001I would like to call this May Board meeting I call the Montgomery County Board of Education to order. Yeah. I need a motion to adopt the agenda as stated. So moved. Mr. Chairman, second. Second is accepted. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Yes, we'll move on to our devotion and the last couple of months um I've kind of focused on what the theme was in the school. So, this is um National Poetry Month. So, I have a poem and a devotion to go with the poem. This poem is called The Little Seed and it's by Kate Louise Brown. The little seed was planted deep in the soil where roots could creep. It waited, it grew, and when the time was right, it reached up high to the morning light. The little seed starts in the dark
002deep within the earth. It's not seen, it's not recognized, but it's there waiting and growing. Just like that seed, we often face seasons in life where we may feel hidden or unsure. But, God is always at work within us even when we can't see it. In the poem, the seed eventually grows and its purpose is fulfilled as it reaches for the light. This can remind us of our own journey. Sometimes it feels like we are in a waiting period, unsure of what's happening or where we're going. But, just as the seed quietly grows underground, we too are growing in ways that are unseen by others. God is developing our character, our faith, and our trust in him during these times. The light the seed reaches toward is the sun. And in our lives, the light
003is God's love and his guidance. Just as the seed needs the sun to grow, we need God we need God's presence in our lives to grow in faith. Think about your own life and the life of the students in our schools. We know that even in quiet or difficult seasons, we are growing and they are growing. And the scripture tonight is from Galatians 5:22-23. But, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And now we will have our Pledge of Allegiance and we have Dylan Martinez and Maybelline Jimenez. So, they'll come forward. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Next on
004our agenda, we have public comment with no one turning up, we'll move on to recognitions. And our first recognition is a resolution of esteem for Mrs. Ella Ruth McIntosh. As they're coming forward, seems like each month I get to say something about somebody, but um I taught with Ruth for years. Uh when I first went to Troy Elementary in 80-something, um she was there and she was always a mentor to me. Montgomery County Board of Education resolution of esteem for Ella Ruth McIntosh. Whereas our heavenly Father in his infinite love and wisdom saw fit to call home Ella Ruth McIntosh on December 29th, 2024. And whereas her dedication to Montgomery County Schools for 35 years as a teacher were a living testament to her integrity and skill. And whereas her loss will be deeply felt
005not only by those with whom she served, but also throughout the entire community and county. Now, therefore, be it resolved that Montgomery County Board of Education goes on record in expressing a sense of real loss and regret in her passing. That a copy of this resolution be conveyed to her family as an indication of our deep sympathy and that a copy of the same be filed as a part of the permanent minutes of the Board of Education. Um now, our next resolution of esteem is for Mr. Richard Junior Sheffield. If he and his family would like to come forward. Montgomery County Board of Education resolution of esteem for Richard Junior Sheffield. Whereas our heavenly Father in his infinite love and wisdom saw fit to call home Richard Junior Sheffield on December 11th, 2024. And whereas
006his dedication to Montgomery County Schools for 9 years as director of child nutrition were a living testament of his integrity and skill. And whereas his loss will be deeply felt not only by those with whom he served, but also throughout his his entire community and county. Now, therefore, let it be resolved that the Montgomery County Board of Education goes on record in expressing a sense of real loss and regret in his passing. That a copy of this resolution be conveyed to his family as an indication of our deep sympathy and that a copy of the same be filed as a part of the permanent minutes of the Board of Education. Moving on, we have um our recognitions and I'll turn it over to Mr. Holman. Thank you, Ms. Evans. Um we've got our employees of
007the month and this month it is Star Elementary. So, if I can get um Ms. Janet Deaton and Ms. Lisa Wood to come up. Ms. Wood is our certified employee of the month for Star Elementary and I'll ask Ms. Deaton to say something about this young lady. Congratulations. Ms. Wood is hands down the most dedicated educator that I have ever worked with. When she was leaving Cander to come to Star, Mr. Bledsoe told me, "I might have to take her laptop because she wants to work a lot of late nights." And I have not resorted to that because after 28 years, I've learned to pick my battles. So, I'll go visit her and take her dinner. I do try to try to scare her once in a while. Uh she heads up our PLC's meetings,
008constantly coming up with fun and engaging things to help our teachers grow. She heads our MTSS team, so our students are getting interventions to help close those gaps. Um hands down, couldn't do my job without her. She is my right hand. The one thing I could not convince her to do is become a principal. That's where she draws the line. She's not going into administration, but she is uh really integral to our team at Star Elementary and most deserving of this honor. Congratulations. All right, our next person is our classified staff member of the month and that is Ms. Kathy Singleton. Congratulations. Kathy has been recognized a few years ago as our custodian. But, we kind of pushed her to go back to school to get her two-year degree to become a teacher assistant. And
