in those conversations I've emphasized that while we are not in a crisis, we are at a crossroads and there is a difference. The crisis for a crisis forces reaction. A crossroads allows for choice. If we act now and if we act together, we can manage declining enrollment and reductions in funding in a way that positions CHCCS to become a smaller, more innovative and highquality district, one that continues to reflect our community and the deep values and in uh that deeply values and invests in public education. Uh as was uh mentioned earlier over the past two years, the board and the administration have already made difficult decisions particularly as it relates to uh staffing. I'm sorry, including a reduction in force. Those decisions were not easy, but they were necessary. As reflected in our most
003recent audit, the district has reversed structural deficit spending and is now in a position to begin rebuilding its fund balance. One of my top priorities as superintendent is to continue that work in partnership with the board and to restore our fund balance to a healthy and sustainable level. At the same time, uh, we face ongoing and emerging risks. Uncertainty at the federal level, the absence of a state budget, the potential revision of uh, the county school funding model, and enrollment projections that suggest continued decline over the next decade. Together, these realities require us to think differently about our long-term infrastructure, staffing, and operational model. also want to acknowledge the human dimension to tonight's discussion. I've spent much of my career in this district and I know deeply that this presentation focuses on the fiscal and
004operational realities before us, not the long history of strong schools, dedicated educators, and communities that have supported them. This is not because those stories don't matter. They matter deeply, but because it is essential that the board and the community fully understand the financial headwinds we face and the urgency of addressing them. This is not a moment to step backward in ensuring the long-term solveny of our district. In our community conversations, I think we've been clear CHCCS will need to become a smaller district both in terms of facilities and staffing. Our goal as an administrative team is to manage this in a way that preserves the high academic standards, programs, and services our community has long valued. Achieving that will require difficult tradeoffs. Choices that may not feel good today, but are necessary to secure a
005stable and promising future. Simply put, we need newer schools, which the bond um our recent bond helps us achieve. And we need fewer schools, which centers the advancement of the conversation uh we began this fall. So, our aim tonight is to assist the board in achieving its goal of making a financially and operationally sustainable and equitable decision regarding school closure uh by June 30. And the way we do this is by uh grounding our decision and our values and centering the future planning of elementary schools, including potential closures in transparency, uh objective decision making and fidelity to prior county and facility planning commitments while ensuring that our board fulfills its legal and fiscal responsibilities and acts in the long-term interests of our students and our district. I want to take a moment to kind of
006walk us through what our presentation uh will be uh this evening or this portion of our presentation. In just a moment, I'll turn uh the mic over to Mr. Sherroki who will um outline where we've been uh as a community uh as a school community. So, we'll look at the Wolfford report, uh, our 2024 bond, and the board's 10-year, uh, CIP plan. He will then move into where we are now, where we will review some of the information that we shared with our community this fall, including, uh, information that Dr. Nathan Dollar shared with us concerning um our de demographic shifts that we're experiencing in our community, including uh 10-year projections that were shared at the board retreat in um December. Uh and he'll also kind of highlight uh the school school capacity figures that
007may not have been seen by the board or our community as of yet. He'll then move to our budgetary impacts and savings and then turn the present over presentation over to me where I'll talk about next steps where we'll present the administration with a proposed timeline uh that will create a path hopefully for uh a decision- making process. I'll then turn it back over to our chair uh who then can have a discussion with the board about criteria for uh selection of uh schools for closure. Um right now I'll invite uh Dr. Sherroki uh to the podium to get our presentation started. Thank you, Dr. Trice. Uh, Madam Chair, members of the board, um, staff and guests here tonight. Uh, as Dr. Trice said, I'm going to walk through basically a recap, uh, of where
008we've been, where we are, and then talk about, uh, the budgetary impact and savings possibilities that you, as a board, uh, uh, can consider. And uh as Mr. Scott had shared, I refer to that as a budget lever. You know, what I'm presenting tonight potentially on looking at some inefficiencies that we have primarily at the elementary level within our district. Uh it it's not a turnkey solution to the the gap that Mr. Scott talks about with the board of county commissioners and what they're facing within their budget for the entire county, not just for us in Orange County schools. But it is one where I need to present the facts. uh they they are in many cases as you know with uh Carolina demography here at UNCC doing some of the projections they are doing
009a report for the for the county that's going to be coming out in March and we got a preview of that so it was really at 10,000 ft using regression analysis but we just want to talk about the trends just as Mr. Scott talked about the downward trend financially. Unfortunately, I I'm going to be presenting the information you've seen with the downward trend at the elementary level within our district over a period of time. So, my presentation tonight is not to really be about doom and gloom, though it could be read that way. It's really just basing the facts and showing it so that you can make the best informed decision uh and and with the fiduciary responsibilities that you have. So, I want to go back uh and actually it goes back before 2023,
010but as you're aware, the board of county commissioners by state statute uh they are required uh within the state of North Carolina as all county commissioners are to fund the capital improvements be it new construction, renovation, major maintenance of all public schools, all public K12 schools. They are charged with that financing. Uh so uh for years the county uh has had multiple priorities and they recognized back in 2022ish uh that they had unfunded or not funded successfully uh when it comes to school maintenance within both school districts that we have here in Orange County. Uh so ultimately there was a capital studies workg group that was created that consisted of board members from Orange County schools, Chapel Hill Carborough Schools as well as Orange County Commissioner representation and then staff members from uh each representative
011bodies that came together really to look at the needs knowing that for both school districts uh close to 50% of the school portfolios between both districts were greater than 50 years of age and there were uh multiple cases where there were uh major catastrophic failures in schools where either air conditioning, roofs uh had to be addressed uh and it was more of a reactive approach. So the committee was tasked to try to develop a plan at least a strategic fiscal plan of how to overcome the challenges that they were uh faced with uh over a 10 to 15 year period. But they but you know I can get up there and I can I can advocate for our school district. uh Orange County schools can uh but the county felt for the citizens because we're
012going to advocate and for our own needs they needed to have an objective independent body come in. So ultimately there was an RFQ that went out in Walford uh which is a company that does this kind of work came in and they were tasked to look at the assets of our buildings given the age but also to look at the space utilization looking at enrollment trends and then actually how the buildings were being used in the classrooms. So they it wasn't just um looking at uh individual buildings. It was a comprehensive facilities assessment where the uh planning effort was designed to help Chapel Hill Carbrow Schools and Orange County schools develop a long-term plan because Orange County shares very similar statistics when it comes to decline in enrollment just as we do and their portfolio
013parallels. Uh so with that being said uh the study really looked at uh educational adequacy which was a new term for the commissioners but it's basically you look at a school that was built in 1958 which we have here in our district that's still being used daily. Uh and the size the the the parameters the design of the room is not consistent with current DPI standards best design practice standards for educational facilities. uh and very uh different than what we see in some of our newer schools, be it North Side Elementary or even I'm going to call it a newer school, but when you look at Rashus, Morris Grove, Scrogs, those schools are pushing 20 years of age in some cases, those are new when we compare to some of our older schools that were
014built in 1958, 59, 1960. So it they really looked at that and I'll talk a little bit further in the presentation about why that was important because you know obviously the question that continued to come up was do you renovate or do you replace uh and what I want to say is that with the building assessments Walpool uh did a just in time assessment because their goal was to develop a strategic financial plan so that the county could better prepare uh and I'll walk through some of the the levers that they utilized in order to do that. So the first thing uh and again this is a slide that you've seen but they they used what's called a facility condition index and that's basically a percentage of what does it cost to invest in a
015building versus replacing a building. My biggest disclaimer here is the facility condition index was not the indicator to determine if a school should be closed or replaced or rebuilt whatever term you want to use. It was really to give a snapshot. Uh, and what we found with facility condition indexes is that Walpert came back and said, "Our oldest schools, if money was no object," because they identified over a billion dollars worth of maintenance needs for the county, over 500 million for our district. What they said is uh that the facility condition index is going to determine where the needs are for your schools that are 30 to 40 years of age, not the older schools. They use the age of the school to determine the prioritization when it comes to schools that should either be
016replaced or potentially they would say school closure in their report. Age was a biggest the biggest determinant. But what it did help us in building the fiscal case for the amount of money the county needs to invest over 10 to 15 years is that when it when you looked at schools such as Carbor High School, East Chapel Hill High School, you saw that they had very high facility condition index ratings. And it was because those schools are not over 50 years of age. It's because they're at a life cycle point where the roof, the HVAC for very large buildings had to be replaced, which had substantial cost. But that cost doesn't mean that because you have to spend, I'll make up a number here, but $30 million at a high school that you would close
017that school because that school still has good bones in it. It has life to it. Uh so we use that as a tool to build the case that either you have to uh Walpert would say either you have to take a building uh out of the inventory or you should replace it. But you need to put your ongoing maintenance money into the buildings that remain that are not replaced because you know if you go out with a bond and you uh raise 300 million 300 million does not replace when it's split between two two districts it doesn't get you that far. you still have to work with the schools that children and staff are going into each and every day that are not being impacted by a bond that may come out every five or
018six years. So in the building assessment uh and this is just a slide that just kind of shows you how they they work their way down uh holistically. We looked at all of our schools in the inventory and you know again these are in alphabetical order but they you know you can look at them and ultimately there'll be a slide that kind of shows you the age but it came back to where the the buildings that had the greatest needs uh for uh a 10-year period consisted of Carlboro Ephesus Estes Hills Frank Porter Graham Belinguway Glenwood SU elementary and then Colorth and Phillips Middle School and you probably recollect that during the bond pre-bond presentation ations. The consultant uh Wilpert prioritized Culbras replacement over Phillips and we came back and we demonstrated that there were
019assets within that facility that gave that school greater light. So you as a board uh acknowledged and said that if money was ever available we would prioritize Phillips over Culbr based upon need. Uh so ultimately in the end uh the and I will show this later but the bond plan consisted of the schools that had the greatest needs uh which were Carro, Estis Hills and FPG out of which there were still three additional schools that were on the high need list and those are Ephesus, Glennwood and SU. Uh, and then again, I don't want to leave out Cobra and Phillips, but tonight's presentation is really about elementary schools because when we start looking at student capacity, you'll see where where the inefficiencies are in our district, and it's at the primary level, not the secondary
020level. So, at the same time, the board of county commissioners who commissioned this report, they weighed in and made a lot of decisions as far as the direction that they wanted both school districts to head in, both boards to head in. uh and primarily because they're the ones charged with the funding and they know that there are far greater needs than they have means. So when uh when they developed this and they saw the proposals because Walpert was asked to provide four options based on different funding commitments established by the county. It wasn't a blank check report. It was here's a scenario where there is 100 million, 250 million, 500 million. What would you recommend if you only had that limited pot of money? It was not here's a blank check just tell us what
021you did because that's really not realistic. But the report kind of shows you that basically when it comes to replacing schools age does play a predominant factor in what you would consider first, second, third, and fourth. uh unless we as a district had done some major improvements for a variety of reasons in the meantime that might put a younger school ahead of an older school because maybe you had to replace the roof and you still had a lot of lights to that roof or you just recently had to replace the air conditioning schoolwide. So we had a little of that but predominantly it is the age. So, the commissioners ultimately uh felt confident that they could fund a $300 million, I'll call it a stimulus or a bond, right, to help begin funding where they
022were not funding. And I would be remiss to say that before the bond, the county was providing deferred maintenance money to the districts to a tune of about $9 million a year uh for for us uh over a course of about 3 to four years. So, it wasn't as that they weren't funding, but that money was being spent uh at a a very fast rate. Once we got out of the pandemic and we were able to get more steady pricing and consistent labor, uh districts, we started spending that money really in 2022 and uh spent the course of it over the course of three fiscal years. So, in doing so, um, when they adopted the bond and they felt that that was a a good sell to the citizens here in Orange County, they also
023wanted to develop a framework of how we would uh optimize the the plan that Wilpert provided so we could balance where there are inefficiencies with uh major costs and uh expectations that existed. and their framework prioritized replacing old facilities with new facilities and improving the educational adequacy of the school buildings versus renovating. So the Wolver report talked about renovating. The commissioners came back and said why would you renovate a building and put say 60% money into a renovation but then in the end it still looks like the same school. The spaces inside look the same, but it may have new finishes, uh, new HVAC system, new electrical, new technology infrastructure, but the spaces are inadequate based upon the DPI standards. So, in their mind, if we're only going to have limited funding with bonds that
024our county can support, we want you to replace over renovation. So, that was the direction that you as a board were provided from the people who appropriate the funding on a capital level. Uh, and again, they appropriate approve appropriation. they don't approve projects. That is your role. But again, for them to to appropriate, you have to follow the guidance of of who is funding that at that level. So ultimately, the bond was approved November 24. Uh there was about just over a 67% approval rating. Most of which came from the town of Chapel Hill and Carbor when you look at it. Uh but it was a very strong support as has historically been within our school district uh in previous bonds. So when you look at the pre-bond plan that of where we landed, what
025you see here uh are basically I kind of go from green, yellow, red because that's what Walford did at the time. This is very similar of where and again it's where we landed. You'll see that basically all the schools from the bottom which is the newest Chapel Hill High School up to about McDougall are all in green and they go up to about 30 years of age. Uh and I will tell you uh even Chapel Hill that is a brand new building there were major components of that building that were not replaced. They are they were not touched. So even though it's a brand new school from the outside the auditorium, the gymnasium and the cafeteria is the original core infrastructure for when Chapel Hill you know we had consolidation of the two merging of
026the two schools from Lincoln and Chapel Hill and they built out there on the current campus. Um, so there is still deficiencies with that school and I always have to say that because those are things that are going to come back and you're you guys are going to come back and say why are we putting money into Chapel Hill when we replace it like we didn't. Uh, but what you'll see is the yellow and the red is basically schools that are 50 years of age or older and that's where you get the schools that are on that list that I had shared just previously. Uh, we do have the Lincoln Center which is the building that we're in right now. So back in 2023 that building was 74 years old. There are components in this
027facility that are that age. But again, our money is not to go into an admin office. It is to go where the children and the teachers are best served. So we have prioritized that money is not to go into uh major infrastructure for support services. It's to go into our schools. So ultimately uh again it left five schools remaining that are on that priority list. And you know the thing I will say about the the warper plan the warper plan as good as uh the moment that it was put out but it it changes the project that they identified for maintenance. We know that we're in a reactive mode not a preventative mode with maintenance. So even though they may say that a project needed to be done at a school we know that even
028though they said that it needed to happen we have something else that surfaces and we're having to redirect money to respond as we go. kind of just in time management which is what you have to do when your funding is limited as it is today. So the guidance that the uh commissioners gave us with our capital investment plan which is an annual plan that comes to you to review and you approve and you submit it to the county for their consideration and then ultimately they approve that plan uh along with the other departments within the county that also have CIP plans. Uh they their goals were to replace aging school facilities with modern structures, to address all high priority facility needs such as infrastructure repairs and safety improvements, but also to enhance educational adequacy to
029support the involving instructional needs. So, their goal is when you approve a plan and and uh senior staff goes over to present or when we have our joint meeting and and you are presenting it, if we deviate from replacing aging school facilities with modern facilities, we're going to have to demonstrate why of why we're not addressing educational adequacy when we're asking them to invest and to have our citizens have an increase in tax rate and to sell debt. That's the piece that they're saying to us. you know, do your best to follow our guidance because we have to be able to balance this with the other needs that the county has to be able to manage. So, the reason I'm showing this, and I know for the folks in the audience, this is hard to
030see. This is the a CIP that we submitted that ultimately was uh the county commissioners approved in June of each year. I show this and it is available PDFs of all of this uh from the date uh that this was approved back in April. I wanted to show you that for the bond uh it shows we tal Mr. Scott talked about the payo money and how that potentially reducing the payo on the county side could be a lever that they have to employ to overcome their budget gap. Originally those who were very active with the bond, it was a $300 million bond with $100 million in payo over 10 years. And at the time we were about a 6040 split when it comes to what percentage goes to our district versus what goes to Chapel
031Hill. So, we were out there basically saying that, you know, we're going to use about 175 million of the 300 in the bond and we were going to use that to prioritize to replace uh up to three schools. And here was the order that we prioritized them at. But we also knew that there was PGO money, which is basically cash that the county generates uh from uh a percentage of tax that the citizens pay. So, the tax rate is is impacted in order to pay PGO. And that's where Mr. Scott had talked about how they they didn't have the confidence to be able to raise the tax rate at the level that they had uh I'll say promoted in the bond when the reality came and they saw what was what was heading ahead with
032or using those uh the tradewinds as an example they knew they had to pull back on that. Uh but the idea was that we would use the payo the cash money to pay for the design portions of our replacement schools which is what we're currently doing with Carro Elementary today. Um by the fact that they did not prove approve that payo we're using bond money for that. Uh but the concern of what the commissioners may or may not have to do with PIGO in the future is what I want to talk about tonight because the bottom slide is the the capital money that the district has historically received annually from the county and it last year it's about 4.2 million. This year it probably be about the same once we get the information from the
033county. So, if we don't have the PGO money to go with maintenance to help cover that in the years out after the design portion is done, then we really only have 4.2 million to address the high priority maintenance needs that are within the the projects that the warper plan had initiated and our staff bring to you. So I say that to say for us from an efficiency standpoint, if we know that the amount of payo long-term could be impacted or lesser in amount, it's even more so that if we have anything within our system that we can uh not have to maintain, that is money that we could redirect to schools that have just as great of a need. And those would be the schools that are in the 30 to 50year range uh in
034being able to address major roofing or HVAC. Yes. >> I just want to ask a question. I know it's hard for other people to see. That's why I want to call out this number in year one for Carbur Elementary. And I know it's not complete in terms of what we spent, but we have spent a significant amount of this. How much how much is I see 5.3 million already. >> Yeah. So, for the design portion, uh there's three components to the design portion that was budgeted. The first was for the project management firm, Turner Towns, and Harry, uh that you approved. That was about just over a $1 million commitment for again a $53 million budget, total budget. Uh we uh awarded a contract to an architect to be able to start the design. That
035was about 3.2 million. And then uh we're entering into the construction manager at risk construction delivery method and there is some pre uh construction services that come from the contractor before they develop um their guaranteed best price. Uh so we have committed or will have committed the good portion of that design money uh within the next 30 days but we've already done about twothirds of it already. >> Right. So if we were to say not carbor burl and then try to start over with a different school that's not it would we would have to then spend another $5 million. >> If it's not carbor >> yeah if you were say that again. So, if we were to say, "Oh, well, not Carbor." If we were to backtrack as a board and say, "We've changed our
036mind, >> we're now going to pick different schools to do, yeah, >> we would lose $5 million that we because it's not like they can port the information to another." >> You wouldn't lose the whole, but you would lose the portion that's been expended contractually. >> Um, if and we would have to have just, you know, we have a uh the ability to be able to do that, but there would be monies that we would have spent that we would not get back. So my recommendation at this point, you know, we've move because we've talked about inflationary measures. Time is money. Uh we've worked through the interlocal agreement and that'll be coming to you shortly. We you know that's a project where inflation will catch up uh to where that you know the the longer
037we spend on a project that we started the greater that will be in the end when the bid day comes. And that's if any project that exists it's not just with Carbra. So my recommendation if you were to ask me today, I would not waste any expended money that we've done. Uh but but we have not expended any money on any any other schools that were approved in your capital investment plan. If that answers your question. >> Thank go ahead George. Go ahead. >> Can I ask you a question about the PGO funds because it it gets confusing. >> Um pay as you go. PGO is the v the voters approved a $300 million bond. >> Yes. >> Be split between two school districts. And then the county commissioner said we'll give another hundred million
038of PIGO funds over the next 10 years. Basically 10 million a year which you've been explaining. But so the reason the when they retract the money because they don't have it even though they intended to have it not not blaming anybody is they had to start borrowing money from the bond. Is that correct? >> Only for what has been expended. Yes. >> Uh so it's not as if they're they've got a loan for $300 million 5 million. >> Yeah. It's only for what we've expended. That's correct. >> For the sake of purpose over here. So, so we're really looking at a significant issue right now where the initial bond we were really thinking 400 million for two school systems over 10 years. We're really maybe down to 300 million >> potentially. I mean, whatever. The
039county uh pulled back on the on the payo funding for this current fiscal year out of the gate. >> I can't determine Yeah, I can't determine what they would do in the future. That would be but I think you have to be aware it or at least cognizant of the fact that it could happen again and when they talk about a delta we at least need to take that into consideration as we are planning our major maintenance projects. So when can we get from you and I don't mean immediately or anything like we have $175 million in bond money for our share for Chapel Hill Carbor out of the 300 million. Um, when will we know how realistic that is to build three schools out of that money? Yeah. I believe that realistically, um, you
040have to wait for the for the elected body that appropriates the money to make those ultimate decisions or to, uh, take action, uh, publicly to be able to say this is a position that we have to take. I don't want to put the carp for the horse with another elected body, but I mean, that's that's there. But I think we just have to be cognizant of that uh as we move forward. But again, they've talked about uh potentially rein reinstating that money over time to where it's not going to zero out. they're going to have to decide what is that balance of what they can manage or not because there was a commitment that was made to the community and and they know that there is a pressing need and the longer they uh I'll
041say kick the can down the road when it comes to funding major maintenance in our buildings uh they know that that's just going to be problematic. So they I mean they've got a tough task at hand because they've got obviously there's competing interest but they know that there's a need and they'll have to decide that. Uh but we just have to be cognizant of it as Mr. Scott has said that's a that is a lever. There's only two levers that they can approach with us because the the citizens voted on the bond. So that is that is a go the bond funding itself and that's why it's a general obligation bond and it was done through an election. Uh but you still have the payo and you still have the local funding that they do.
