Moore County School Board Regular Business Meeting - 7-12-21 - Part 2

001have faced personal hardships and at times have felt like you were not measuring up to the standards you have set for yourself please believe that you are doing enough doing enough does not mean that you are perfect it means you are doing the best you can with the resources that you have remember that we are all in this together we appreciate you and will continue to provide support to you and your children carry with you into this upcoming school year that you inspire you are enough and you are definitely not alone thank you thank you but ask that you join me now in a moment of silence thank you at this time i'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved mentioned by mr levy second second by mr holmes all those in

002favor all right motion carries 6-0 i will now move on to the public address to the board which i gather is the reason quite a few of you are here uh normally this is handled by vice chair thompson but in her absence i'm going to begin the the process because we have so many speakers tonight and at this time we have 57 people signed up to speak either in person or by phone i'll ask i'm going to go ahead and call out the first five names and would ask that you be ready to speak such that we can minimize the amount of time that it takes between our speakers each speaker is limited to three minutes per speaker and we ask that that you abide by that the clock will be set such that you

003can see the the timer countdown if you've spoken to the board numerous times and feel like your voice has been heard and you choose to withdraw from your list on the on your name on the list we'll understand that as well but we do want to hear you all and hope that you will bear with us for the next four hours because that's the predicted time it will take our first five speakers arianny degar bethan pratt margus sweet sweers okay russ van sant and peggy smetana and if you guys can just say your name when you come up to the podium so we don't forget you good evening board members my name is ariadne degar please don't forget me i have spoken with you a couple of times tonight we'll make a few and next

004time we'll make several um i feel that i've been heard but i don't know that i've been listened to i would like to start by saying that immediately following the last board meeting anyone who happens to receive the publication i was quoted in the republican newsletter as saying something that agreed with the standpoint that they were conveying and i would just like to say while i was not misquoted i was misrepresented um it was taken out of context so i would just like to let you know that should you be looking at that i'm here to talk about southern pines land and housing trust and west southern pines for the third time you've all heard how much it means to me and my family numerous other families i watched a movie last night in the

005heights i'm sure many of you have seen it it was written by a childhood friend and the music was great and the dancing was great but the deeper point was the gentrification is a real thing and whether you sorry whether you think it's because of finances and economics and you don't like the way this part of town looks and you want to take the highest bid so that you can beautify it and build more big beautiful houses you also need to respect the people that help build that town and when you erase a culture it it hurts the american culture as a whole because everyone's culture made up that greater culture we are all americans we are all proud we are all patriots and we all deserve to have our cultures preserved so i understand

006that you may be entertaining higher bids but i need you to understand what taking that higher bid over doing what's right with a bid that's comparable it may not be quite as high as the other but rather than working with the people that you are doing irreparable damage and you may be excited that your property value goes up you may be excited that you have more golf resorts than before but who are you erasing if you look in your past who would you erase and say we'd be better off without them so i beg you to please entertain the land trust offer and to please work with them thank you thank you bethan pratt [Applause] each of you took an oath to uphold federal and state laws you cannot appropriately govern our schools determine if

007policies are constitutional and lawful or ensure that the administration complies with the laws if you yourself are ignorant of these various documents north carolina guarantees that every child has a right to a sound basic education this term is defined in the north carolina supreme court as the sufficient abilities to read write speak english sufficient knowledge of fundamental math physical science geography history basic economics and political science evidence shows that moore county schools do not provide such an education to all students since over 40 percent of the students are not proficient in math reading or english language arts graduation rates are basically meaningless since there's no quantitative measurement of competency for graduation the board's focus must be on spending time and providing teachers the tools and the knowledge to make certain that all students master the

008foundational skills your job according to the north carolina state statute is to provide students with this education every single decision you make should be with that objective in mind but more importantly the litmus test is is what you're doing constitutional i don't know how many of you have actually read the united states constitution and the north carolina constitution but at any like we all have opinions on critical race theory we all have opinions on everything opinions are one thing but we govern by our constitution we are a republic we are not a democracy and so at the end of the day when you listen to everybody's comments you go back to say is it constitutional so some of us tonight are reading parts of the north carolina constitution because i doubt if many of you

009have even read it i am going to start with just the preamble and article one one part we the people of the state of north carolina grateful to almighty god the sovereign ruler of nations for the preservation of the american union and the existence of our civil political and religious liberties we acknowledge our dependence upon him for our continuance and blessings and security thereof for the better government of the state ordained and established this constitution article 1 declaration of rights that there that the great general and essential principles of liberty and free government may be recognized and established and that the relations of this state to the union and the government of the united states and those people may be defined in the firm we do declare the following and tonight throughout the 52 whatever