009she was a great custodian, but she is an even better teacher assistant. She's Ms. Carmen Taylor's teacher assistant in a K-1 combo class. We had visitors there last week on campus and they could not tell who the teacher was or who the TA was. Kathy takes our first grade students and she is teaching them reading. She pushes in to another classroom to provide interventions. And above all that, she is constantly keeping me on my toes, making me laugh, um calling for maybe homework help. I think she's even called Mr. Holman to get some math homework help. She is answer. There was no I couldn't help her with math. So, she uh is truly an asset to our school and I'm hoping in about another three or four years, even though she's telling me no, we're
010going to recognize her as being a teacher and employee of the month instead. She's done a great job. Good job. THANK YOU. OUR NEXT RECOGNITION IS MISS Caitlin Jimenez Ruiz. She was our Montgomery County Schools District Spelling Bee winner. Our District Spelling Bee is a regional qualifier. Congratulations. And she actually went to Bank of America State Stadium on March 9th and competed at the regional competition there. But she is a great representation of our school system and we appreciate you doing that for us. Congratulations. All right, so we have three other recognitions. So we have our 2025 North Carolina Governor's School recipients. We actually had three accepted this year. So if I can get Hillary Jimenez Perez to come up. She was selected to go into the mathematics discipline. Congratulations. Next we had Eleisha Britton.
011She was accepted into the English discipline. And then last we had Miss Isla Seawells. So And she was selected for the natural science discipline. Congratulations Leslie. Thank you all so much. Next we have our consent agenda and I'll make a motion to accept it. Thank you Dwight. Second the motion. You know, I'm sad to see you only get to see them once. And next we will have our ask Miss Jan Bynum to come forward with our board with competitive students and their inspiring presentation. Thank you for giving us an opportunity to share a little bit about our school. Before I do that I know you're all probably going to play some prank on people, so I want to start this off with a compliment. You all know we had a death at our school which
012was you know not easy, but I wanted to brag on our leadership team because they showed up. Not one or two of them, all of them showed up. Wayne, Emily, Jack, Joanna, Ellen everybody. Dr. Shaw, and not just the day after, but the whole week after. They checked on us, made sure we were okay, showed up to the memorial, and it is very comforting to know that we work in such a supportive district. So thank you all. I hope you have a good new year. All right, let's get down to business. If I talk too fast, let me know because I am a fast talker. At Star Elementary we are student driven, data focused, and community centered. We are right in the heart of our community and we cherish that and use that to our
013advantage. So looking at our school improvement goals for this year we meet every summer. Lisa and I are going through the data. We're looking at this cohort to cohort and we set the goal for math for this upcoming school year to be at 62% or greater. We finished the last year at 60.5% and reading we finished the year at 52.1%. So our goal is 56% or greater for this upcoming school year. So just some things that we are strong in, strengths and proficiency. Our fourth grade reading, fifth grade reading, we're both well above the state and district average in 23 and in 24. Our third grade math was at or above state and district average in 23 and 24. Fourth grade math was well above state and district average in 23 and 24. And our
014fifth grade science was at or above the district average in 2024. Our kindergarten, first, and second grade students in the year in flash, they all get tested on that. Their pro- scores and their proficiencies were above the different district average in 2024 as well. So they're all things that we are very proud of. Our subgroups, we were really proud of this this year. Our Hispanic students and economically disadvantaged students are performing well above the state average. Our English language learners and students with disabilities are performing at or above the state average. And percent of English learners who make progress, which was at 50%, was twice as high as the state average as well. So strength and climate our school attendance and behavior are better than the district and state average. We work really hard on
015making our school a place where people students want to be and also teachers want to be there as well. We're forever eating there, planning fun events, scavenger hunts, games, doing something to keep teachers happy, but also students happy as well. We have lots of extracurriculars like running club. We just helped hosted a Girls on the Run event Saturday at the school. We have chorus, STEM, lots of things to keep them engaged and happy at Star. So our North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions shows that 100% of our teachers believe we have a safe and positive school climate and our teacher turnover rate is lower than that of the state average. I'm very grateful for that. Last year we had improvements in two of our subgroups. Our Hispanic and economically disadvantaged subgroups grew from these to Cs