042Those are the two things they have control over. So, do you recommend that we that this be part of the discussion now with them or do we just wait and see over the next year too? I mean, do you have a recommendation for us as we My recommendation is that for Mr. Scott and I that we continue to dialogue with county budget and finance staff. Uh but and ask them to communicate with us when there are um considerations that their elected body or the and the manager are both considering to put forward, but for us just to keep informed and to monitor that because the retreat was just giving them an overview. But they are going to have as any elected body, they're going to have to take some steps to be able to start
043addressing that as they go through their own budget development and that's what we have to continue to monitor. Thank you. Right. So jumping right into just where we are. Uh and and this is information that you have had presented for years. Uh we've had two there's two institutions that provide demography here in the state of North Carolina through public research institutions that is uh North Carolina State University and through University of North Carolina i.e. Carolina Demography is the department the division I guess. Um so we've received information from both both entities over the course of years and this was uh the county contracted with Carolina Demography this year. Um so in doing so uh and I I'll just briefly go over you know do Dr. T started with over 15 communitywide meetings where he presented
044the forecast the trends when it comes to student enrollment that the county had been tasked and that we had been seeing for years. He wanted to get input. He also talked about where do we want to see our district? You know, knowing that potentially there is a student decline that is going to continue, how can we be a high performing district? Uh just a smaller district, but providing the same quality, if not more quality at the same time, uh but also having to address some of the inefficiencies that we have. And again, the topic I'm here tonight to talk about is just one budget lever that's there. So, at the board retreat for you back in December, uh, Carolina Demography pretty much showed you nothing new yet you had not seen for many years as
045a as a a body, not each of you individually, but just as a body, right? Um, to where the trend has has been downward uh, from 2015. And what uh Carolina demography was to say is okay I was here the year before at your board retreat came back this year and basically said that based upon you know going back about five years and using regression analysis we don't see the trend changing uh and that was really the information uh but he provided a lot of information which I'll go over about um the reduction of students uh in in our with our ADM over the course of six years. He talked about the number of live births. You know, you all know he said it's not this is not uh unique to our district. It's not
046unique to our state, our nation. It's it's our world. There are just fewer children being having there's fewer live births. Period. It's not about just people not coming into our community. It's just period. And districts across our country today, many of them are talking about this now that we're not talking about it before because they're seeing the same trend uh as he described. But this just kind of gave a totality of looking at from the 1920 through uh this current school year. Uh we've seen a reduction most recently which is the most impactful about 1545 students is what he wanted to show. Uh but he also just gave the uh talked a little bit about the projections and that that trend was not stabilizing or going up that it would continue uh in doing so.
047So when you look at the elementary enrollment again that's where uh he showed that that's where your greatest decline was and and I'll get into a little further detail. He talked about the cohort analysis and this is a very busy chart but what it basically does is it shows you cohorts that start saying in 2018 and he projects out to 2035 and you could go further back than 2018 and you're going to see the same progression. But what this chart shows is is that over uh in the past and in the future the number of children that are entering our district at the kindergarten level continues to go down each year the number goes down. So if you look at the chart on from the top left you'll see 2018 855 I believe students as
048you project down you will see all the way down it goes down to just under 600 students in 2035. Again, that is a a mathematical calculation. We've always said and he will even say as a demographer, you can take stock in what I show you for about two to three years, but beyond that, you just have to continually monitor this. But it does allow you from a strategic standpoint, you at least have to plan accordingly and not think that something's just going to change in 5 years and enrollment is going to change. No, there are no indicators that would modify what he has projected. But the unique thing that he shared is though that the incoming enrollment is going down at the kindergarten level. And what he will say is it's not that kids aren't
049coming to our district, they're just not being born. He would say that's the predominant reason and that's nationally is what he he shared with you. Um, but what you see is the cohorts. If you watch, if you look at the chart and you see where you start in say 2018 and you work your way all the way to say projected in uh 12th grade, the cohorts once you're here and you start with us, you stay with us. So, what he was trying to show us is it's people move to our district in the middle of the year and they stay as a whole. Though we do have people who leave, but in the end there's a gain in the end once you start. and was what he wanted to show us is it's that they're
050just not coming in the kindergarten year. The next piece uh and this is something we have talked about but we just graphically wanted to show you is okay so we see that the trend is at the elementary level uh and let me go back I did want to say the high school levels are in are strong. So, we have lots of underutilized spaces at the elementary level, but then our high schools, they're pretty snug right now. And the phenomena uh that Dr. uh Dollar would say is that realistically, you know, you have people who are possibly are not coming to our district because of market share. Maybe maybe they're they're just not being born, but if they are born, they may be choosing other options that the state of North Carolina provides, be it private,
051charter schools, home school, things of other nature. But what he said is is that potentially the reason why your high school numbers and and we take uh we we agree with him is at the high school level a lot of our parents bring their kids back into public education because at the high school level there are opportunities and courses and offerings that they're not able to get at a private charter or even homeschooling. So our numbers continue to move in that direction. But I think that was important to show that uh we do gain over time. But you know when you look at capacity, we're really not looking at the middle schools and the high schools today. We're only looking at the elementary. Though he did show that eventually the children at elementary will metriculate
052through and that there would be some movement at the middle school level to where there could be some reductions down the road. But at the high school level, if that trend remains the same where people are coming back into public education and he says it's not just with us, it's across the board. uh that we would continue to see uh good utilization of high school classroom space. So going back to elementary, this is just a chart that graphically just shows you the capacity, the building capacity of our buildings versus the enrollment, student enrollment. And what you will see is that uh the program schools that we have with the exception of a McDougall Elementary which it does not have a program in it they are the ones that have the strongest enrollment because they are
053working through a lottery system. So when you look at Glenwood, when you look at um Carbo Elementary, when you look at FPG, when you look at SU, those numbers are a lot stronger because there are children that are being accepted and they're filling slots whereas except with McDougall, everybody else there is uh imbalance if you want to call it or or underutilization in the building. So this is just a graphic way to to show that but also just to be able to show you that the utilization rate what you're going to see is uh the utilization rate today is about 75% uh but then ultimately we're projecting that the elementary utilization rate will be downward of 70% in the future. Now when Walpert gave their presentation and you'll probably remember me saying it they said
054at that time in basically 2022 23 we were 80% utilization at the elementary level and I always said 80% that was about a thousand students on average our schools hold about 500 each and I would always say that's about two elementary schools right there. Well, that number has increased since even the Wolver report was done to where I used to say, let's look at one school, not two, because there could be some fluctuations that the demographers don't hit. Let's be let's be conservative. Now, the numbers, it's very compelling that it is two schools. Potentially, it's moving towards three down the road, but it's two today because again, I wouldn't trust any demographer beyond three to four years when it comes to making those decisions. you just wouldn't make a decision today for that immediately and
055and he agrees to that so I'm not speaking out of turn uh for the elementary capacity enrollment uh this was a 10,000 ft analysis where he used because you'll see that it shows program schools slightly increasing well if if we have a cap and the school can only hold but so many that school is not going to increase because they're controlling the size by the enrollment in the lottery but just using a simple regression analysis that what was to be taken from this is just the trend trend. The trend is still uh more empty seats as you go into 2035. So we showed today about 1371 seats ultimately could be as up to 1,700 seats and that's why I threw out there potentially it could be three schools down the road that are uh underutilized
056in totality for our school district portfolio. So the uh yes ma'am >> I just want to make sure that that this is said at some point but looking at these numbers you know there's quite a range between elementary schools but I mean a lot of it has to do with the way that the district lines are drawn right so you know as neighborhoods eb and flow yeah >> what we drew you know 14 years ago when we did the last redistricting may not look the same as it does today. >> Correct. Um, so you know, knowing that the the last uh major redistricting was when uh I guess FPG became a program school and the opening of North Side Elementary. Um, you know, communities uh age out. You know, there's cycles where families and children
057and that does fluctuate over time and you know, town planners, we could talk to you for hours about that. The life the life uh I call it cradle to grave of a of a community and then how it recycles and they could predict how many times it will recycle and do all of that. So there have been fluctuations. So we have some communities where uh there may be homes where there are people who are I'll say 50 years of age plus where their children maybe are out of school but they're holding on to their house and they it just hasn't recycled yet if you want to call it that. Um so yeah that's that's a big piece there is that there are differences based upon student family movements that have occurred since the last redistricting.
058So, I just wanted to uh just to kind of say so where we are when we throw out today we're at about 10,700 students that really takes us back 20 years ago for our district. That was the last time our district was at that student count back in 2005 2006. Uh and at that time uh there were three less schools in our district was Carro High School, Morris Grove and Northside. Uh and again today's enrollment is just a little over the 107 uh depending upon if you look at that the the principal's monthly report which number you look at but again it's a trend but it does show you and what I will say is um the carb the fact that we were at 107 and we had three high schools back 20 years ago.