010people who are presenting you will hear parts of the north carolina constitution related to education and the decisions that you need to make thank you margo pronounce your last name again swears it's okay uh i'm going to read section article 1 section 1 the equality and rights of persons we all hold it to be self-evident that persons are created equal by their creator among those life liberty and the pursuit of happiness america is made up of imperfect people but our nation has embraced good things certainly martin luther king jr's dream not to judge people by the color of their skin which is just an organ but by the contents of their character if this board teaches staff or students to view everything through the context of their skin color that's racism it will destroy his

011dream and progress our co and all the progress that our country has made so we're asking you the board and teachers to do their job hold the superintendent accountable the curriculum standards the social studies curriculum standards are very vague they don't help us understand anything that's being taught the glossary it was even plagiarized in the beginning we need to again provide a sound uh basic education and inserting these uh divisive political propaganda is only going to and and also mandating the students to wearing masks will make very unlawful decisions invite and violate our rights more cranny board need to take immediate action to prohibit any students or others to be taught that one race or one sex is superior that we are made to feel or or students made to feel that they are accountable

012for past ancestors or label them as oppressed or oppressors so failure to do this is not abiding by article one section one section two sovereignty of the people all political people uh it is vested in and derived from the people all political power all government of right originates from the people these amer our american schools are under attack by marxist propaganda we don't want you we've told you we don't want the pr panorama platform we don't want castle professional development we don't want these social studies standards it's going to indoctrinate our schools it's okay open up to controlling them as well so does any school board member here believe that the color of a student's skin really determines their abilities we only have a disparity in our schools when we have one a ranked school

013and 5d school so focus on that or else it's almost a form of child abuse and we're thinking about the poor math grades across the country and we have a literacy problem across our country please think about defunding this critical race theory thank you and take the mask mr van sant sir i might ask that you just leave your poster there at your feet so that you don't block other people thank you mrs havers good to be here with you i'm going to read from the north carolina state constitution section 3 internal government of government of the state the people of this state have the inherent sole and exclusive right of regulating the internal government and police thereof and of altering or abolishing their constitution and form of government whenever it may be necessary to

014their safety and happiness but every such right shall be exercised in pursuance of law and consistently with the constitution of the united states separate item in a paragraph the moore county school board nor the state school board have the authority or power to construct circular content curricular content based on a theory that inherently defies every value and right of americans the verb is used with the new social studies objectives and content in the crosswalk documents exhibits marxist ideology and critical race theory doctrine the local schools school board has complete control over this matter we ask that you establish a policy to ensure that students or staff will not be taught that one race or one sex is superior be taught or made to feel that they are accountable for the past actions of the race

015or sex or be labeled as either oppressed or oppressive by virtue of the race or sex if the board fails to act then you are in direct violation of the north carolina state constitution article 1 section 3. section 4 secession prohibited this state shall never remain a member of the american union north carolina shall always be part of the american union the admissions clause required states to follow the principles of the declaration of independence and the constitution the state board of education is not an elected body and is forbidden to create any policy that violates existing laws or the constitution this board must create a declaration that denounces critical race theory the project or any content that incorporates like doctrine you have complete authority over this matter if the board fails to act then you

016are in direct violation of the north carolina state constitution article 1 section 4. allegiance to the united states every citizen of the state owes paramount allegiance to the constitution and government of the united states and no law or ordinance of the state and contravention or subversion thereof can have any binding force each of us here tonight are privileged because we live in america many men and women say gave their lives for our freedoms we owe paramount allegiance to this republic a new local studies standard and equity training are subversive and fail to provide any educational value mr levy reported to the board that the crosswalk document does not give the primary students the basic building blocks to learn about a republic rather they are learning about current left-leaning people not historical figures every place that

017you turn this becomes a political curriculum that is in opposition to the united states constitution north carolina constitution thank you mr van sant uh miss bantana and if the next five speakers will come forward steve woodward holly frank pauline bruno troy pickens and vanessa marcelli our government was constructed to have those living closest to the citizens to have the most control numerous times some board members comments inferred that the local school board has no authority or power over the matters of our schools but this is false the state school board can our board of election cannot subject local school boards or force the students to be subject to instruction that violates the constitution and established laws the local school board's neat local school board needs to take a stand and take action um we i'd

018like to reassert that that the school board should ensure that our students and staff will not be taught that one race or sex is better than another uh taught or made to feel that they are accountable for past actions of their race or sex and be labeled as either oppressed or oppressive by virtue of their race and sex um and it seems like all citizens have the right to assemble and petition the board for redress of grievances and there was some talk about that it seems like some individuals on the board want to eliminate opposition to their agenda the board and all the employees of moore county schools use our tax dollars we're concerned that moore county school board policy 1315 uh restricts free and restricts free and open access a free and open discussion