016to create all of our subgroups in 23-24 to Cs. So with all that in mind we wanted to look at things what could help us grow, what are maybe areas that we had not addressed with our school improvement team. And so this is where we started at. We knew going into this school year we were going to have a new reading curriculum that we were adopting and that we were going to have new science standards. So that meant planning and aligning and I'm going to let Miss Wood talk a little bit about that. Um and you know, to focus on this I meet with the teachers weekly. We take a look at our standards. We're making sure that we're going over that curriculum. You know, we're not cutting anything out. The curriculum is very rigorous
017for CKLA. We love it. Um thank you Mr. Almond for that. Um I've been eating a little crow. We didn't exactly think we were going to like it, but we we actually love it. We also have weekly PLCs where we share best practices. You know, and there's a lot of collaboration with our teachers. You know, something that they're doing great in their classroom, they're sharing with the other teachers so they can do that as well. Um also we are meeting every quarter PDSA to discuss our curriculum and making sure that our standards are in line and we're across the county making sure that standards are being taught with fidelity. So there's some work samples of some of the CKLA work that our students have done. And as a former history teacher, it just makes my
018heart happy to go through those classrooms. Today I was in the rooms and second grade studying the Civil War. Fourth grade studying the American Revolution. Fifth grade just finished reading a play I read as a senior with Jerry Thompson, A Midsummer's Night's Dream, and they were getting it. As you can see here they've done lots of hands-on projects. Just great work samples. All of this background knowledge, because it is heavy on science and social studies, there's no way that their reading scores cannot go up because it's going to absolutely improve their comprehension. And also the writing is so rich in writing which we have not had a lot of in the past. Um so I mean just look at these. Lots of graphic organizers. So our next area that we wanted to work on was
019transitions. We always done this for pre-K to kindergarten and fifth grade to middle school, but we had not addressed it holistically. We do meet at the end of the year. Lisa leads that PLC so the teachers can have conversations and our teachers put the kids so like kindergarten will put first graders in groups and they'll do that based on the strengths of the students and what they need and they'll have those conversations, but this year we wanted to do it whole school. So we have a meet my teacher day scheduled for May the 13th where all of the students will go up and meet who their teacher will be for the next year so they can go ahead and start building those relationships. The parents are not going to have to wait until the summer
020time for that postcard they're always so anxious about getting. They already know going in. They'll know what their supplies and things their students will need for that following school year. It's just going to build communication with the community throughout our building. And build positive relationships between those kids and help you know with anxiety. And if kids are going to be anxious you know, so We have a couple of kids who always dread the next school year because they don't want to leave their teachers to work. But that ease some of that. Our next focus for our school improvement team was that all of our teachers would be attentive to our students' emotional states and guide their helping learn to manage their emotions. I think that is a life skill that will carry them. I put
021some research in here for you because it does affect their academics. If they're having an emotional meltdown and they're having a full out of the classroom, they're missing instruction in that room and it is a skill that you have to learn how to manage your emotions and our guidance counselor provides zones of regulations. They can go in and they'll tell you if they're angry, they're kind of in a red zone, if they're in a good mood, they might be in a green zone. They can identify that and what that feels like physically in their body. Our teachers will go in and they'll do morning check-ins. We got cool down corners. They might They may have fidgets and little comfy things to sit on in the room. If they get to the point where they're starting
022to have a meltdown and they want to cut that off. Um we as a PBIS committee, we will analyze our data to see are there trends or patterns like all these kids are struggling with transitions, what can we do to make that easier for them? Uh there may be some kids whose hands we need to hold during transitions. It keeps them you know, even keel with their emotions, but we're always working to create a positive, rigorous climate at our school. So again, everybody wants to stay there and and it has been successful. We've seen a reduction in our discipline referrals this year. I also had a PLC with the teachers um based on coping skill mechanisms and I gave them a plethora of ideas that they can use for themselves and for their students. Um