059Part of the reason why uh is that the high school membership has not changed. It's the elementary membership that has changed. the high school still remains strong and I talked about that phenomena where parents are bringing their children back into public education. So you can kind of answer to why because we're not saying that you don't need a high school right now. They're full but it's just to be able to show that that yeah I mean we've gone back to the same size student wise as we were 20 years ago. So with the budgetary impact uh the budget lever that you asked me back in August to bring to you just to talk about uh hypothetically of what are the cost savings and the types of cost savings that a district could uh reap by
060the closing of a building period and we used an elementary school because that's where the conversation has been trending uh over the course of the past three years. Um so you know in the beginning you know there's three primary reasons that generally school districts have to consider looking at the budget level of school closure and that could be the aging failing facilities where literally the buildings are crumbling. I'm I'm pleased to say that we are not in that kind of disparity uh when it comes to our buildings. They're old. They've served their life but they are they are still functional today. There are other school districts when it rains we all see it. I mean there's water pouring down the walls. there's plaster bubbling, all kinds of crazy stuff, right? Um the financial pressures, the
061shortfall with the the revenue that's coming in for a district versus what it's expending. That's the biggest. And then you have just declining school enrollment. So, we talked about that back in August. And what I presented is just uh again uh looking at an elementary level uh of what you could reap uh when it comes to recurring annual savings, avoided capital investment with major maintenance. not talking about the replacement of schools, just the ongoing major maintenance that you have to continue to invest and then the potential one-time savings that might occur. Uh so the recurring annual savings was about $1.7 million a year out of your local budget. About 1.4 million of that came from fixed positions in our schools. The remainder was uh utility and general maintenance costs. Not big maintenance, but just fixing
062small things at the school. Elementary schools are not the energy cons consumers in our district. It's the secondary schools. So even from an energy standpoint, it's not a lot of money at our elementary schools. It they pale in comparison to our middle and high schools because of the amount of square footage and the usage of the buildings because our middle and high schools are used for greater periods of time. Uh so we talked a little bit about that. um about $10 to $15 million on average for over a 5 to 10 year period that you might have to invest. Be it roof, mechanical, storm, uh water improvements on site, uh sewer replacement, domestic water, all the infrastructure stuff just like you have if you have an older home that you have to invest in. It's
063just on a very large scale. And then ultimately I gave you some uh direction of uh if you were to close a school and determine that the building needed to be uh no longer had served the use of the district in any way, shape or form that you have the ability uh following state statute. Uh and getting permission from the county commissioners because in order to sell, they would get first right of refusal. But you ultimately could sell that property if the county was not interested in it. uh and there potentially could be a one-time savings, though uh that money and the rules are very specific to that. And you know, I've publicly said that real property within our school district is at a premium, it's very limited. and uh any land that our district
064has, unless there is something that is comparable that you as a board might consider as far as swapping land in some way, shape, or form with the county, uh I would not recommend ever selling any of our land in our district. Uh, and I'm not a point to say that I would sell any of our buildings because we've talked about the fact that in our portfolio with the the the reactive maintenance that we're doing that one day we could have a catastrophic failure at a school that requires uh engineering and manufacturing say to replace an air conditioning system and it's in the middle of a school year and we have to move our kids to another school. So, it would be our goal ultimately to consider if the school was to be closed, could we
065maintain it minimally uh in order to use it as a swing space until the time comes where it no longer can serve that purpose. But we've talked about that and other districts utilize that as well. Wake County does that. They're at a whole different ballgame than we are, but they're having to replace older buildings and they're having to move kids in order to do that. It does give you that flexibility if you ever had a largecale uh facility issue because I think that you know we would not want to do uh you know switching over to virtual instruction as a long-term possibility right we would want to be able to have a building that we could educate our children in uh >> go ahead George >> on this um chart here the $1.7 million per
066year savings is connected to what Jonathan was presenting with our county commissioner requests for annual operating expenses. I think it would be helpful for people to be real clear that when we go every year to the county commissioners and ask for a 3% increase just to stay where we were last year, that $60 million that we were talking about, this is the $1.7 million that would help with that request. The capital funding is another whole issue. It's not in that discussion. Correct. >> In a sense, we still needed we needed to find $6 million. We're we're getting about 25% here of our total request just for next year. >> That's right. And that's why I call it it's only one budget lever, but it's not the solution. It's just something for you to consider because
067the bottom line is that's money that is uh being left on the table every year and it that that you could maximize your buildings. And again, I say that's easier said than done. and we all recognize that. But it's the idea that when you look at the numbers here, it's very compelling that you at least have to weigh it and to decide what you believe is the best course of action. So, this is a slide that I showed as well back in August, but it just kind of puts it into perspective. And again, this is 1.7 million of local funding uh per year. Uh if you make the decision uh today, and I'm not suggesting that, but we show in 2026 u you would save about 6.8 8 million. But if you wait, the longer
068you wait, the less of that savings you're able to benefit from. And you see on the chart here, it goes right back down to 1.7. Um, it's just a tool to know it. Again, there are a lot of factors that come into play when you when you consider this, but it is one where um, you know, the as the county is looking at their structural deficits financially. We're looking at ours. uh these are things that at least we have to consider but it just shows you that these this is money that could be redirected that can minimize other reductions within our district uh where we have greater priorities possibly right so talking about budget levers I felt that I didn't want to speak just in isolation that this is the only thing that the operations
069department is just sharing with you know we have worked as a district uh to look at other current and potential budget adjustments as you know reviewing our central office staffing structures looking at those positions. There's currently uh Mr. Scott has talked about there's been a freeze to 25% on non-personnel budget items where departments have all had a basically a 25% reduction and then ultimately uh Mr. Scott will have to determine if that money needs to go cover the shortfall, how that money needs to be used. Uh there's been discussion about adjusting our staff allocation formulas. Uh reducing expenditures on instructional technology. Uh we've examined district-wide staffing patterns to look for any opportunities in reducing redundancy, consolidating roles where it makes sense. Uh but we also exploring opportu opportunities across the board just to look at
070any existing contracts we have and are there ways in which we could reduce services. Can we uh combine services or even looking at outsourcing certain options? We know when it comes to uh our costs, you know, the benefits that come along add to to the salary. So when you hear someone's salary, there's benefits that come along with that that have additional cost. But if there are services out there that can get the job done uh for less and more efficiently, we've been tasked by the superintendent just to evaluate that. Uh so with that being said, u I can answer any questions, but we're at the point where Dr. Trice wants to talk about next steps >> or members. Do you have any questions? >> All right. So, let's talk about next steps. As I mentioned
071at the top of the presentation, uh this section of the agenda really focuses on um a proposed timeline that the administration uh put together for the board's consideration that creates a pathway for decision making uh around uh school closure. I want to say upfront a big part of that is uh continued community engagement in the same lines as we followed this fall when uh informing our community about the changing demographics, the de declining enrollment and uh the budget implications. So for the next five or six slides, I just want to present that timeline, be happy to answer any questions, but um we'll definitely be seeking board feedback on this timeline. So here we are tonight. Uh, as I shared at the top of the conversation, um, we would ask the board to, uh, begin initial
072conversations that identify the criteria that will form, uh, inform our future, uh, decision about school closure. So, we're not asking for a vote. Um, but at some point, uh, the administration will need direction to, uh, complete its, uh, statutory requirement on completing a study regarding school closure. Uh we have a board meeting on February 19th where perhaps uh we could uh formally establish that criteria that would give the uh administration some runway to begin to um conduct its study moving into March. Uh if we were able to get the criteria, we certainly would want to begin to engage our our community. um sharing much of what we shared today. Um it was a bit of a reflection but it was also a look forward in terms of uh understanding our school capacity um numbers or
073um uh challenges. Um perhaps it is also kind of uh informing our community what the criteria is for school closure. Uh but it's also to communicate that it's not about uh impacted schools or schools that may close. Uh if the board decides to close a school or two schools, it will impact our entire district because we will have to go through a redistricting process. And so we want to, as we did earlier this fall, help carry our community through what that potentially could look like, but also get feedback on what the needs are concerning redistricting because it will impact all of us. Um, as you can see on the screen, we're proposing three inperson sessions um perhaps at our high schools that can uh hold a lot of our uh community. um one virtual. Uh
074that's a an option that we didn't do this fall that I think would have been smart um that we could deploy, you know, during this cycle of community engagement. Uh we certainly will begin our data collection uh to inform our recommendation uh to the board. uh we want to start that as soon as possible um because you know our report or our recommendation will be based on uh the data and the criteria that the board outlines. Uh moving into April uh we'll be kind of quiet because we do need to actually construct the the actual recommendation. So, um, using the board's criteria, the data collection, uh, the community input sessions, um, the history of the reports that we just referenced, uh, we'll need to craft a recommendation and we're looking at about a month to
075do so using the month of April. Uh, to do that, in May, the administration would publish its recommendation May 7th. Um we feel it's important uh to publish our recommendation well before the board is uh asked to be in a position to uh vote on a recommendation or select a recommendation or perhaps uh adjust a recommendation. And so it's our intention uh to publish u you know our recommendation on May 7th. Uh our policy um as a district requires a public hearing on major decisions that impact uh our community broadly. Um we are proposing to have that public hearing on May 21st and that gives the community a couple of weeks to read through the administration's proposal but also engage with the board with questions or perhaps alternatives to the recommendation. Uh but at the
076public hearing like we've done in the past uh there is feedback from the community that happens in a setting much like you know we have now where the community is offering their feedback. Uh and then in June uh as you you can see if we move from May 21st uh to June 4th that's another couple of weeks where uh we would ask the board to make um or take action on the administration's recommendation or um you know an adjustment to a recommendation that the board uh deems appropriate. But it gives the uh the board a couple of weeks between the public hearing and when we're proposing that the board take action on a recommendation uh to um you know have have discussions. And so the idea is that we wouldn't kind of uh stack uh
077information and decision making back toback, but we wanted to spread it out a little bit. So um this is the proposal that we're kind of putting forth. Um it is uh it's it's uh February right now. Not a lot of time between now and June, but a lot of work to do. And uh we want we thought it was important that not only that the board see in a timeline and what the proposed actions are. Uh but that we're pretty transparent with our public as well about when decisions are made, when information will be presented as well. Um, again, this is just another way to kind of look at the timeline. I'm not going to walk through it. Um, but as I mentioned, between now and June is where the bulk of our work will
078be done. Any action that the board takes will also inform uh the administration's work for uh you know, the following year. Uh it's important to to recognize um that we're not asking that the board uh consider closure of schools for next the next academic year. It would be the following uh academic year. So I want to make that clear uh to uh our public. Um but I'd be happy to uh answer uh any questions or take any feedback concerning the timeline. Um but we did uh draft a discussion prompt for the board. Um, concerning criteria, uh, given the financial and enrollment realities we've just reviewed and with an eye toward the long-term financial health of the district, what criteria should guide decisions about potential elementary school closures? Um, and our staff is prepared to to
079take notes, I know, on on that discussion. Uh but you know, we'll be happy to answer any questions about our presentations, the timeline, and I'll turn it back over to um Chair Jenkins for facilitation. >> Thank you. Um why don't we start with just initial thoughts from the board on the timeline first before we get to the discussion prompt. >> Ronnie, go ahead. Thank you for the presentation and laying out sort of what has to be true to kind of get us to where we need to be. I would um observe this is an extremely aggressive timeline to make all of these decisions to give us enough time to be able to reopen whatever our district looks like in, you know, 18 months, right? Uh and so I'm just going to caution us to like
080build flexibility where we need to and if we need to pivot, think about what that might look like. Can you all hear me? >> Okay, thank you. Um, the other thing I would ask maybe the board to consider and maybe from administration as well is like what are we considering from a like how many schools? I I think it would be impossible to close two schools in a year and so are we talking about one school and then coming back and re-engaging the conversation as we assess sort of where we are with enrollment and the financial impact that's left us with or sort of what are we considering in the decision that we're being asked to think about today? Thank you, Ron. Why don't we have other people reflect on the timeline and we'll come
081can we come back to your question? >> I think it impacts the timeline. So, I wonder if we could talk about that. >> All right. Board members, what are we considering when we think about closure? Is it one school over time, right, Ronnie? Or two schools? And maybe board members can refer approach and maybe board members want to reflect on why I can start. I You can go or I can start calling on you. >> Can't sit quiet on this one. Board member. Sorry. >> Start calling people. >> Go ahead. Oh, go ahead. Okay. Vicki wants to ask a clarifying. >> I'd like to clarify. Have a question. Clarifying what you're saying to us. What is it administration is bringing to us? What are you asking us to consider? One, two at once or staggered?
082what what are your thoughts before we need to try to try to figure out what we need to look at doing? >> Well, I don't know that we've, you know, brought anything to the board. Um, you know, when I think about the staggering option, um, I think we need to think about redistricting. And so, if you close one school, you have to redistrict the entire district. Yeah. >> So, if we waited another year and closed another school, are we going through another district-wide redistricting? So, that, you know, those are considerations and trade-offs that we would have to make as a community. And I haven't yet talked about the rebuilding of schools that we are also underway doing where we will also have to do another redistricting. So, the idea is that we would want to
083create as much stability as we can in our community when we make these decisions. But but again, I just want to want you to know we haven't brought any plan or um consideration to the board concerning Do >> you have a follow-up question? >> Okay, so forgive me for going down this rabbit hole. Oh god. But in terms of looking at the rebuild and the fact that we need new buildings and are having to potentially close two schools, time frame for possible having a new build would be how many years out again? >> So we're looking at three three years three years. >> So potentially we could have a new building and around the same time that we need to have two schools closed. No, it's going to be before. >> It's going to be
084before I don't >> The new school won't open until 2829. >> Okay. And you were saying possible the two closing 27 28 with the So around I'm saying we're talking about two school year I mean one school year difference in time, right? So around so we are possibly looking at a new build building with two schools being closed within a year or two, right? >> Okay. All right. I just wanted to get that straight in my head because that can help formulate a different thought process. >> Go ahead. Um Meredith. >> Yeah. I mean, I actually was going to say something similar to what Vicki said initially in that like I'm really looking for direction from the administration as to like how far do we need to pull the financial levers to make this work
085for our district for its long-term stability and sustainability. So, I would prefer to close zero schools. However, I also recognize financial realities. Um, so I can't really say right now one versus two without understanding how crucial those two data points are to solving our overall issue because I know that that's really just as you've pointed out, it's one piece. It's not the entirety of what we need to do to remain solvent. >> Certainly, it is one piece, but it it is a big a big piece, perhaps the biggest piece when we look at our budget levers. Um and um in the absence of uh using uh that budget lever, what I mean by that is closing schools. Um we still have the responsibility of closing our budget gap. Uh and if we're not going to
086close schools, then we will pivot toward, you know, where we spend our funding. And as Dr. Mr. Scott showed, uh what is it? 83% of our funding is spent on people. Um, so as an administration, we were looking to use closure of schools to create a bit of a runway knowing that we have to kind of step down our staff, but we want to give them as much time as possible to make life-changing decisions uh when we do that. Um so if we decide about for instance school closures soon uh we are still in the process of developing a staffing plan that's stepped down over the years but as people leave the district or retire retire we can begin to fill those openings right away. Um, and that gives our staff certainty. Um, as opposed
087to, you know, spending time to think deeply or more long term about school closures and having to accelerate our step down in staffing plan, which would feel much like the riff in some ways that we did a couple of years ago. Um, I'm sorry. Can >> can I ask a question? But looking at how significant our financial gap is, do you think we can achieve it just by by reducing personnel? Because when you start reducing personnel, you start impacting our students and our values of what's like what we a complement of staff that we value as a district, right? There are things that are unique to our district that as I talk with districts all over the country, they don't have. We have a nurse in every single one of our schools. I've talked to
088people all over the country. They're like, "No, no, no. We get a nurse every other day." So hopefully your kid gets sick on the day the nurse is there or it's going to be a teacher taking care of them, right? And so even if we try to reduce it with staff, I guess my question is, are we still going to find ourselves fiscally short? >> Not only Yes. I'm sorry. I mean, >> yeah. No, no. >> So, not only fiscally short, but we still haven't dealt with the inefficiency in our facilities. >> So, not only will we kind of focus on staff and many of the programs and services will be in jeopardy, you know, we're still looking at um capacity, you know, 60 70% which will get worse as our uh student population declines.
089So, we'll make a decision about reducing staff and then we're still going to have to come back to you as an administration to say, "We need to deal with these facilities. They're getting more expensive to maintain. We have declining enrollment. When are we going to deal with that?" Um, and so our approach as an administration is to deal with facilities first. Uh you saw some of the benefits um in terms of allowing us to pull money, shift funding to support the infrastructure needs that are clearly there, but also giving our staff the runway uh to make decisions about employment and you know quite frankly keeping them with us. I was going to say that too >> as as staff retire or decide to work in other districts or move um you know that is that's
090helpful uh for for us >> because we're not staffed at 100%. And so that's where I mean I talk with you >> you know a lot about like a lot of the inefficiencies when we look at a school that's under capacity. I'm sorry board members I object to you on this one but I asked this question of like you know class size because that's the other thing at play that if it's from the state it's the state law about class size requirements and like the you know the tipping point like when you hit a certain number of kids in a class it requires a classroom and so we have some very very small classes not because we chose it but the state yet again has dictated something and not tied dollars to it. Absolutely. Um,
091and so, so I think that's where like there's an efficiency where we can round out classes and it doesn't mean that it's a loss of a teacher. It may be for for the sake of our HR department, it may be tipping us to 100% versus sitting at 96 or 90 98%. >> Absolutely. I couldn't add anything to that. And I think Dr. Harris would say, I don't want to speak for her, but um the faster she knows um that um we need to kind of place staff in open position uh the better uh because it just creates stability across uh the board. It, you know, eases transitions for staff because it, you know, it can be pretty nerve-wracking. Um if you start to name employment categories that may be impacted but you're not making decisions
092for two or three years because you know >> um sorry about that board members other board members reflections. I don't know Meredith if you want to add anything. Okay. >> Thank you. Okay. Board members reflections in terms of the timing. Go ahead Barb question. >> It's just another question. Um, isn't there something called spot redistricting where you can just redistrict a part of the district? So, I guess because I think nobody wants to redistrict three times in four years or whatever, like at all. And ideally, we would just do it once and I remember Mr. Shroi not wanting to close a school because he wanted to only redistrict once. >> He wanted to wait, but we can't. So, I guess what >> I don't know, I know we have a policy 4150 that tries very
093it's it's like you really should try not to redistrict very much and especially move kids more than once within elementary schools. But I guess what um would you really have to re I guess the question is like this obviously to me is connected to redistricting because that's its own cost and its own disruption and so you really think we'd have to redistrict even if we just closed one school or you don't the whole district? >> Well, yeah. Um yes um particularly with given some of the the programming that's in our schools um you know we would have to decide because we're not proposing to the board that we would eliminate any any of our programs uh in our schools. So we would one have to find a school to place those programs into um and
094which also may display displace students. So uh there would be a bit of a a redistricting. I don't know if if Mr. Shiroki could add anything to I know he's you know done this a number of times. So >> yeah. So there are two variables I think for your question about spot redistricting. So let me talk about programs first. So if we have four programs in our district, the children in those programs are randomly selected and they come from all over. So for a demographer who's looking at redistricting, you kind of have to look at kind of like a regression analysis of the past of where have the children predominantly come from within our district and kind of hedge that. But even when you have programs, you have to lower your capacity to deal with
095over and under because you just don't know where parents are going to move or where their kids are going to land. So you already have some inefficiencies when you have a district that has programs versus not having any programs and every school is just residential. the spot redistricting. Um, ultimately you could look at and I'll just I have to make this up, but you could if there were uh two schools and you're able to separate them geographically where you might have an eastern redistricting and a western redistricting or a quadrant uh one and two and then quadrant three and four, however you want to look at it. and you make it a two-part with the demographers, uh, you know, we've, you know, NC State, this is what they do for districts in North Carolina. They
096would come back and say, you're going to have to lower your utilization because you're hedging on the future. So, you can only use the information that you have. So what they would put out a big disclaimer is we're going to do our best to hit the mark working with transportation, working with all the departments that have programs, but you're going to have to be ready and they'll have to develop options where you may have to pivot and tell a community right now you're slated to go to school A, but then when we reality we see that there's not enough room in school A because of the way the program's balanced and that section or that neighborhood may have to go to a different school and you have to give full disclaimers to people that you're
097going to look at that information to make sure that they're balanced. But what happens is with spot districtricting is you do lower your uh your utilization rates in that calculation. >> Not that we have room for that, right? But it's just maximizing our buildings at the same time. So ideally, that's what a demographer would do. They would try to balance it to minimize that disruption to parents and students. Uh unlike what you experience in larger districts like Wake County where annually notices are sent to residents saying next year you will be at school B, not A. you know, that's not what we've been accustomed to in our district and they would try to balance that. >> All right, Melinda, I'm gonna put you on the spot. >> I'm fine with that. Um, I think obviously
098we've all been putting a lot of thought into this and I just want to acknowledge how painful this is going to be, not just closing schools, but also the redistricting part. I'm a big believer sometimes I think you just need to rip the band-aid off and I would say I really feel like we should really look at closing two schools. I mean looking at the cost savings. Um I would like for us to redistrict as little as poss. Um to me it just makes more sense rather than kind of kicking that can down the road is going ahead and doing it all at once. >> Thank you Melinda. I'm just gonna yo-yo back and forth. Ronnie, >> I I I just want to like paint a picture. We're talking about two schools, 800 students. The
099district has other priorities we have to manage. Uh we're we're going to have to re create a redistricting plan for all 800, manage all the programming shifts, rethink transportation, build school schedules, communicate to families where their kids are going to go and open to I mean schools, and I just think the feasibility of this is something that we have to I totally hear you, Meinda. And as a finance person, I'm like, let's move as fast as we can to get our financial savings, but can we feasibly do it? And should we do that to our community? like I just like I I just don't know how we do that. >> Thank you, Ronnie. George, thank you. Um to be clear, I have always said for the last two years that we need to close one
100school and maybe two and I think we need to close two schools, but I have a lot of caveats and I wanted to to share them and I don't know if I'm chasing unicorns here or what sometimes. Um but before doing that I do I want to thank you and uh Dr. Trice and uh Miss Feders. I know you guys have spent hours and you have moved us significantly from where we were January 15th to today. So thank you for the effort to get us here. Um because I feel like we're moving forward. Um my caveat to this and sort of echoing what Ronnie had said here. If we're we close one school in 2027 and if we open Carbor Elementary new in 2029 and we open Estie's Hills new in 2030 and we close
101another school sometime in there, we have got to redistrict the entire district, right? And so there I I I just want us I want us to know and this is where everybody's going to granone here because working with it is can we realistically build three new schools and if we are not going to build a third new school and I've heard prominent people say that may not happen um we got to factor that into this discussion too and I'm not one to go back and revisit the bond. But I can't just say let's do this, do this, do this, and then in two years we're sitting here going, "Oh my god, we've got another whole school. We should have talked about it." Um, so that's my cha my sort of uh unicorn because I know
102it's all sort of vague, but I think we need some other concrete answers before we just go whole hog into it. And that's a little different from where I've been >> in the past 90 days about it because I really do support we do need to close two schools. Thanks for listening. >> Thank you, George. >> Go ahead, Ronnie. >> Yeah, just to put some numbers around what you're saying, George, is we have $175 million and it cost about 60 million to build an elementary school. Mr. Shroy, about 60 million. >> Yeah. So 50 to 60 million. and we know that our pay goes declined and we're tapping into bond money to do the design work. I'm going to say 6065 for an elementary school. You just can't do the math with inflation by the
103time we get to that third school. And so I think the reality is like as we're making these decisions, we have to keep that context. So I appreciate you raising I just wanted to put some math around it. >> Thank you, Ronnie. All right, Vicki, I know you had some clarifying questions on you. So, well, um, well, you answered one of my questions, which was to clarify and then with the timeline if we were to be able to slow it down with preparing to close and looking at where our population is as we're building and we possibly could look at the the one school that we know we have the money to build right now. We know what we have right now. So, we're looking at a new larger one school and we have to
104close the one maybe two, but the new larger one school will house more and possibly have more space for programming. That would be able to put us in a better mindset in terms of trying to um as Melinda would say, rip the band-aid off, but try not to ripping it off. that would prevent the pain of coming it off somewhat because you would be doing two things at once. Redistriting and program moving and then we would have a little more time for some academic return on investment coming in for us to see some responses to where our programs are looking at so we can have a larger picture of what's going on in our community. And I think in an additional statement I think I would like to say is is I know that our
105community has little pockets and I would like to say that you know um a lot of people may not realize that we built Ephesus came aboard in 1972. another elementary didn't come on board until 1996. That prior to that 1996, this community had six elementary schools. And they were not all just community schools. Because let me help you understand for those who were not here and don't all know the actual history of this community. There were lots of kids that had to always ride the bus. There were lots of kids who had to move schools who were redistricted and it had nothing to do with building schools. As we know, we're looking at having to close schools for the first time since desegregation, but we've gone through redistricting many times prior to the newer schools
106coming aboard. And I think we're going to have to start looking a little more back towards full circle and realizing that as our community changes. The way we look at what a community school means needs to change because if we're all part of CHCCS, which we are, we need to realize that it's not just about the school that's right down the street. And if we get to know who's around the corner and down the street, we may be able to get some of these beloved educators that are moving the mark for some of these students in those pocket schools to help move the mark for some of those kids that are down the street and around the corner, too. Because you know what? They need to have the opportunity for their mark to be moved.
107I know what it's like to go to one school and then get bus to the other school because they didn't have the numbers of people that looked like me. So I stand here and say I know cuz I walked those hallways. I know what it's like to go into a school where they weren't prepared to teach people that looked like me. So, we have to look at this from all different situations and realize that all of our children are going to need to look at this and we as the adults are going to need to stand back and realize that what we wanted, what was best for us and what seemed like might be better in your thought might not be what's best for our children that are coming along. Because if we don't teach
108them not to want to be with all the different people with down the corner and around the street, they don't know that they may not want to build community with those people that are down the corner and around the street. They won't know that they should only deal with who's next door. It might be worth them having programming with people from across town. So, we really need to look at it from a larger lens to really accomplish what needs to be accomplished. We are small. We need to be smaller. Like I said, we had six elementary schools with roughly the same number of students we have now and we have 11. It's not that different. We had a huge explosion in population for about 20 years and then it stopped. It literally started going back
109the other way. We went woo woo and it came down. The largest graduating class in Chapel Hill at Chapel Hill High was in the 80s. We started building other high schools, but it's not because the numbers stayed up because Chabio High was still the only high school for a few more years after that. But the largest class was in 1988. I know cuz I was in it. So over 500, the only time we hit that high. So people need to understand from which we came so we don't make the same mistakes with where we're going. Thank you. >> Thank you, Becky. All right, Barb. I just I want to ask um Ronnie about so I you it's funny because I looked at this timeline and thought it seems totally reasonable and you think it's not
110and I guess is it that you think from February 26 to fall of 27 is too compressed or that and that that should all take longer or that we should do all of this in this amount of time but wait longer to close schools or neither. Am I just misunderstanding you? I don't necessarily I don't >> No, it's a good question. I appreciate the ask for the clarity. uh like I have an appreciation that we have to move fast. And so I think like this is kind of we are where we have to be, I'm just appreciating that having made big decisions and done big implementations, you're always going to run into something unexpected. And so for us to to sit here today and say we're going to open we're going to move 800 students
111and be ready to reopen schools by the fall of 2020. I just don't see how it happens, right? Um so I think we have to make like think about how we are making decisions today like do we do one or two schools what our school consideration criteria are and march down the path uh but being flexible that we may have to to think about how to do this in a different way. Does that make sense? >> Yeah. >> Did you want to weigh in on one two schools? >> You kind of have to I don't want to right now. Okay. I'm gonna ask Dr. Trice another question. >> Okay. All right. >> Um, something that's come up in the many emails we've gotten and I wanted to tell people we've read, we're all reading the
112emails, is title one. Um, and so could you just explain how does a school get to become a title one school? What are the benefits of being a title one school and can you create new title one schools through redistricting? Um so yes, Title One, you know, a federal funding source um that's tied to a school's population. Um we're looking at, you know, essentially social economic status of students in schools. And so if you cross a certain threshold, um you are eligible to become a title one school. Um in our district historically, um there's been a little flux. um you know, some years you cross that threshold and and and some years you don't. Um I think it's important for our community to recognize that, you know, as we think about closing schools um or
113replacing schools and we get into redistricting, you know, that's going to shuffle students all over the district. So, if you're a title one school today, there is zero guarantee that you will be a title one school after redistricting. It just depends on how um the student population plays out across our schools and if we cross certain thresholds uh in our schools after redistricting and they're eligible for title one funding, they will receive it. Um you know, one of the things that I often think about as well in terms of redistricting, it creates an opportunity uh to balance uh social economic um issues across our district. It's very difficult to operate a school with a you know high SCES. Um and we do a great job in our district, but it is a bit of a
114challenge. Um and when you don't exercise that muscle of redistricting, you know, you know, sometimes that's what happens as communities change or neighborhoods change. And so, uh, but again, to answer your question, uh, once we go through redistricting, there's no guarantee that any of our current title one schools will be title one in the future. >> Okay. >> Um, I mean, an issue that I've been thinking about a lot that I haven't heard come up is how many people who live in our district who pay these high taxes, who don't have kids, who go here. And I am finding it it's hard to justify that to say we're being fiscally responsible with your taxpayer dollars when we got a bunch of schools at 65 70%. That really bothers me. Um among all the other issues
115about our own budget, that really bothers me as an elected official accountable not just to parents but to everybody who lives here. And so I I think we should close too. I'd like to try to do it in a way that minimizes the number of times we have to redistrict. So I I that's above my pay grade. um that timing question, but yeah. Thank you, Barb. So, boy, um I'm going to say two and I would say immediately. Um I think the staff know I've been thinking about this for a while. Sorry, this is hard because you know I see some of you and I know some of you and I know this is hard to hear. These are our staff and and our in our schools. And I think Vicki has highlighted, you know,
116we we've got a lot of history in these schools, but this is something we have to do for our kids. So, it's two. I am sensitive to Ronnie's concern about the compressed timeline. I do feel the pressure that it's external to us. So, I I won't go on my state federal rant right now. I'll save that for another day. But, I think the pressure is external to us. We're not a taxing authority. And I would ask the question to the staff. Do do they think they can do it? Because it's not going to be the seven of us who do this work. It's going to be the administration, cabinet, and all the staff that are going to support them. I think it's possible. I don't think it's impossible. And I would hope you would lean
117on other districts who do it. I mean, we've got neighbors who do redistricting all the time. But I would lean on asking the staff, do you think you can do it? I agree. I would like to see us minimize redistricting as much as possible. I first moved here right when we were doing some of the north side redistricting. So I wasn't my kids weren't a part of it per se, but I just remember how tense it was and it wasn't it wasn't great. And so I'd love to see it minimized. I'd like for us to be thoughtful like other board members have shared about the timing of the new schools because we do it's the balancing of Walpert. We don't gain a lot of seats but we gain a lot of seats pursuant to the
118confines of what the county of Walpert has laid out to us. And so, you know, we may not need to have to redistrict after schools, new schools are built. We may be able to delay that for another two years. But I would I would lean on the staff to help us think about can we do it in a year. My suspicion and I'm going to look to you Dr. Tric to answer it. You wouldn't have proposed this if you didn't think it was possible to be done either. >> Right. But I also understand that schools. >> Well, I was just noting that you didn't bring a recommendation on two schools. Yeah. Um and I think it's important to understand um there's a there's a difference between me standing here and saying yes, I think we
119can do it. Um there's this idea of trust to verify. You know, as a as a uh the superintendent um and leading our administration, um if you were to give us direction, I think it's important for us to demonstrate how we could do it. Um, and so that's a little more than the timeline that I shared today, but it kind of gets into the ins and out, the nuts and bolts of going from point A to point B, whether that's closing a school or two schools. Um, to include, you know, moving of programs and finding space. I mean, it will definitely involve us partnering with NC State or another demographer to look at boundary lines and and so, you know, we know that they look those partners assist other districts to do it within a
120year. Um, and and that's kind of what what we're proposing. But, you know, I stand here today and and say yes, but my next move would be to uh be a little bit more concrete about each step along the way. And to M Dossi's point, you know, I mean, it's the human conditions, things change, you know, issues come up and but we would, you know, need to put that into our timeline. The idea is that we have to start to move on facilities now. uh as the superintendent, I would prefer not to start with personnel is was what I'm saying. Uh if we start with personnel on the back end, we still have this issue with facilities and that would that would be in my mind more disruptive. Um, and starting with personnel, uh, we
121would likely have to focus on areas that we've come to to to know and, um, love in our district. You know, when I talk about instructional assistants and counselors and administrators, like, we enjoy those things. And if we have to make decisions about those positions, you know, I'm fully I'm here fully saying, yeah, we may have to, but at least we'll have a longer runway to to kind of help ease that that transition. And that's why we would want to start with facilities. But to I know I'm talking a lot, but to kind of go back to your point, I think we need a plan to demonstrate how we would go from a to closure of two schools if that's the direction we get. >> That that's helpful. And I as you're talking I'm thinking
122as a board if we we have to give you something to work with and why I said two is it gives you the most it gives you more financial flexibility to work with than one. One really limits you financially knowing that we've got this bigger worst case scenario of what was it 6.5 million and I don't I I agree with you. I don't want to look for that 6.5 million with people that that that is the very very last place I want to look again. That was hard. That was painful. I don't want to do that again. So, so that's why I'm for board members, that's why I'm leaning more towards two. It gives the staff more financial flexibility. I know for community members, it feels like it's personal, but >> I think there's I'm
123I'm just listening to Dr. tric the staff. >> And I do want to be open like if if while we're focusing on facilities, I still have to bring to the board at some point soon a staffing plan that right sizes our organization. So we're not out of the woods with that. This is not, you know, the magic bullet that's going to solve all of our financial issues. It is big. Uh but it is not the only thing that we're doing. we're doing two things or three or maybe five things at once when we talk about these budget levers. Um but we will have to bring a staffing plan uh to the board to kind of look at um concerning our recommendations on you know right sizing the organization based on student enrollment >> and we
124also have the ARI the academic return on investment work. So, I think that's really important that we're working hard to be thoughtful, thoughtful about our finances, thoughtful about student outcomes, and looking, like you said, at all levers, not just one. So, I agree with you, this isn't going to fix everything. >> But to Miss Feder's point, I mean, facilities is a big one. Um, our community invests heavily into our schools. Um, and there is quite a bit of inefficiency in our schools. Um, and that in itself is an equity issue. uh because if you are spending um funding on fixed costs um where you could deal with those inefficiencies, those dollars could flow into making sure that every EC classroom has a full-time teachers. We we have classroom EC classrooms now, but there's not a
125full-time teacher, right? And we could address those things and things like that if we were to become more efficient as a district. And we know today that as we close schools, uh, most of the teachers will follow the students. Um, and there are positions that are kind of one-offs that, you know, that wouldn't be the case, but it does give us a little bit more flexibility. >> Okay. All right. So yes, so I got a board member ask to board members. cuz I know we wanted to start with criteria but it feels like I want to respect and it's late and you guys a lot of you are elementary parents so you got an early start you know teachers too >> teachers and so um board members do we feel comfortable moving the criteria discussion
126to our next board meeting >> I I think that makes sense I think this is also an example of compression timeline Right. So like every decision feeds to the next one and pushes further downstream. >> And and just I I know when when I was working and talking with the staff about this, there's we have some buffer. That's why it says February 2026 because we thought this discussion might flow over into another board meeting. >> Um Okay, go ahead, Meredith. Thanks. Um, yeah. I mean, I I would be fine pushing the criteria discussion, but I also think that we have a large captive audience here and that it might make sense to address like a couple of things. Like I, you know, there were definitely some themes that emerged from a lot of the messages
127that we were getting. And so I don't know if it makes them like I don't want us to go off on like a huge tangent but like you know I do want to acknowledge some of the the things that we have been thinking about and that you know I I saw a lot of comments about you can't just consider facilities age and you know from my perspective at least you know as an individual board member that's never been my aim was to only look at age of facilities. Sure, that's a consideration, but we do have to look at other impacts and especially as it relates to economics and so things like walkability where it, you know, affects bus transportation, but we need real numbers on that, not just a, you know, not a perception or,
128you know, we we need data that will show us kind of how to proceed. Um, so I I guess I just wanted to acknowledge those. I don't want to hijack the discussion. Um, but I did want to, you know, I feel like people have have invested their time to come tonight and so, you know, and I don't know that that how many people will be able to come to the next one and I just want to make sure that we address some of these things. >> Yeah. >> Go ahead, Ronnie. >> Um, so I have something related to what Meredith said, but I wanted to close the conversation on the number of schools, like how are we going to make a decision about that? Is that when administration comes back with a plan we'll look
129at it or do we want to sort of take the temperature of the board today and make >> why why don't we take a temperature of the board because I think that's going to inform the criteria and also when we task the administration to do work. So two sub twos three ones. I'm I'm of the mindset >> two wire opening one. >> Okay, I got you. >> Yeah. I mean, I think too with the caveat that we need to think creatively on how that looks and you know what what can be done to minimize the disruption. >> I I I wonder when we direct the administration about the plan, right? Because that's what it is. Would it be helpful to also layer in like a draft concept of like how they you know how they
130would achieve you would that be >> yeah I mean to me that's how I would be able to make a decision I would need to see a project plan that kind of lays out the steps of the things that need to be considered timeline the the the dependencies like you know what has to feed something else and then I could say like I feel comfortable that we can do too or we should come back and have a discussion so I'm I think we need more information before we make a decision >> and obviously the decision ision won't be made until June. So, we could frame it and send the administration off to make the case because when it comes time for the board to vote, there's nothing that says we we have to vote for
131two, right? It's going I think Dr. Trice framed it that way. However, or whatever version the board proposes, right? Is that okay? >> Yeah. I think the timeline looks different if it's two than one, though. So, like it's what are we asking administration to go do? There would be two scenarios. Maybe that's the one school and then there's two schools. There's some overlap in the activities, but >> that's right. >> You know, each school's individual and we'd have to think about that. >> That's right. Thank you, Ronnie, for pointing that out. >> So, I think the temperature of the board is two schools. Okay. And so, and I think that gives us a broad umbrella, right? Because it'll include one and two. Okay. So, I think was that helpful? Okay. And then go ahead, Ronnie.