023and so they're using those in the classrooms. That was really enlightening. This was one of our initiative initiatives that we started this year. We noticed in our data our students that frequently were not showing growth was because they were out a lot and at the elementary level, a lot of times that is a parent issue. Um and so we wanted to create some incentives and this was our guidance counselor, Ms. Douglas's. This is kind of her baby. I was like, we're trying to work out having kids that are out a lot, what can we do? And so she created uh we call it the show up challenge. You see some pictures here at Christmas where those students were selected. The criteria in place was you couldn't have any write-ups and less than six unexcused unexcused
024absences for the first half of the year cuz we'll do it twice. We'll have another group of students we'll be recognized at the end of the school year. And if you had three or more, you needed to have a doctor's note. We partnered with the Star United Methodist Church. They were like, "Hey, we want to write a write a grant, what can we help you with?" I was like, "This is perfect. It helps our attendance. It's going to help our academics." And so that we wrote the grant and Ms. Douglas headed all this up. Every one of those children received a personalized Stanley cup, a t-shirt, a beanie, Rubik's cube, fidgets, uh certificates. They got recognized at an assembly and uh announced over the intercom as well. So we'll know at the end of the
025year it's paying off, but we are going to get to recognize another group of students at the end of the school year. They were very excited about all that stuff, especially that Stanley cup. Um again, looking at our attendance, this was a little project I took on this past summer. I created attendance boards that are outside all of our classrooms and every day the teachers mark down and you can see here where they've been marking attendance. If the class gets 100% perfect attendance, you know, the teachers celebrate that. The whole class will get a Dojo point. I walk by the rooms, I may see they have perfect attendance and put that in as a Dojo points because the parents see that. "Hey, my kids' class got a Dojo point from Ms. Eaton because they had
026perfect attendance. This must be something that is important." And at the end of the month, our data manager tally's all that up and any class that had 95% or higher attendance can spin an incentive wheel. It's a little digital wheel I created. Easy peasy. And then they get extra recess. They might get a 10-minute longer lunch. They might want popsicles or popcorn or or whatever it is there that wheel lands on, we're going to provide that for them. Uh so they know that it's important. At the end of my announcements, uh I always remind the teachers to go ahead and mark your attendance and I say tell to the students, you got to show up to grow up. You know, we need you to blow up. We want you to grow. Does anybody have any
027questions? Good job, lady. Thank you. We have nice events at our school. Our Battle of the Books team took place second and our running team, our choral production here, Red Ribbon Week, Cross America Week and Red Ribbon Week and our Someone Special Dance, just some special moments that make our school a nice place to be. That's great. Thank you. I appreciate it. Um to Dr. Shaw's 100% on the um policy announcements from the North Carolina School Boards Association. Um good evening, board. Tonight I would like to share that the North Carolina School Boards Association released a policy memo that encouraged school districts to review all of their local policies and determine whether their policies, regulations, or processes need to be modified in light of the recent guidance from the US Department of Ed's Office of
028Civil Rights. The North Carolina School Boards Association memo also identified the specific policies that the NCSBA policy manual recommended for review. These recommended reviews were divided into two sections. Ones were policies that uh reference the term diversity and or equity and the other reference policies that we uh refer to gender identity. In summary, this memo is for information purposes only and no action is required at this time. Currently, there are no specific concerns that any of our policies violate the current law, but it is suggested that districts review and be aware of race and gender-related policies. So in your packet, I've enclosed all of the identified policies um for you to familiarize yourself with um with all of ours that reference either race and or gender and or diversity and or equity. So again, no
029action is needed. It was just suggested that the uh board be aware of all of our current policies that include any of those terms um in light of everything that's been um passed through the Department of Ed. Lots of good reading there. I appreciate you highlighting that. And Max and I have went over everything with a fine-tooth comb and uh we are a member of of a division of the School Boards Association that uh focuses on policy and so anytime a policy change is needed to keep us in compliance, they send it to us and they have not done anything other than send us that memo. Thank you. Next, we'll move down to uh Mr. Owens to present Uh thank you, Ms. Evans. Um tonight I just wanted to discuss some of the recent legislative