132>> I was just gonna say, do you feel like you have what you need to kind of think about a plan? >> No. I think we need um >> No, no, no. >> I think criteria. >> I mean, I think from from a planning standpoint, I mean, it it'd be important for us to understand criteria. That's right. If that's a >> Oh, yeah. I was just about the two schools. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. and and also the guidance of like it's not just closing two schools but like the timeline and the needs and information and all the things right >> okay good all right and then one more thing before we get to criteria I do want to ask like are we open to reconsidering the
133schools under consideration and so uh I I just I just it's late don't you want to go home. >> Okay, listen. >> So, um, you know, we've talked a lot about our financial headwinds, and so I don't I I just think that it would make sense to consider what could lead to the biggest savings without restricting ourselves to decisions we made when we didn't have full information. And so I I would just ask the board to reconsider and allow us to assess allow administration to assess the remaining five schools identified as the highest need to the report excluding Carbo Elementary given the progress we've already made toward rebuilding that facility. I would say in the previous discussion some board members raised questions about whether reopening the bond decision might create community confusion. I think we've
134heard from the community that is not the case. I think they're willing to re-engage. Um, and I just go back to the financial considerations. If we constrain ourselves from being able to consider where we might get the biggest savings, I think we're missing our fiscal responsibility. SO, all right. So, Ronnie has asked another question of the board. Does do the board members have an appetite to look at more than the three schools we previously discussed on January 15th or would they like to expand it and it sounds like you're saying to include Est's Hills and and FPG as well? I want to make clear that we have we need a name. >> That's right. Those would be the five schools. So Soul, Glenwood, Estes Hills, Ephesis and did I already say Glenn? FPG. Thank you.
135>> Thank you. Okay. So I'm going to try again. Sorry. Meredith. Um, this is tough for me. I mean, you know, I think we did make a commitment to certain schools when we clearly laid out the plan and there were reasons why we picked the schools that we did for the redevelopment. I think one thing that was not said earlier that I have in my notes that I wanted to make sure that we did say was that one consideration was the ability to rebuild on site while kids are in buildings going to school and then demolish the old building when the new one comes online. It was to minimize disruption so that we didn't have to utilize swing schools and you know there were a lot of cons a lot of talk about that at
136the time. Um however, you know, I do think in the interest of fiscal responsibility that we should kind of look at all the options even if we ultimately arrive at the same place that we started. I think and that means looking at a grid that has criteria listed for all of those schools. Um so I mean I would I would be open to that. I feel like I've evolved a little bit in my thinking over the past couple of weeks. Um, you know, I I I do think we have to be creative. We have a lot of new information that we didn't have when the bond was being voted on. Um, most notably the things that Mr. Shuropi mentioned in his presentation. Um, so that that's where I would fall. I think we'd like to
137clarify what is the like we saying the statement new information. I can I just ask for you Meredith what was the new information? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean the when we voted for the bond, we didn't know about the $21 million gap that the county commission um we didn't know that they were going to consider changing the funding the allocation model um which I think >> now that we might not be able to build a third school, >> right? I mean, yeah, at the beginning we were planning on building the three schools and now there does seem to be some doubt which and I am concerned about that. Um because I, you know, I think all of our kids deserve to be in excellent buildings and we need to figure out the best way that
138we can do that with the limited funds that we have. >> Thank you, Meredith. I'm going to keep doing the way I was before Melinda. Three schools, five schools. Uh as the new kid on the board, I wasn't here two years ago. So to me, I think again, you make the best decisions when you have the most information. So we absolutely should open up to five schools. RONNIE FIVE, know that. Um, and so I know this is difficult, but we made a commitment to them to replace those schools. And, you know, We also were told at that time we would need to consolidate one elementary school, which the word consolidate was used instead of close. But we started talking about closing an elementary school formally in August of 2024. This isn't just didn't just happen.
139There wasn't we we we've seen the problem now. It's accelerated to two schools in my opinion, but other than that, nothing's really changed. So, I'll stick with three. >> Thank you, George Vicki. >> Dr. Trace, I want to repeat something that you said to make sure everyone understands and is clear about what you said. This is not a problem that just happened. This is a problem that was happening 10 years ago. And 10 years ago, nobody really heard it. It wasn't said out loud. I guess it was the quiet little secret that was in the bubble that is Chapel Hill Carro City Schools, but really isn't. That's something we have to now look at dealing with. And if we don't deal with it, we'll have a situation like Chapel Hill High where they kept kicking
140it down the road and kicking it down the road and we ended up with a new school that was based on something that needed to have been done 25 years ago. So unfortunately, I know this is where we are, but I'm also hearing that we're getting a whole lot. But I want people to understand that no one is saying that at least from Let me speak. Let let me not say no one. Let me say I I don't perceive that any of our children should be in a school that's still in the 50s or the 60s. I know what it's like for our kids to have to figure out and you have to build things to get the school to be where DPI says we have to be now or the federal government says we
141have to be now where you're still trying to make sure you don't find things inside the infrastructure that shouldn't be in a school anymore. We're needing to think about the building itself and that our people are who make our community and make our schools. to where our students are, where our wonderful staff and teachers are. That will be the life of Chapel Hill Carbur City Schools. So, I really want us to not feel that we're closing anything. If a building has to close and even if we consolidate at some point, if our children are going to be in the best facilities with the best staff doing the best work and they have the state-of-the-art outside and inside, wonderful opportunity. I want us to maybe consider embracing that. We've seen it. Guilford did a wonderful opportunity.
142They did a wonderful job and we were amazed. And yes, multiple schools were closed to consolidate and make it a larger space. And those children have wonderful opportunities with lots of staff. So I am of the mindset. Like I said, I really feel like if we're looking at the ones that are the oldest and the hardest to keep up, to bring kids in along the way, we need to make sure that we're going to be able to have the most accessible. Think about our student, our EC students, newer facilities. Think about our students who need smaller chairs that aren't this small. Kids aren't the same as they used to be. Some are almost six feet tall before third grade. I'm just saying we really need to think about doing best practices for our kids. So,
143I am really of the mindset to hope that we can find our ways to a space where we can be closing two schools, opening one, and looking at the schools that are the oldest and the most in need and looking at where the programs are and see where that comes to. Do I know which schools they are at this point? No, I don't. But I would like you guys to be able to come back and give us what it is that you think that looks like and for us to have these conversations with the community. I don't want to put the cart in front of the horse and say that I know those answers tonight. I'm saying I want us to keep listening to them and keep listening to you and do our best practices
144and do the best. So, I don't feel comfortable right now at this point after everything that we've been hearing them say and you say that I'm saying it should be what particular school. But I think the shorter list probably is going to be the reality of it. But I don't think there's an issue with you doing a grid showing everything. So I if that's what makes sense to you, I'm not saying I'm changing my mind. I'm saying that there's nothing wrong with our town being the academic epicenter that it is for to keep bringing the academics and the information to us. I'll put it that way. >> Go ahead, Barb. >> I I guess I'm just really confused with the people who want to go back to five. what you think is the significance of
145the fact that we had multiple meetings, people came, we presented a plan, we voted on it, people voted for the bond, we submitted a we submitted a capital Thank you so much. But you will I I was the one who wanted to end so you guys could talk. But anyway, that we submitted a capital investment plan that was voted on. So does that do we just do we is that just a mean it doesn't matter? Like I I really >> I mean there's so much new information I don't even understand your question, right? Like we now are in a position where we talked about three schools. We probably can't do that. >> No, my specific question is the legal significance of the fact that we have a capital investment plan that was accepted by the
146county commissioners that we do that every year. >> It's slide 12. It's slide 12 that Mr. Shi just presented >> all the time. >> Okay. >> I I mean we're going to make another meeting with >> Can I Barb, did you want to I don't think we should go back on the commitments we already made. >> Right. So, I want to share my I want to share my thoughts on this and and and I I can appreciate board members sharing their opinion and what community members think. I think what we're saying is we're hearing from the community and that's I don't think that's accurate. We're hearing from some of the community because we named we we named three schools. Okay? And so if we then go back then it reopens and again let's be sensitive
147to our financial parameters that we have to live in. This then extends our timeline that is outside of our control. It is 100% outside outside of our control our financial situation and I think that's that's my concern. And then we also we are going to go back on the trust of community members where we said and they also believe that their school was also going to be rebuilt. So and I'm and I don't know I'm looking out and I see certain colors of shirts but I don't know if I see Estie's Hills parents here tonight. That's what I don't know. And so that's where I'm just like so it's it's for me it's like we're going back on what we said and I get it. There are community members who say well it wasn't on
148the bond. It wasn't on the bond because that's not it. It wasn't on the bond because that's not what goes on the ballot for the bond. You don't list the facilities on the bond, but it was an understanding that we presented to the community and the county that it was going to be those three schools if fiscally possible. I can hear my board members raise concerns about that third school. at third school. That one has its own set of challenges that I think the staff are going to have to bring to us that putting it on the table of closure is going to open a whole another set of issues and challenges. And I could probably talk and I've talked to some of you at Nauseium about some of the challenges that I've talked to
149staff about as I wondered the same thing. Do we reopen it up? because then it's going to unlock a whole another can of worms where we're not just talking about redistricting for that, but then we're just going to be redistricting all schools period to address a school. I am hesitant to agree with board members to say that the new information changes which schools we look at. $21 billion doesn't change whether it's this school or that school. It's $21 million. That just means we have to make a decision urgently. Full stop for me as a board member. It just tells that's the that's what that new information tells me. We no longer have time to go back and revisit and reopen things and debate and tear up this community while we fight over this school is
150better for this reason or that. We can't do that. We are here for our kids and we have to show up as board members and buckle down. We're not going to make a perfect decision. We're going to try to make the best decision based on the information we have. But I disagree with board members saying that $21 million changes the schools. For me, it doesn't. It just changes the urgency of what we have to do and and in and asking our staff to work on a more compressed timeline. That that's all the $21 million or anything that's going on the county changes for me. It does not change the schools for me. So, it doesn't sound like we have consensus to continue with three. It sounds like we have board members who want to go
151to five. and and I'm going to follow the consensus of the board. So I think well >> it's four to three. I'm so sorry. Thank you my co-chair. It is the majority of the board. Is that more accurate? The majority of the board. I think what board members have con agreed as a concession is a grid matrix of some size just to like narrow down why what schools. Meredith, I want you to >> Yeah, I mean that to me that that is what I was suggesting. I think that it will show it will confirm for us that we're on the right track, but I don't think there's a harm in looking at everything on one page so that we can see it. I don't think that that adds much to the timeline. Um I don't
152>> Okay. >> But you know I hear you and I I feel that it is urgent. So >> yeah and I just want to remind the community and and board members that the criteria about like schools and stuff is dictated by the wool pan. There's there's considerations that the county has given us. So I mean I agree we probably come to the same conclusion. I would say to the staff, I feel like we need to have that grid ASAP. >> I I'm sorry, I'm confused about what grid we're talking about. I think what the board just said is we want to have all the schools considered according to the criteria that we lay out to make a decision. >> Okay. >> So, I think the next step might be like if we want to start
153brainstorming criteria, if you thought that would be a good use of time. Okay. So, so board members, you want to start talking about criteria tonight or at least framing of the criteria, we do have to have because it's a work session item. That's what I was suggesting. Could we I know it doesn't feel great. Could we move criteria? I mean, one thing we could do is frame the criteria. So, like what are the parameters for the criteria for us to consider? >> Yeah. I mean, could we spend like maybe 10 minutes with like just brainstorming some criteria that that that'll give us a baseline to come back to on the our next meeting to build from that? >> Sure. Right. 10 minutes. I mean, you got time right here. All right. So board members, I
154mean you can speak freely. Doesn't have to be in an order in terms of well I would like to start by framing the criteria. So can I offer that? And I think the framing of the criteria really is rooted in in the box that the county gives to us like in deciding which schools we are being framed by Wilpert because no matter what we do, what we decide, we have to take it to the county to change our plan. So it's Wooper, it's the county requirements, right? >> I I don't agree with that. I like some of the top line criteria I think about are like the cost of maintenance over five years. I'd love to see that laid out for each building, the cost of out offlining a facility, the cost to replace buildings,
155program impacts, transportation impacts, minimizing minutes on the bus for students, what transportation costs are, walkability, how many students are in walk zones around the buildings. To me, those are the things that would help us make decisions that get us to the the highest financial savings, least disruption, and minimize impact to to the community. And that's an insufficient list because it's just what I I'm sure there's more. >> Thank you, Ronnie. Barb, >> I mean, I don't think it's that hard. I think it has to be about what saves us the most amount of money. >> Okay. So, because because this is about saving money. So, walkability, walkability, first of all, there's tons of research that if that walkability and diversity, racial diversity are absolutely incompatible. We have a ton of residential segregation in this community.
156And so we can consider walkability only in so far as it is a cost issue. That's how I think about it anyway. If it you have more walkers, you save less you save on busing. But walkability as its own as its own um I'm sorry. We're gonna we're going to have public comment. I'm going to ask you all to kind of hold your comments and let the board members finish discussion. >> I know, but this is the way the board process works. So please be respectful. Thank you, Ronnie. >> So, anyway, I I agree with all everything you said, Ronnie. I just I just wanted to do that asterisk with walkability. >> Another board member's comments. At least just the starting point of criteria. It doesn't mean this is where we're landing. I don't think
157you said um housing and I think we need to look at that like the housing development because I you know there's been a lot of talk about that and I want to know you know of new units what's coming and how many of them do we actually expect to house families um because I think that it's actually not as many as we think according to people on the town council that we've spoken to as well as um you know the chamber of commerce presentation that we got. So I'd like to look at housing. Thank you. Any other board members some initial thoughts? George, >> I just want to uh remind people that the only real criteria I used that separated the three from the three that didn't get rebuilt was the the ease with building
158on site while kids stay in school. And because all six of the schools needed to be replaced uh with a new modern facility and no one of them was is more important or less important or more valuable to the greater good in my opinion. Um they just happen to be where they're located and where you where you live. You go you're assigned to school there. So if we do change, I mean, I'm not going to, you know, it's like then then I want to hear the, okay, we got to have a plan now for 500 kids to be out of their building for three years while we build a new school for them because that was in our discussion last year. And that that's going to be a reality. And that's going to require then
159a swing school with seats in it. and we went through all this >> and I don't look forward to doing that again. But I would be pushing us as we look at criteria to put that out there because that's a reality and I think we're just revisiting a major part of what we did and we should stay committed to the to doing the best we can to replace the next three schools >> or in this case it might be one or two but still that was our goal was modern facilities for the kids. Thank you, George. Melinda, >> I mean, ultimately we're doing this because we have we have to save money. I mean, otherwise, if we had, you know, plenty of money, we would keep all the schools open and rebuild them all. Um,
160so to me, I think every all of our criteria is really going to be based around that. I think another one I I thought Ronnie's list was excellent. I also look at, speaking your language, Amza, about energy efficiency. Do we have are some of these schools so old that they are really inefficient in terms of energy usage? >> But yeah, >> anyone else? >> Go ahead. Thank you. >> Um, as as I have said to you in in a prior meeting that I think that um and like I said, I'm not saying that I've changed my mind. It's not that. I'm saying that I think based on where some of the board members are saying that they would like to see all the information in one space. I think as we're doing community engagement meetings
161when we tell them what you've been telling us tonight, which makes sense to me. I hear what you're saying. I still feel like that we have it may be one or two school communities here, but we're going to have to be addressing 11 school communities and they're all going to want to look to see show me how. Not necessarily tell me. So, if you have a PowerPoint or presentation that says the same thing that you said to us tonight, which makes sense to me because I'm hearing you and I think you've done a phenomenal job laying it out. So, as we're going around saying those things in those different spaces, I think that will help bring our community along to what's going to be a painful situation, but it helps them feel more communal that
162they were a part of it and not just being spoonfed what may be what has to happen, but they at least will be a party to it in that way. So, that's that's what I'm saying. >> Thank you, Becky. Um well since people are burning out criteria something for us to think about is um that might differentiate some of the schools already investments that have been made in some of these schools and when they've been made. Also forecasting of like major failures for some of these old facilities. So if we haven't spent money on some of these old systems in some of these schools it is inevitable that we will have to spend it in the future. I think it goes back to that $10 million chart. And so just because it hasn't happened, the
163team I know the operations team is anticipating a a a major failure in some of these systems. So I think we need to also look at some of those things. Um but I think we've got kind of a round list right now. That doesn't mean next time we come back we won't board members won't think about other other criteria to think about. >> Well and I'd love like administration perspective you know Mr. stroke. He's probably done multiple of these before and he's probably got some thoughts that we should be thinking about, too. All right. I didn't see anyone keeping time for me. So, I'm going to say that's 10 minutes. All right. So, we've given you Dr. D a lot of things to think about. Obviously, we're going to talk more and narrow down the
164criteria for you and the team. Um, for members, I'm going to close our work session on this topic. Just a point of clarification. Sure. Um >> for the administration >> this topic of criteria is on the next >> that is yes. Yeah. We I don't we have not finalized the criteria. >> All right. Um let's go. All right. Now we're into work session public comments. I'm not going to read the spiel. It's two minutes. We're going to have um teacher organizations, SIT or student groups go first and then Tamara, you're going to help me with everyone who signed up. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Mr. Link, I see you coming forward. >> Madam Madam Chair, since we're at a crossroads and I I do this virtually every time, I'm happy to stay to
165the end. There are people here who have been waiting three plus hours this evening. I would ask as a point of personal privilege, Madam Chair, if the organization's comments could be paired with my own individual comments, and I would go to the end of the line to allow others who have been here tonight to speak first. >> Thank you so much, Brian. I appreciate it. >> You're welcome. >> Next up, we've got Tiffany. Thank you. I know I called you Tiffany the other day. I didn't pronounce your last name. Uh, good evening. My name is Tiffany Angler and we have um our families at Ephesus. I'm the PTA president. Um we are the squeaky wheel in your inbox right now and I appreciate all of your time. Um I've also worked in this town to
166advance affordable housing here and I organized teacher trainings across the south. Throughout all this, I've learned this truth. When children have fair access to quality public education, communities don't just survive, they strengthen. At Ephesus, we say Ephesus is all of us. That is not a slogan. It is a description of how a school functions when it is doing what it is meant to do. Including Ephesus in closure discussions signals that student access, equity, and growth are secondary concerns. And that message carries consequences far beyond this decision cycle. Ephesus is more than an aging facility. Despite continued deferred maintenance, it delivers critical services and is filled with joy. Last year, it led the district in elementary academic growth. It houses two of the district's three EC preK teachers, serves a significant Title One population, and supports
167one of only a few Head Start programs. 65% or more of our students walk or roll to school, reducing barriers and transportation costs. An EPS will serve neighborhoods with approved affordable housing developments nearby, meaning it is directly tied to the district's future enrollment. It is also one of few existing campuses with land positioned for growth and absorbing displaced communities. That is what Ephesus is all of us looks like in practice. It's access, stability, and growth that's working together. I am encouraged by the superintendent's long-term vision for a strong, sustainable CHCCS. Reimagining our district is not something that we fear, but vision without process undermines the trust this district is asking of families and staff to extend. How you define a school in this process will determine not just which buildings remain open but which communities
168are seen, protected, and worth planning for. Ephesus can be for all of us. Thank you. Next up is Amanda. This is STEM. Thank you. Good evening. Um, I'm Amanda Stem. I'm a parent at Ephesus Elementary School and I'm uh the advocacy chair at on the PTA at Ephesus. And I was planning something different, but I changed my mind and I want to just ex but I still want to exercise my right to make a comment and say this was really challenging. This was really hard. Um, thank you so much and I want to thank all of Ephesus for showing up. This is um, really meaningful and all the other schools here that like, you know, we just want this to be done right and the transparency and we appreciate, you know, I think we appreciate
169just the acknowledgement that information has changed, perspective on the information has changed and thank you so much. Thank you, Melissa. >> Thank you. Thank you, Tamara. Good evening. Uh, my name is Melissa Maris. I'm here tonight on behalf of previous Ephesus PTA presidents to tell you what sets Ephesus apart as much more than an elementary school. Ephesus is a place where children are known where parents volunteer because they know they belong and where teachers don't just educate, they invest. The culture here is not accidental. Ephesus is a walkable school where teacher families are neighbors with student families. Where grandparents volunteer to plant flowers on school beautifification day, where Larry the crossing guard is a local hero, and where members of a neighborhood lift serve dug deep into their pockets to feed Ephesus families when SNAP
170benefits were suspended this fall. There is a social foundation upon which this school is built. This community support is a unique feature of our neighborhood school and it empowers Ephesus to routinely surpass academic standards. It's what keeps staff at Ephesus for decades of service. It's what makes our students proud to call themselves road runners. When young families move to our state, they are drawn to Chapel Hill for its excellent public education. and families who really do their research often choose to live in the Ephesus neighborhoods of Brier Cliff and Ridgewood. This is a place where people continue to invest in public education generation after generation because they see the value it holds for their families. It's not just our staff who go above and beyond to bring out the best in our children. The way
171that people show up for this school is deeply ingrained in our walkable community. It's a whole ecosystem grounded in the day-to-day lives of the neighborhood. Ephesus is not just a school. It's the heart of a beloved community. Once a school like Ephesus is gone, what's lost cannot be measured on a spreadsheet. Thank you for your consideration and for your continued service to our district. This letter is signed by Tiffany Angler, myself, Irene Scaronic, Laura Owen, Elizabeth Portoy, and Boyit Bell. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and the board for everyone's clear thought and investment in this discussion tonight. My name is Dr. Britney Davidson, and I'm speaking on behalf of the Ephesus Elementary School improvement team. Um, I've amended my comments because lots of things have been brought up, but I want to echo that we really
172do recognize the district's enrollment and budget pressures and appreciate the challenge that everyone in this room is facing tonight. We ask several things of you. is that please publish the closure criteria and waiting before any recommendation is made and providing scenario by scenario due diligence that includes an allcost financial analysis that does not include that does not only include facility savings but also transportation impacts, transition and redistricting costs, staffing impacts and the ongoing cost of maintaining an inactive building and also an equity impact analysis with mitigation strategies again before any recommendation comes out. Ephesus Elementary deser deserves careful consideration because the evidence shows that it is a school that is working well especially for the often marginalized students who most benefit from stability and strong relationships. Our teacher working conditions data are stronger than district
173and state averages. Students report higher levels of school connectedness and climate than district and national standards. And academically, as mentioned before, Ephesus is the highest end of uh end of grade growth among CHCCS elementary schools last year and met or exceeded growth targets across student groups. That includes students with disabilities, multilingual learners, economically disadvantaged students, and all racial and ethnic groups. Those outcomes reflect years of intentional effort by a cohesive group of teachers and specialists and support staff who partner with families who are clearly very deeply engaged. And for a title one school serving a naturally diverse neighborhood, that connectedness is not incidental. It is a key driver of progress. Ephesus is uniquely walkable. Again, as mentioned, twothirds of our students live in the walk zone, myself included. Closing Ephesus would split a successful community
174across multiple schools, increasing longer distance busing, adding traffic and transportation costs, while disrupting the very community-based conditions that have produced all of these strong results. Thank you for your consideration tonight. flowers. I know I'm not Eric. I'm Mallerie Turner. Um, and my interest in the school closure issue stems from my roles as a mother, a realtor, and a PhD in maternal and child health. My husband and I moved to the Ridgefield neighborhood adjacent to Ephesus when I was pregnant with my daughter, who's now 18 months old. My husband grew up in this neighborhood, walking and biking to Ephesus Elementary with his three sisters, an experience that we wanted for our daughter as well. My daughter is not yet a roadrunner, but currently attends a daycare in the neighborhood. And each day that I walk her
175there, we chat with neighbors who have become our supportive community. My daughter and I also bond together, talking about each dog and squirrel that we pass. Our experience bonding with our community and with each other in this way is reflective of so many children in our neighborhood, past and present, who have had this opportunity. I ask that the board consider the many benefits of walkable schools in making their decision. As a realtor and advocate for affordable housing, I recognize that housing around the Ephesus community is among the most affordable in Chapel Hill with recent home sales in that area $165,000 below the median Chapel Hill price. Ephesus is also near the highest density of affordable housing units in Chapel Hill with more in development. I ask that the board consider where young lower resourced families
176can afford to move and the disperate value of proximity to school for these families when making their decision. As a PhD in maternal and child health, I studied the long-term social, cognitive, and health benefits of prek, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Ephesus has the highest number of NC preK and Head Start classrooms in the district and is a title one school providing continuity of support for children attending these programs. You may argue that you can simply move these programs to a different school and while that is true, you cannot move the community. The walkable Ephesus community organically brings together children from wide-ranging socioeconomic back backgrounds both inside and outside of the school. I asked that the board consider the equity impacts of closing a school with critical programming for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Thank
177you so much. I know this is a hard decision. I appreciate your time. >> Hi. Um I am the mom of a kindergartener at Ephesus that is not in the walk zone. We are not in the walk zone. We don't experience that benefit except that we do from the community it creates. It makes such a big difference and I know that that community matters in a way that the Wal study maybe didn't show. I think you guys are doing such a good job. This is so hard even listening. I changed my mind like six times about everything. But I think for me and so many other people to feel good about it, we do need to feel like I voted on that bond and I didn't know exactly what I was voting for. And I
178want to have all the information to be like this is the best thing long term holistically for literally everybody, not just me and not just our community. And I'm willing to accept that if we look at everything, including the other schools that were discussed previously. And I'm sorry that I'm asking you to do that again. Um, but I hope that can so that I just know that this was the best thing and the only option. Hi, I'm Danielle Rafetto. I'm a first grade teacher at Ephesus. Um, thanks. I'm really tired. I don't want to I am a great teacher, but I don't know that I'll do my best tomorrow. Um, we are we've heard a lot. Thank you all so much. Um, as was said, this is hard and I too have gone back and
179forth with changing my mind and what what I think is great and not great. And um, I guess I don't need to touch on a lot of the things that others are saying or going to say. Um, I think most importantly, I recognize that all of our schools in our district have communities and all of them are important. All of them are valuable and they all have highly qualified teachers. um they all have students with needs, with various needs. Um I want to make sure that decisions are made transparently and that we know that all of the information that went in the the bond um going to what I understood as the three schools in worst condition and maybe I'm wrong, you know, I I don't know those details. Um and if they were, why
180would we spend the money to fix those? And so I'm sure there's a lot of information I'm missing. Um but I think we deserve to have that and and full um discussion of it. Um I have in my hand a racial equity impact assessment card that teachers in this district are expected to use and stakehold um school improvement teams when making decisions. And I hope that you have it available. I hope that the board, the um administration in our district has it available because which racial and ethnic groups might be most affected by the changes we're going to make. Those are some of the questions. Examine the cause. Um and maybe you do use these, but I know if it's important for us, um it's important for you all. And um on a personal note,
181I have to truly admit that I don't want what's best for the budget. I want what's best for our students, my students, the district students. Um I do want what's also that's just my primary drive. Um budget too, but that's not why I'm here. Um and taking a little bit more time might, you know, I don't know how I feel about that. Um I also bought my first home as an adult single woman, okay, in the district in affordable housing. So I see how that works and benefits us all. Thanks. Sorry. Thank you very um hi guys. I'm Sarah McDaniel. I am a 28-year resident of and a 23y year homeowner in the Chapel Hill Schools District. I'm also currently a parent of students at Ephesus and Phillips Middle. Um, I have followed your decision-making
182over many years. I have been a very involved citizen and parent. I love this community so much and I'm probably going to cry. Um, but it is really important to me that you realize that when that school bond was approved that I really wanted it because I love our schools. There was no talk publicly about imminent school closures. The only decision at that time that the school board communicated was that ESD's FPG and Carro were going to be targeted for renovations and we were thrilled about that and I believe that you know the need to close two schools like this is a big deal but it changes the calculus for all of this. It's it's it's why we need to look at all five again. Equity is one of our school district's most important shared
183values. Ephesus has had tremendous success with its model. The students that it supports grow more than at any other school in ele elementary school in the district. They take care of every type of student from those in the most need to those who are thriving every day. They do it better in my opinion than anyone else. They have shown us the way. They have the leadership, staff, and capacity today to take on all of the challenges that we've talked about today. and they need to keep keep doing it. >> Thank you so much Sarah. >> Hi, I'm Pam Shiers, teacher at Ephesus. Um, also former parent from Ephesus, parent in the district. Um, I have been asked to read just a few notes from fifth grade students from our school. I will keep them very
184brief. Um, one student said, "Our school should definitely stay open because it is basically the heart of our whole neighborhood. It's where we grew up together." And for a lot of us, the teachers are like our second family who actually know our names and how we learn. And I'll sort of summarize with losing our school would feel like losing our home away from home. And that's just not fair to the kids who are still growing up here. Um, another one, I think our school should stay open because it's where everyone is welcome. It's safe. It's fun. And a memory I if I ever could have a chance to bring someone here, I would really want to come back when I'm in middle school and never forget it. of the teachers, specials, assemblies. Um, and then
185if I had another sibling, I'd like to see them grow up here and do many programs like Odyssey the Mind or YMCA after school. And I'd walk them to the bus and wait for them at their stops and other stuff. IDK, I'd like to take my kid there cuz it's going to be going on forever. My dad's, my uncles, my sister went here and I'd like my kid to go here just to have him have fun. And that's why the school should stay open. Um, Ephesus is home to a lot of people for over 50 years. Children of parents who went the generation before. It's a home for all types of people, welcoming them all. There are activities, sports, festivals to enjoy at any time. Ephesus is meant to be a safe place for all.
186Teachers have been students at Ephesus before becoming teachers, so they wouldn't have to leave the beauty of the school. Ephesus is a heartwarming place, and many students, teachers, and even parents would agree. Please keep Ephesus open. Hi, my name is Sarah Snder. I'm a mom of four. Therefore, I did my demographic duty to provide kindergarteners to you. Um, I grew up in Charlotte. I was bust across the city of Charlotte to go to a school where I was in the 10% white um population. I was minority. Um, I believe in diversity hardcore. My middle school was actually diverse. my high school was not um when I we lived in Lake Forest. Um I love the proximity to things, but I didn't like letting my I couldn't let my kids free range because the roads are
187too narrow. It's too ravenous. So when it was time for my firstborn to attend kindergarten, I toured five schools because my mom is an early ed um board certified master's degree teacher and I'm a ped nurse, so I care about childhood development. I did all my due diligence. My son got a spot at FPG. We toured it. I toured Creekide. I toured Ephesus. I toured Voyager because he got it into Voyager. And we based our home purchase on the amazing culture at Ephesus. The incredible culture at Ephesus. It is a diamond in the rough. It is so worth it. I have not regretted that. I have one that's graduated and is at Phillips in that disaster of traffic. Um, I have a three-year-old that's to start in 2728. And what I want to say to
188you is I really want you to look at the Ephesus slide deck that was put together by a bunch of parents that has a lot of the data that you're looking for that they have pulled and they have cited. And then the other thing I want to say is that you don't have enough money to build three schools. You don't have enough money to build FPG programs can move. communities. People bought their homes to be to go to that school. We bought our homes because we realized the amazing culture at Ephesus. It's diverse. It's got great ratios. There's great learning as you can see. Move the programs. You can't rebuild FPG. You can move the program. You're going to have swing schools because you're going to close two schools. So, building on site is not
189even going to be an issue anymore because you're going to close two schools. So you're gonna have two schools open to swing those kids. So you got to re-evaluate everything there. You don't have enough money to build FPG. >> Hi, thank you for taking the time to let us all speak and for listening and for making these difficult decisions that I do not envy. Um, my name is Sarah Roberts. I'm a I'm a parent of two children who have been at Ephesus Elementary from kindergarten and will finish fifth grade. Um, I'm this is a very personal story, so I know it's not it's not based in data and it's not based in finances, but perhaps some of it can be translated that way, but I just wanted to share it because it's it's from just
190a personal perspective. Um, our oldest is now in middle school at Phillips and our youngest is in fourth grade at Ephesus Elementary. Having been raised in Raleigh myself, I attended Wake County Public Schools from kindergarten through high school. My mother spent her entire career as a dedicated educator and leader for Wake County Public School System. This is all to say I have an entrenched belief in the power of public education. So, when my husband and I had children, we knew we would be devoted to supporting public education for them. As new parents, we were living in California and as our oldest reached preschool age, we were looking to move somewhere with a strong public school system. We chose to return to our home state and chose the town of Chapel Hill for that reason. When
191looking at neighborhoods we could plant our roots in for our family, we landed in a neighborhood within walking distance of Ephesus Elementary. And what has come from the experience of living in this area and being a part of the ethsist community has given us more than what could be put in numbers or data points. The adage, "It takes a village to raise a child," never rang as true to me as it did when my children started elementary school. The challenges we faced when we discovered our son was neurodeivergent, presented new complexities that required classroom support and communication with teachers and staff for his entire K through five years. At Ephesus, each and every educator, staff, and administrator met us where we were, provided mutual support, and most importantly met our son where he was. Hi
192there. Thank you guys so much for your time. Um, my name is Jackie Bangma and I am here to today to represent the parents of the future Ephesus Elementary Road Runners. Um, we submitted a letter today with over um 50 family signatures representing over 84 future students. Um, so I want to take a few minutes of your time to highlight several key points we detailed in our letter. Uh, many of us moved here specifically for the neighborhood. Um, myself included. EPIS isn't just a building and it's the most walkable school in the district and the heart of a thriving community. Families gather on sidewalks. Children walk to school together. I don't have a kid in the school and I can see that. Parents build support networks simply by stepping outside their homes. My daughter is
193not yet 8 months old and I have already found a community among the parents in the neighborhood. That's how tight it is. So do I so I do not exaggerate when I say in an era where social disconnection is recognized as one of the gravest threats to health and well-being that this con this everyday connection is invaluable to the parents and students of our community. In addition, Ephesus is a title one school with a head start program. Families who rely on these programs will bear the greatest harm from its closure. As we have heard several times today from other folks, we are deeply concerned about the decisions that disproportionately burden those with the fewest options. And finally, we supported the 2024 school bond thinking that it would protect our schools. We were shocked to learn
194almost a year after the bond was passed that our schools are on the chopping block. So, if members of our community seem upset tonight, it is because of this. We feel we were misled. In short, we feel strongly that closing Ephesus would profoundly and negatively impact our children and our community that is one of a kind. If this board believes that closure is truly necessary, we ask that you consider the district as a whole and thoroughly evaluate all schools identified as candidates for closure. >> Thank you. and >> Hi. Hi. I I'll keep this quick um to not repeat what others have said. U I'm a parent of one hopefully soon two students at SU. And like many others, I wanted to attend tonight to show how strong the SU community is. But being here,
195I I can't help but feel just a deep disappointment that we are all in a position where we feel we must uh do that and feel we must compete with each other. Frankly, I really appreciate the focus tonight on determining an appropriate process for finding the right path. Closing schools is a serious business and we need an equally serious process. And while I appreciate the time pressure, perhaps the most surprising thing I have heard tonight is that you're moving forward with closing schools without a comprehensive plan in place. Not only to get the finances right, but a plan that represents a clear vision for what we want the district to be. Sure, I buy that closing schools is a key piece of fixing the problem, fixing the budget, but it's not really good enough to
196disrupt our schools and communities without the assurance that it's being done as part of a complete plan that you're articulating to us. So that's what I would ask that as you move forward, you develop an actual strategic plan, long-term plan, and communicate that to us. THANKS. >> Good evening, board members and Dr. Tric. My name is Bailey Norman and I have been the librarian at Ephesus Elementary for the past three and a half years. I'm also a member of the school's equity team and I'm here tonight to speak on behalf on its behalf regarding the matter of future planning considerations for elementary schools. The equity team at Ephesus has the express responsibility of identifying and addressing inequalities on an institutional level and ensuring that any proposed actions and decisions we make lend to the advancement
197of racial equity and greater inclusion within our school. In order to facilitate this work, we consistently and effectively utilize the the systematic evidence-based racial equity impact assessment or REIA tool which my uh colleague Daniel Orphetto already pulled out. We implore you, the board and Dr. Trice to share with us whether the REIA framework will be meaningfully used during your decision-making process in order to effectively anticipate and minimize unintended adverse consequences not only to our community's most vulnerable and under reppresented populations but to our community as a whole. The REIA assessment begins by identifying who is most affected by a proposal. You've already heard about our community and who will be affected by this proposal. The REI framework also asks decision makers to consider whether those most affected have been meaningfully engaged. Families who rely on
198walking to school, families navigating housing instability and staff whose jobs and school community are at risk must be authentically involved. And we also must examine our data. And you've also heard that we were the elementary school that grew all students last year. Um, and applying an equity lens also allows us to examine root causes and not just symptoms. It's well known that we are facing a severe housing affordability in Chapel Hill and we also urge the board to consider equity and staffing decisions. Um please look at my email that I sent with contracts contracts from other um districts around the country that have um equitable and transparent um decision-m processes for transfer and reassignment. Thank you for your time and for the responsibility you carry from our equity team. Yeah, we're waiting for a while.