030developments and the impacts that they could have on our district. Uh there are multiple bills being submitted during this long session. They've been in session for 8 weeks and not all of these are associated with the school system, but there have already been 760 bills submitted by the Senate alone. I I don't even have a number of how many have been submitted by the House. Um but they one bill in particular, uh a significant proposal currently under consideration is uh Senate Bill 754 um titled School Calendar Flexibility, A New Alternative. Um this bill does aim to provide uh our school district with increased flexibility um with the setting of the academic calendar, um but has requirements that make it very difficult to implement. Um and I know we have already uh approved our calendar for
031next year, but if this goes into effect, we're going to have to definitely revisit that. Um Ms. Epps and I both sat through a meeting today with School Boards Association um and some of what I'm going to finish up with was was discussed there, but um the bill has been introduced um by a very influential senator and I'm not going to name that person's name. You just trust me. Just a very powerful individual. So it could very well uh make it into law. Um but the new calendar um law um or bill allows for two options. We can maintain the current calendar law as is where it is the Monday closest to August 26th. That would push testing again back to um the second semester, which we could do the innovative calendar again to shorten
032first semester, lengthen second semester to do testing before. Um and then we have to close uh school by the Friday closest to June 11th. The option that they are giving us in this calendar law is that we can begin the aca- academic year as early as the Monday closest to August 19th, which in the upcoming year would be August 18th. Um but the requirement there is we have to end the Friday before Memorial Day. Um so again, it compacts all of that, um but there are a lot of other requirements in there um and we can kind of flesh that out if it becomes law, but like one of the semesters have to be equal, so that kind of limits the shortening and and lengthening of semesters to make sure that you can get testing
033done um before Christmas, but again, Um so this proposed bill is still focused, like the old calendar law, solely on the interest of business dependent upon summer tourism in the eastern part of the state. It's still not what is what would benefit us. They're only focusing on the eastern seaboard. Um we have already approved and almost our calendar, if this new law is passed, we could face significantly stricter punishment by the state. If a district violates this newly established calendar parameter, the superintendent of public instruction, which is Mo Green, is tasked with investigating districts out of compliance and reporting this to the state board of education. Previous penalties for violation of school calendar law were that the state would withhold the superintendent salary allotment. In some districts, that's not significant, in ours it still is.
034But the new penalties can levy significant monetary and operational impacts to the district. Potential repercussions for non-compliance include withholding the funding allotments for your entire central office staff. Which would be a major blow to any district, not just ours. The general assembly can impact the future governance governance of the district. In the in the meeting that we were in today, they do not know exactly if that means that they have the authority to remove the sitting superintendent or if they have the authority to disband the school board. So we don't really know exactly what that entails, but that's where it's written is is they can impact the governance of the district. And then the bill also permits residents and local business owners to pursue legal action against any non-compliant school board. So as we continue
035to monitor these legislative developments, our priority always remains delivering a high-quality education to our students while adhering to the state mandates and considering community interest. We have already begun preliminary discussions to meet the needs of MCS students aligned with these two options, but we are going to have to continue proactively preparing in case we need to make these potential adjustments. You know, by doing this we can ensure that any necessary changes serve the best interest of our students, and of course we can keep our community informed if we are required to make any changes to our calendar for next school year. The calendar that we approved was going to start two weeks earlier than normal, August 11th. Which would be out of compliance with this, so we could, if we stay with that calendar, they
036could come in and impose those new those three new This hasn't been passed yet. It's a It has some very heavy hitters as the primary sponsors of it. probably passed it. It's probably They probably will pass it. So is it going to be I mean this this week? Is that even worth it for a week? No, we can't take that chance. Um We have we will we will present something to you guys. was a week, right? Well, you know, he's talking about here. Yeah, I'm not talking about you know, over you know, flying in the face of the law. I'm just saying But if we go that route, you have to have the even semesters. Yes. So so we again, we've started preliminary discussions. It's possible. Are the teachers going to like it? I will
037go ahead and tell you the answer's going to be no. But it is possible. And if it comes into, you know, if it if it does become law, we will bring an option, we will have to reconvene the calendar committee just to have those conversations with those representatives of the school. We will not have a huge turnaround time because we will have to act cuz we do not know when this is going to go into effect. There was some speculation in the meeting today that this could be lumped into the budget, and so it could be like a midnight, you know, before school starts kind of thing, and this is proposed to go into effect 25-26 school year. So we don't know when it's going to pass, but if it does, they could levy these