199Uh, I have some uh one letter but with a lot of sides. I can pass you the copies and uh let me see you take the copies. Okay. And uh I know uh this meeting is not talk about uh cancel any programs or like mandary do language magnets whatever but uh after hear a lot of information that's a lot really uh a little bit messy to me. Um so in case something will happen you know always will change something in a year two years we don't know so my opinion is we in the Glenwood elementary school community have followed discussion about possible school closure with a great interest that's that's a few weeks ago and GL Elementary one of the schools was mentioned for possible closure has been the location for the mandatory dual language
200and world word language programs for many years. Our concern whether the Chapel Hill Corral City Schools board chooses to close Lingwood or another school or two of us I don't know is that the mandary do language on one language progress programs continue these language programs have been agreed a set not only to the Chinese community but to the large Chapel Hill Cobra community as a whole. A number of non-Chinese parents have choose chosen going because of the mandate programs and their children are a vital part of these classes as well. Indeed, half or more of students in my two daughters classes are nonies. >> Yeah. >> Okay. You read it. >> No problem. We just want to make sure to continue to be so in the future in our program. >> Thank you so much.
201If you can hang your letters to our clerk. Thank you so much. So board members and Dr. Trice, I am a proud Ephesus parent. I had a whole speech ready to go, but I as I looked up and listened to the positions that you guys have, I feel badly that you have to make any of these decisions. and I come from a finance background so I know how hard these decisions can be. I've been looking and the picture behind you for wellness is of ROI and Ephesus. Ephesus is a school where my where we live. We will probably be redistricted out of the Ephesus school district because of where we live. We are not in the walkable zone. But I feel strongly that my words need to be listened to because Ephesus is such a
202great school. You talk about moving programs, but you're going to move all of the teachers to different schools and you are going to lose the secret sauce that there is at Ephesus. You will lose the Dr. Sherman. You will lose Bailey the librarian. You will lose all of these to other places and they will not be together. We have a 90.2 academic growth in a school that you call bailing. How does that happen? It is not about the building. It is about the people. And I understand that you will have these from SPS Hill, from FPG, from all the other schools and that we are the loudest here and you will have opportunity to talk about others. I thank you for opening this up to five other schools because we will probably go to one
203of those other schools. But I think that it is important that you listen to the community and you listen to the teachers and moving them around is not always the best decision for the students. To conclude, the board's mission is to do what is in the best interest of the children. Relocating 800 students and be being a project manager. Projects do not go on the timelines that they have. So you wanting to close it and be ready for the 27 28 year is impossible on an 800 students. I understand the finances, but you have to think about this methodically. Thank you for your time. Good evening. Thank you board members for this opportunity to speak with you. My name is Rachel Rossi. I'm a parent of a second and fourth grader at Glenwood Elementary's World
204Language Mandarin program. All 394 students at Glennwood get Mandarin. Um I currently serve as the vice president of the PTA. I'm very grateful that the district has offered this world language pathway to my children. I am grateful to the wonderful staff, teachers, and admin who make it all possible. I am also grateful that both programs live under one roof. This offers two great advantages. One, Glenwood's e excellent staff is efficiently used for both programs and dual language students offer peer support to world language students in their Mandarin studies. But the greatest advantage is that it allows my children to learn Mandarin not in isolation, but with real cultural context. It's not just symbols on a page, but the names of fellow students, the teachers greeting Xiao Jang Hao, which means good morning, in the carline,
205the glee waiting for the dumplings at the new year, Lunar New Year event. A true cultural exchange takes place every day at Glenwood. Steam, world language, dual language programs are like three cords that have been braided together. They create a rich tapestry. We believe that Glenwood's thriving ecosystem of multi-layered programming is the future of this district and what can separate it from other districts. We firmly believe that you should look at all five schools because assumptions that were made with that bond no longer exists. We all voted on that bond in the good faith that more schools were going to be considered for step phased out renovations. That has changed. The reality has changed. Many people in this room may not have voted that way, so we need to take that into consideration. Thank you.
206Hi, thank you for listening tonight. I understand it's a very hard decision. Uh my name is Francis Tong. I am Glenwood's PTA treasurer. I'm also a statistician by training. I love having my son at Glenwood. He's a second grader. Um but I also believe in datadriven decision-making. And I'd like to share three statistics that highlight Glenwood's impact on district enrollment. The Glenwood PTA conducted a survey and we heard from 118 current, prospective, and former families. First, the survey indicates that the Glenwood's language programming boosts district enrollment by attracting families to the district and retaining families who might otherwise choose private charter out of district options. Nearly 90% of respondents said Glenwood and its language program influenced their decision to move here. Second, if the program were relocated, 93% said they would consider or definitely move
207to follow it, which shows how strongly enrollment is tied to the program, not just the building. Third, if Glenwood was closed and the program eliminated, only 14% said they'd be willing to enroll at their neighborhood school. The district projects Glenwood as the only school at full capacity in 2035. This data suggests that closing Glenwood and its exceptional program wouldn't redistribute students in the district. It would just lose them. Thank you for listening. Okay, I had to edit this down. I hope it still makes sense. Um, thank you all so very much for serving our school community and doing this very hard work. I'm Kirsten Benma and I have some concerns about the possible closure of Ephesus Elementary, a school that has been part of my life for more than five decades as a student, a
208teacher, and a community member. I understand the larger context. I think um district enrollment has declined and difficult financial decisions are here and they are here now. I supported the recent bond referendum which aimed to rebuild FPG Carro and Estus Hills, but those of us who supported the bond did not know that we were doing this to save some schools over others. We did so because we believe in strong equitable public schools across the district. My concern is now how this process is unfolding and whether there's been sufficient community engagement as schools like Ephesus are seriously considered. I urge the board to take a district-wide approach when considering school closures, one that is grounded in research about which schools can be rebuilt, which require the most significant repairs and when that work is feasible. I
209ask these decisions be made with care, equity, and a long-term perspective. Any school closure is painful, but Ephesus deserves deeper examination. It has a strong staff, solid student outcomes, as you've heard, and remains one of the most walkable schools serving a affordable housing. It has supported families across generations, and closing it would mean losing a deeply rooted community institution. School closures are never just facility decisions. Schools hold the everyday experiences that shape people long after they leave. I was a student at Ephesus from 1975 to 1981 and years later I returned as a teacher spending 29 years teaching multilingual students many of whom lived in our walk zone. When I was there we started the starfish mentor program and one of my starfish students is now a teaching assistant at Epsis and part of the
210TA to teach program. She's extraordinary. She told me she wrote you a letter. Thank you in advance for reading it. Uh, I also have a um I'll just say as you consider school closures, I ask you to look beyond buildings and numbers. Ephesus is a multigenerational community, as I said, with a proven record of serving students and families well. Thank you for my this opportunity to share concerns. >> Hey, good evening. I'm Ash Sherman. I'm the school counselor at Ephesus and I'm here um on behalf of myself and several dozen of my colleagues who also asked me to share this statement tonight. So I want to first start by thanking you all for this. It is late. We are tired. Emotions are high. Like please know that we see you and we see how hard
211this is and how hard you're working for our community. So thank you. Um I also want to thank you for opening up consideration to the remaining bond schools. Even if the decision turns out the same in the end, please know that it goes a long way with our community to be able to feel that this is a comprehensive yet still hopefully timely um decision-making process. So, we really truly do appreciate you. Um and I know that in the coming months, you're going to hear a lot more about our school community at Ephesus. You're going to hear a lot more about our crumbling and sometimes very smelly building, literally. Um, but I also uh wanted to echo some of the things that were shared tonight about our our community because um there is a reason that
212we have such high teacher working conditions data. There is a reason that our students report such high connectedness at school, so much higher than our district and national averages. And there's also a reason why we do have the highest student growth in the district. And not just overall, but for every single demographic, students with disabilities, every single racial and ethnic demographic. And that reason has nothing to do with our crumbling and smelly building. And it has everything to do with the relationships in our community. It's not just all of these amazing people that are here tonight and that couldn't be here tonight. It's not any individual amazing teacher. It's the fact that we have built intentional relationships that have led to continuous improvement over literally decades of work. Um, and so it didn't happen randomly.
213It didn't happen overnight. And even though a school closure hopefully would result in many of my colleagues still having jobs in other amazing schools too, um, those relationships can't be replicated and they can't be recreated quickly either. Um, I'll also finish with echoing the fact that uh, nearly twothirds of our students do live in our walk zone. And not only is it just that we have a large walk zone, but it's that our walk zone hosts some of the most affordable housing in Chapel Hill, as other folks have mentioned, that includes public housing that includes 150 new family units in the upcoming Legion Road development, which is within eyesight of our building. Um, and so not only do I feel that we're an irreplaceable fixture in our community, but um, our closure would be a
214profound loss. Thank you. Hi. Thank you all for doing this tonight. I know it's been a long night. You all are working hard and we appreciate it. I know none of the schools want to be pitted against each other. You're going to hear about why we're all wonderful and why we should all be kept and we understand that there's also data that you need to inform your decision. So, I'm mainly um I didn't actually introduce myself. I'm sorry. Emily Quiter, Grenland, PTA president. I have a fourth grader in the dual language program. Uh I mainly want to ask for you to share the data on what the criteria is for the decisions and for it to be very transparent with all the schools because then we're not being pitted against each other and we're not
215having to say, "Oh, this school has this and this school doesn't have this and these test scores are better than this school." Um so I just would ask that you share that information and be very transparent about it and the criteria. And then also I would like to have the timeline for closure and the decision for closure to be shared because I know that staff at our school has been very impacted by it. And even if positions are going to be safe, they don't know if it's going to be a position available for them, especially when there's the librarians, when it's the social workers, when it's the nurses, when we have one nurse at every school and we have these really fortunate positions and they're coming with questions and they want to know, well, when's
216our job? And as a PTA, there's also funding considerations. If our school is going to be closed, like how are we going to raise money the following year? How are we going to it just there's so much unknown. So just kind of being mindful about that timeline and communicating that to people I think is really important. Lastly, I would say that our enrollment probably is down right now because families, every family that has come for a tour is concerned about the school closure. And so I would like for the district to consider in extending the magnet program enrollment deadline um knowing that people are very concerned about registering for something that might not be there, might not be underneath that roof. They don't want to start and then be gone. Thank you so much. All
217right. Thank you everyone. Um, I will keep it brief. I was taking a lot of notes and I had a prepared speech, but then I just realized you'd read the emails. You have really given a lot of thought. So, I just thought maybe some actionable recommendations might be helpful at this time of the night. So, Superintendent Trace, you've mentioned that maybe the we are not really focusing on the programs as you've heard. There's a lot of programming that parents, families, teachers are really worried about. I wonder if we could separate out the conversation a little bit since we're talking about facilities closing, but if we could talk about the steam program, mandarin immersion programs, other programs that are very important to communities maybe on a different note on a on a different um uh that
218would be really helpful because I know that that is a particular concern for Glenwood. Uh there were examples mentioned from Wake County and Guilford. I think that that would be really helpful to see how they have gone through redistricting as well as um consolidating schools since those are two action items that we are both looking at and those are our neighboring counties um with not similar demographics but obviously they are neighbors. So it'd be good to see that data. Um it's already been mentioned but as you see even the transparent process of understanding what the process is um understanding what is going to go into the criteria I know you can't look at a million data points but you can look at a subset of them and even understanding why some were chosen over others
219I think would be really important uh to the community. I really want to echo um board member um Ronny's suggestion to give it time. I know that there's a timeline. There are budget considerations and I'm not saying give it a year really though a few months I think would be probably not sufficient for a comprehensive study to be done given that I was uh and I know there's budget concerns but if an independent um entity could do the study that would also be valuable as well and also get a better bigger room next time. Thank you. So I'm sorry so late. Okay. So I'm a parent of a first grader at Glenwood. I'm a new family. So here my son chose Glenwood just because of the immersion program and the steam program. So my family
220moved from Boston last summer. So the only reason is because this program before I did the chose the school I did a lot of research Kerry Raleigh Gilford counties Chapel Hill Durm and then finally so I chose here Glenwood Elementary School and then now my husband and I have to drive commute to Greensboro every day for one hour for what just because of this move and then why Glenwood is special. So in the US there are 396 mandarin immersion programs in the United States and then there are 17 mandarin immersion programs in North Carolina and then two in Chole Hillwood and the Philips. So what makes Chole Hill unique special right? Think about our special programs. This is very important how we attract new families moving to Chole Hill. Not Terry not DM. So please
221consider about it. Thank you. Anna Delator, a parent of three, um, one at Glenwood in second grade. Um, first off, I want to say thank you all for your service. Um, I know this is not easy giving to the community. Um, something clearly we all care about very much as well too. So, thank you very much. I just want to point out some data. uh looked at the Woolport report. Um in addition to just looking at which schools were recommended for closure, also looked at the column that showed the 10-year expected maintenance costs of the three that were originally being considered. Glenwood has the lowest of those three. Um older doesn't necessarily equal worse facilities. Um there's lots of older houses that go for millions of dollars in Chapel Hill that are from the 1950s.
222It really is a beautiful campus. Um I was amazed by all the windows when I moved here. I came from Florida. These schools are amazing in comparison. Um, and our school has history. Um, in addition, uh, look at test scores. Not only do we have the highest test scores, some of the highest test scores across the district, but we have the highest test scores across the board. So, we're doing well for not only our most privileged students. We're also doing well for our historically um, less privileged students. Um, those who are economically disadvantaged um, as well as historically racially as well. So, our our school really is succeeding and it's an amazing community and the programs work really well together. And in some ways, it's nice that it's not a neighborhood school that we get
223people from all over the county. We don't know if someone has a $2 million house. We just know that we all care about our school. And I think that that really does create a beautiful population. Um, I'd also like to say I appreciate the speed. I think the sooner we could make a decision, the sooner our committee, our community can accept it and really start to heal because this heart has already started to break our community apart. Um, so thank you very much. >> Good evening members of the board and superintendent Trice. My name is Geette Dent. I'm a faculty member uh in pathology and laboratory medicine at the UNCC School of Medicine. Uh, and I'm here because I have a grandkid who is at Glenwood in the Mandarin program. And I just have to
224tell you, I can't say enough good things about that program. That program, it is part of the future. We know that one in five human beings on Earth is Chinese. We know that China is going to have the largest economy in the world in 10 years or so. And uh you've heard some of the other comments from the from the uh the uh families here. Our kids because of the neuroplasticity of the brain, they have a window of time where they can learn languages and become fluent. And we have to take advantage of that. So I'm here to advocate for Glenwood and for the Mandarin language program. I feel the same way about the Spanish language program. There's not a day that goes by that I don't wish that my Spanish was better. All I
225can do is conjugate verbs. I never did learn how to speak or talk very well. But what can you say? So when you as you consider this, please consider maintaining this program. It is special. It is unique. It is important. It is the future. It is a model for America. So, please consider that. And full disclosure, I do have a biracial grandkid. And for my little grandkid to be able to talk to his Chinese grandma during the break, there's no words for that. So, please, as you consider this, and let me tell you, you you it's a nightmare. I was an administrator for a while and you're making me very happy I'm no longer administrator. Um this what you're doing is very hard and I know you're well-meaning but please these programs the importance of
226these language programs cannot be overstated for the future of our children. It actually makes you smarter to learn foreign languages. So we we got we got to capitalize on that. So thank you all. God bless you. This is hard work. HANG IN THERE. WELL, THANK YOU. THAT WAS A HARD ACT TO FOLLOW. UM, first of all, thank you so much. We recognize you guys are volunteers. Uh, and you're here late, so we appreciate that. Uh, my name is Mark Shen. Uh, my wife Audrey and I moved here uh 12 years ago. Uh, we have a kindergartener, a very precocious uh, little girl, and a fourth grader, our son. So, we're heavily invested uh, in Glenwood and its dual language programs. our niece also. So, we have three family members. Uh, professionally, Audrey runs a a
227nonprofit for kids with autism and I'm a professor at the school of medicine uh working with kids with developmental disabilities. A and I just wanted to make the case that we talked a lot about um cutting costs, but what we haven't talked about is increasing revenue like the other side of this economic problem. A and revenue of course is due is tied to enrollment. Uh and in November, Dr. Trice sent an email sharing really helpful data from the board about these enrollment trends and um that was very helpful and what we're talking about really is an economic issue and financial stability and it's driven by enrollment. So as we know enrollment is down not just because of birth rates are down which is is true but also that like affordability here is becoming harder but
228the and the families who can actually afford to move here there's a trend where they are older and their kids are older so that they're not their children are not metriculating to kindergarten to drive those numbers that we just saw. So it's a subset of people who can afford to live here. They're not having kids who are then entering kindergarten. And this is your data that you shared in November, Dr. Trice. The third part of it is that those who can afford to live here and do have kindergarteners here, they're sending their kids to private schools and their enrollments like business is good for the private schools. So, what the point is is that Glenwood is a value ad for the school district. There's a reason why the Glenwood enrollment has not dipped if you
229noticed and that we're at 95% capacity. So, I appreciate that consideration and thank you for your service. >> Hi folks, I'm Amber May Scott Brown. I'm a parent of two children at Ephesus. I have a child in Head Start and a child in kindergarten. just really want to say thank you to the folks that are um giving your full attention to the community speakers. I think that's highly valued. I have a daughter that has Down syndrome. She's in the Head Start program at at Ephesus. We actually started out in a different school within the district. We sought out Ephesus. We came, we toured Ephesus, spoke with Dr. Sherid who gave us a personal tour of the building. who ensured us that our child get the attention that she needs and the community that she needs.
230My first grader also transitioned over. They are getting better care, better attention, and they are thriving in the Ephesus community and not getting the attention that they got in another school, quote unquote, the best elementary school in this district. We bought our house in the Etheis school district specifically sought this out. So when you say things like it's not personal, it's very personal. And I think you need to look at the people in this room who all showed up here tonight because it is very personal. It was not shared with us that school closures were going to be on the bond. That is not what we voted for. You need to reconsider. You need to be transparent. Thank you. Yeah, Abraham. Can you guys hear me? Okay, short. Members of the board, thank you for
231your service and time. Um, I'm Sarah Abrahams, a Chapel Public School parent, a PTA member, and a graduate of Chapel High School. My family's been invested in this district for over 30 years. And I returned as a parent because of what the system represents. What brings me here tonight is not advocacy, but concerned about process integrity and sequencing before irreversible decisions are made. At the end of the last meeting which I attended, the district appeared to be moving from a facilitiesdriven analysis directly to a narrowed list of three schools. That sequencing is of concern. A facilities assessment developed for capital planning and bond modeling is not in itself a closure study. A closure study results in board defined criteria and scope before analysis begins. The school board statute is intentionally broad. That breath should not
232be used to justify narrowing scope early. It places responsibility on the board to define and apply best practice criteria before options are limited. Before narrowing the list, the board needs two things in place. a board approved specific criteria matrix applied consistently across all schools under discussion and a clear process road map showing how decisions are made and by whom. This is not about slowing things down. It's about aligning first on criteria, process and facts so that any decision is defensible, student centered and protects the integrity of the district. Thank you. I can still bacon. Hello. Um, I'm here to speak on behalf of my passion for Ephesus like many of our community members here tonight. Um, I have my son is a second grader at Ephesus. He's one of the 100 daily walkers, which is
233a data point that our community has generated. And I have two hopefully rising road runners that'll be um 100 and 101. Um I'm also an immediate neighbor to the school. Um and additionally I attended Ephesus as a child um in the 90s. I also went to SU for a couple of years. So I have an appreciation for the the breadth of um amazing education that happens at the district. Um thank you for the thoughtful discussion tonight um and reopening consideration of FPG and Estus in this conversation. It felt disingenuous to not include all five schools as many people have told you very eloquently. Um, schools are not buildings. You know, it's been said a couple of times, it's a building. It's not a building. It doesn't matter how we don't care how shiny the building
234is. We want it to be safe and comfortable and facilitate learning, but it doesn't need to be shiny and have the latest technology for the kids to feel good. The the teachers make the kids feel good. All these teachers that came here tonight after work, you know, for hours and hours with their children, you know, to show you how much we care about the community. It's not just a building. Um, as a parent, I can tell you the school is thriving. My son is thriving because of Ephesus. He has the most incredible teachers, peers, professionals that support him. You've heard all the reasons. And the teachers are happy. This is so important. You just said retention is the new recruitment. That's what that's what we we need here. Retention is the new recruitment. Um, and
235you're going to hear a lot from the FS community in the next, you know, several months about other points. Um, and I also just want to mention that I'm concerned that closure of Ephesus in this, you know, within the walk zone, the very tight community you've heard about would cause a lot of families to leave the public education system, which is something we've talked about. Um, there are many families that have the option to pursue private school and they they they would they would prefer to have a public education for their children. And a lot of ground was lost during co but momentum is strong at Ephesus and closing thriving schools is exactly what will drive more families to choose alternative options. >> Hi, thank you uh for doing all the hard work that you
236are all doing uh without getting paid for it. Um but we really really appreciate that you are all here and um putting so much thought into this. I am a parent of uh my name is Shabarana Purvala. I'm a faculty member at UNCC. My wife is also an educator uh at UNC. We uh have a kindergartener uh at Ephesus Elementary. Um I moved to this country 18 years ago. Um and back before that when I was in India I had a very tight-knit community for 18 years I've moved in the United States to many different states and in 2017 we came back came to Chapel Hill and u found our home in this neighborhood. We had no idea how good FSS was at that time cuz we didn't have kids. Um, fast forward to last
237year's summer, our daughters started, you know, the mom's group, which all the moms are here, you know, they started a group and and started uh getting the kids together. And even through all those years, we probably knew the neighbors on our street and the neighbors on the street parallel to us. But now through this going to school, walking to school every day, we have we know pretty much everybody in the neighborhood or at least a lot more people and the law and the teachers and uh you know the crossing guard in in in this time that I didn't have community for so many years in the past one year finally I felt like I have a community again. Um and that has been phenomenal. Um, so you you you see the community here today showing
238up um and and everybody saying the same thing. It's not the building that makes the school. It's the community that makes the school. And that's the community that showed up. That's the community you need to think about in a time when you know there is so much divisiveness across the country. Um these are the things that we need to preserve. Thank you. I want to start by thanking the board and Dr. Ty for being proactive in order to best serve our students. I moved here from a community where they needed to close schools and they didn't want to and that's part of why we left that community because it put the district in such a financial hole. Um I am a PhD in sociology. Um and I am not here to talk about specific buildings
239or specific programs. I know that this is going to impact every single elementary school student. My child will be going into fifth grade the year this redistricting happens. We don't know if he will go to fifth grade at the school he is zoned for. It is not on the list. But that doesn't make a difference. It puts uncertainty everywhere. But it's okay if it's for a better shared future than everybody losing their teaching assistance because it could impact even more kids if we don't do that. We already drive past a school to get to our zoned elementary school because of the oddities of how our district works. And that's okay because my child gets to attend a vibrant school community that is racially and economically diverse that includes newcomers and um has an EC program.
240He gets to experience this amazing diversity. But I came here really tonight to talk about the criteria that you are going to use for consolidation. And it's not about my kid. I want to strongly urge you to minimize the impact on our most marginalized student populations. I want you to really think about historically underserved neighborhoods. I want you to think about the history of our district and how we can when we do this redistricting and all of these decisions because they all go together not impact those communities. It's not it's about our larger district community. Um, and it's also about maintaining our school staff and helping them find other positions in the district so that we can keep our talent serving our kids. Thank you very much. Good evening everybody. I hope you can hear
241me. I'm sorry I'm not sick. I have really bad asthma right now. Uh thank you all for staying, listening, everybody in this room for coming. Um, I am here as a professor at UNCC, but I'm also here as a environmental anthropologist who studies decision- making, risk mitigation, and most importantly, how communities recover when they do have crisis. Usually, I'm actually in this position talking to people whose school has washed away or burned down or exploded from a volcano. We're not in that situation. we aren't we have the moment to make some choices and it may take a little bit more time. I'm also here because I'm concerned about the very specific data set that you are using for these choices. I'm currently partnering with the town of Chapel Hill and the Chamber of Commerce. Um,
242and I also serve on North Carolina's state committee for disaster preparedness and planning. We are trying to work together to make community and stakeholder specific flood and disaster mitigation planning toolkits. There's a reason that your property taxes are more based on your land than the value of your building. If you go to my website, hayoconell.org, or and go to my lab, you will see some images that I just pulled up. I didn't I didn't know about this, but I pulled up some images and just I looked at some made some quick GIS maps. And the thing is if you don't also consider the geohysical location, the elevation, the proximity to extreme heat to corridors, all of those things, then you're not actually following the mandate of the state or the town because we have to
243be planning for the future, not just mitigating this moment's crisis. And the piece of that that matters most is this is also an opportunity. This is an opportunity for our district to make plans about positive, forwardthinking, act differently, think differently schools. I have a lot of other ideas. >> Okay, so that was everyone who signed up. Oh. Oh, and then Brian. >> Yes. So, Brian, are you okay if we go ahead and open it up to anyone who didn't sign up? Are you fine? >> Okay. I just want to make sure because you said you want to go last. So, thank you. Please state your name. Okay. My name is Dennis Kikiff and I'm a parent of a second grade at Ephesus Elementary and I came here to hear the discussion about the decision to
244be made about which schools to be rebuilt and which will be closed. But apparently at least some members of the board has have already made this decision and my question is how? Because today is February 5th. This document which you distributed specifically says that this board will establish the criteria to be used on February 19th. Thank you. >> Hi, my name is Emily Sternbach Elkins. I would just like to speak briefly. I grew up in this town. I went to all of my schooling in this town as did my husband. I went to Estus Hills. Actually, it doesn't matter. But I just have to speak. This is all of our towns. I don't like it's all of our town. I don't like being that we're pitted against each other. I understand the situation that we're
245in now, but I think it's very valuable for everyone who's in this town 20 years down the road. We know which schools there are the same way 20 years ago what schools were here. That we're all in this kind of we go through this together and we have this list. I really appreciate you considering the list of more schools so we can just get to the bottom of that. And I have to say I came back here. I lived in Denver for eight years and I moved back. That school system was very different, very hard. I worked with tons of school systems in Denver. I I knew my mom had always told me the school system was amazing and I really believe it and I see it and I moved back to have my family
246here. So please consider all the schools. Thank you. All right. I'm so sorry. I know we're all so tired. I didn't sign up to speak because quite honestly, I've had sick kids for the last week. My friend died today and I didn't want to be here and I still showed up because I love our community of Glenwood so much. We talk about equity in our school system. I have three children. I have a fourth grader. I have a first grader and I have a three-year-old that's in preschool that wants to go to Glenwood because his brothers love it so much. Um, my husband and I grew up in Chicago in a really diverse area and when we moved to North Carolina, I said one year and then we're out. And then we fell in love
247and we started to try to decide where we should plant our feet and we looked at Durham initially and um and then we got swayed because people said, "Well, Chapel Hill Carro School system is way better." And there is so much that's wonderful here, but I think that quite honestly, and I don't know if I'm doing this politically correctly or not, but I think that there's a huge amount of racial bias in that and that people are realizing that, which is why more and more people are going to Durham and recognizing the value of their school system. And more and more people are going to Chattam County and recognizing their amazing school system. And I ask you to think about, as Mark did, what is going to bring value to Chapel Hill, Carver City Schools
248moving forward. And part of that is diversity and part of that is equity and how children learn differently. And a variety of programming speaks to different kids needs. And having a program like Glenwood that offers a steam program and offers a language component is drawing people to our school district. And I don't think it's just my family. And I think it is a beautiful thing that even though almost none of us are in the walk zone, we still find community. Our kids still are bonded. Our families get together and do playdates and grandparents come and plant flowers in our garden. and parents come to the school and have lunch with their kids altogether. And what I have not heard in any of this, and maybe I'm missing something, is I have not heard anyone address
249if these special programs that bring communities together are going to exist if we close facilities. >> Thank you. Can I get your name as well? >> I'm so sorry. Megan Siver. >> Thank you, Megan. >> Yes. Thank you. Anyone else? I'm trying to >> Hi, I'm Miriam Bberg. Thank you. Yep. I'm from Ephesus. I just moved here to Chicago. You guys all got my letter that stated my emotional why with what I believe a hard rationale of why I did my research and came to this school. One thing that I just have to point out because as a data person, it's eating me. So you guys are throwing around a number of a research that you did for close to $6 million on Carro School and then you're comparing that same $6 million and now
250I'm shaking. I have to pull up my list. Sorry um for saving a school that's going to be the same amount of money. So basically you're putting up you're going to save $6 million saving a school. That's $6 million that you spent in architectural plans and designs. So, I just don't understand. And I really hope that when the criteria comes back in a few months or in a few weeks, because I know we're pushing to go fast here, how is $6 million of closing a school comparable to the $6 million that you've already sunk into doing research for Carro? It's just not adding up in my head. And I think if you take a second look at the data that so many people here are requesting on all of these schools, we can actually see
251what you're talking about. So, thank you for that consideration. >> Anyone else before Mr. Sterling comes up? Thank Thank you, Brian, for being kind with our community members. >> Happy to do so. >> Thank you. Um, and just to be clear, Madam Chair, I'd like the privilege to be able to speak not only on behalf of the organization, but then to take my uh personal speaking time just to make sure that I can finish this statement. So, thank you. Um, I know, I know. Um, >> four minutes. >> I understand we will be done before four, but I want to make sure that it's here and I'll tell you exactly why. Good evening. My name is Brian Link and I'm the president of the Chapel Hill Carbo Association of Educators. And the statement I'm about
252to deliver tonight was first um developed in our AR meeting in January and asking individuals who represented our elementary schools about what they were facing um and what it is that they wanted to have communicated this evening. It was then um brought before our executive board and discussed further there, including representatives from our elementary uh schools there and then sent to every single member of our union um who is an elementary school member for them to provide feedback. And so in addition to the comments tonight, I will provide any additional thoughts that folks have that they were submitting up until 3 p.m. today. Um, and so I'm here tonight to say the following things. One, the heart of the Chapel Hill Carbo City Schools has always and will always be its people, our amazing students,
253our dedicated colleagues, and thank you. Thank you so much for being here this evening. And our stalwart families who support public education at its very best. Thank you. Um, no matter what happens going forward, we need to remember we the people working together are what makes our schools great. We know the road before us is challenging and we know what the problems are that we need to solve. The question is, what pathway are we going to take? I'm not here to divide folks tonight. I represent everyone in this district. We cannot be divided. We have to work together. So, I'm not here to argue the merits of one school over the other. There are great merits in cases you've heard all around. I'm asking you to consider three things. One, as you've heard tonight, our
254students, staff, and families need clarity and certainty. A school closing is not only a huge undertaking, it is also a traumatic event. The sooner we can prepare our kids and their caregivers, both in schools and at home, of what will transpire, the better off we all psychologically will be. And we know if we do not take action that we are going to face another riff and that simply cannot happen. Our people are at the heart of Chapel Hill Carbo City Schools. Second, as you've heard tonight, the administration board need to make decisions based on data that is clearly communicated to all impacted. Show the work, outline the utilization rates, demonstrate the savings that are expected, and make sure that your decision is transparent. We all need and have to buy into a path forward as
255hard as it might be. And we believe that the heart of CHCCS, its students, families, and staff can do that if the case presented is valid and reliable. Finally, our community needs to see the forest as well as the trees. We need to know where we are going. Not just what we're pivoting from, but what we're pivoting toward so that the trade-offs and opportunity costs can be properly evaluated. And we need to, as Miss Feast the Fornville has said, be ready, if necessary, to save the momentos and histories at sites left behind. That the heart of CCHS has created over decades so that future generations can be reminded about why our mission and our people are so important and will continue to be the lifeblood that sustains the Chapel Hill Car City Schools from one
256generation to the next. We cannot be divided. do right by our people tonight and they will continue to fill our community with excellence and with equity for years to come. Collective action, engagement, social justice demands nothing less. Thank you very much for your time this evening. >> Thank you so much. Excuse me. I do not have the same social capital as Mr. But I would also now like to speak as a parent of children in the district in the elementary school. I have something different to say. >> Excuse me. Hold on. Excuse me. So Mr. Link represents an organization and then he res >> Yes. And so we have organizations the teacher. So we've got our cha our sit and then our student organizations. It doesn't mean like you work for UNCC or things like
257that. But I came for the flood task force of the entire community. >> That that is not what we recognize as one of our recognized groups, unfortunately. >> Thank you for explaining. >> Um I'm deeply concerned that there's been no conversation of what happened next to the middle school or the high schools, the demographics. >> Well, all the people who've been sitting here waiting, these are teachers and they have to get up in the morning. Please just be respectful. Thank you. I'm looking around the room making sure there's no other public comments. Okay, with that we're going to close our public comment for this work session item.