038more strict penalties against us. But again, we can make it work. I'm just going to go ahead and be perfectly up front with you guys that the teachers are not going to like it because we may have to take the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We may have to take December 22nd and make it a testing day. We we've bounced some ideas around. I'm not saying that that will happen. I'm just saying it's going to be very tight, and there one of the things that came up in the meeting that we've already kind of realized is there is not going to be very much room at all for teacher work days inside, so there's going to be long stretches of like there was one stretch we were looking at today, it's going to be like 7 and
0391/2 weeks before a break within the calendar for teachers to have a work day or something. And in in in you know, in context of of teaching kids, that is a long stretch without some form of a break in there. Well, the legislators think they can take 10 days at the beginning and 10 days at the end call it a work day. I mean, that's just how far removed they are from this. Let's add 10 or 15 minutes to the day so you can get your 180 whatever. You know, like they're just so far removed. One thing they did encourage, and it's not something we probably can say, but I'll say it, is to reach out kindly to your representatives and just let them know what that means for our county. I think that that
040is just they one of the things they are going to try to bill is going to try to see if they can put it off for a year. That was another thing they talked about. But we don't know if that would happen. So We just need to make the parents know this thing's probably going to change. Well, that was the main reason for me bringing it up tonight, so now it is publicly known that this is out there. Can we put it on our website? I mean, it's it's out there on the it's out there on the legislator website right now. It's not our fault. Well, we did caveat the calendar that was passed. We did. Yeah, we said, "Hey." And that was before we knew of this. I mean, that was just Yeah, well,
041we're we Yeah, Shawn and I have already kind of come to that realization. We're going to have to go ahead and have those preliminary conversations. When they say go? Yeah, we we've got something kind of framed up already to present to them. We did that this morning. What about the bill for prohibiting cell phones? So that has changed slightly. Um that has now not it has become more lenient. Um so now it is stated in there that they do not want students to have cellular devices, but if a teacher sees value and wants to use it, then they can use it. So they've already removed the teacher from that, but They the problem is is they have lumped all electronics into one bill, so it could include your computer. You know, and all of our
042students use their computers cuz we don't have the books digitally. When did you build that in the what were you originally? Well, and and we listened some of us were on a Zoom spring law conference on Thursday and Friday mornings. And Thursday morning, they talked about cell phones. That bill specifically. And they we listened to the principal at Ashville High School and what they have done. So I'd be glad to in Anybody else that was on that webinar, we can share what they did because it's seems to be working in Ashville. Well, four parents complained. That was it. It's also working in Chilton County what they've done. Right. So we'll share what they what the Ashville what they've done. They have a similar situation as far as students moving from campus to campus. So we
043can talk about that, but they have done something. But I mean, there are there are a lot of bills out right now. And some of them apply to education. Like there's one out there right now where they're going to do away with block scheduling in the high school level. And that could have a major impact on how we operate our high schools. I don't know if that's going to gain traction. I asked that question in the meeting today, and they said that they haven't really heard anything about that one in a while. There's another bill that's out there that somebody has, you know, submitted that would basically reshape mathematics at the secondary level. Will it gain traction? I don't know. Like I said, they have submitted 760 Senate bills in 8 weeks, and I want
044to say that I heard that we're 1,100 on the house side. I don't know that to be factual, but if any of those bills gain traction, we just need to make sure that we're paying attention if it applies to the school system. There's one about American flags, about one being in all the classrooms, the pledge being said being said 1 hour into the day. Like you can't have it 1 hour and 30 minutes after your second hour. You know, like it's just they're they're very micromanaged. That's I wish they would allow us to do that. But unfortunately, that's not the case. That's all I've got. Any other comments? I motion to go into closed session. Yes. Mr. Davis, I motion to go into closed session. Second Mr. Floyd. Ready? I'll make a motion that we
045adjourn. Do we have a second? I'll make a second to that. Second. Mr. Davis, Mr. S second, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Meeting adjourned. Get your stuff.