019rather with the school board the policy cites this authority this policy a cites that cites its authority for this policy but it ignores the historical premise and statutes requiring the board to be held accountable to the people we request that the school board hold town hall meetings to openly discuss subjects it seems like some board meetings don't want meaningful discussions with the public and i'd like to have the board have dialogue all right um and maybe it would be a better idea instead of having the public comment session before this meeting to have it and before i know you had a work session today um where maybe you already decided what you're going to do but i think it'd be better to have our comments first and then have your open board meeting board no

020your close board meeting or your work sessions afterwards thank you very much mr woodward good evening steve woodward from pinehurst i'm on the clock but i am here to tell all of you that your time is up the time has come to quit pretending that shiny new schools can detract from the reality that public education and american values are under assault as never before the time has come to flatly reject standards for teaching america's history handed down by a state board of education dominated by a vowed marxist led by board appointee james ford the left says we're running out of time to save the planet from climate change but i'm here to tell you that the time is of the essence to save our nation from racial climate change the heat is on to embrace

021crt constant racial tension in the classroom and then there's sel social emotional leveraging of young minds i examined the new so-called standards being rushed into place briefly but long enough to find some landmines capitalism uplifts some people but only at the expense of others ours is a history defined not by resolute freedom but by intolerance xenophobia and disenfranchisement from which there can be no redemption systemic oppression crushed the identities of women immigrants and black americans jesus christ said accept me as savior of the world then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free today many americans cynically ask what is truth these cynics gladly shun the notion of freedom as it if it advances their goal of hijacking the truth there is no truth there is only the narrative consider myriad

022false narratives to enforce mass wearing by children a travesty what does the narrative say systemic racism is the story of the united states of america we are a nation measured by 245 irredeemable years but time has run out on this false narrative our children deserve to know in every fiber of their beings that the american story unfolds in such a way that slavery and racism never were going to survive never had a chance segregation's days were numbered from the start in our land since we have seen so many statues come down let's find room for a new one honoring north carolina's civil rights warrior clarence henderson clarence intuitively knew he would not be held back because his blue-collar father told himself clarence did not need someone to remind him that black lives matter it wasn't

023blm that gave him the will to walk into wolverts in 1960 he just wanted a blt and a pepsi at the lunch counter and from there he went forward to feast at the table of american capitalism and liberty our great american story includes a glorious chapter detailing how our founding fathers who though flawed because they were human formed a nation capable of advancing beyond the social norms of their times a proper education would ingrain this achievement in every student thank you that's right hi i'm holly frank this is my second time to address you all so totally fine if we're not that familiar with you guys or if you're not that familiar with me excuse me but um i wanted to the last time that i spoke before you was the day that you voted

024on mr levy's proposal to ban crt from moore county schools and i just wanted to give you some feedback on what those of you that voted nay on that proposal like what that feedback has come back to look like in society and with the parents so um a lot of the reasons that you gave did not have like substantiation behind them and a lot of them are logical fallacies so i just want you to know that since then what's happening on the playgrounds and when we do like our birthday parties and what all the parents are talking about we're pulling our kids out of the school because we knew that that was the chance to protect more county from critical race theory and the new social studies standards and ms caldwell you mentioned that you

025didn't feel like we needed to have mr levy's thing pass because it wasn't in the schools but we all knew that the state was passing it down and that the department of instruction was going to be training teachers on it like in the next few weeks we all knew that it was coming but you voted nay on it and so now more counties not protected from it and miss carter you gave two logical fallacies in your argument against that you said what are we going to do if we don't include critical race theory are we now not going to listen to like the theory of relativity or the theory of evolution i was shocked to hear you say that because i know that you've put in a lot at pine pinecrest high school and even

026though i'm relatively new to the community and i only have elementary school students i know that you're well liked in the community so i was super shocked to hear that that would be your argument against it that those two things that have standed that have stood the test of time that we would that we would ever compare that to critical race theory which is something brand new and is causing such division it surprised me also when i was telling some girlfriends at work about it and they said that you were the debate coach at pinecrest high school but don't you worry because i took up for you and i said there's no way that she was the debate coach at pinecrest high school and used logical fallacies like that and i would never want to

027call anybody unintelligent especially a fellow female leader but i was shocked that that was your argument and so and mr grimesy the stuff that you say about the reasons that you say no to things like it's like the one-liners that pageant queens give and i'm not trying to be rude to you or disrespectful to you i'm not i'm not at all those girls are trained very well but what i'm saying is like they don't have like they're not powerful they're not reasonable it's not something that you can actually grind your teeth into and that plays out in the real world and mr dennison i really appreciate everything that you bring to the table as well but when one of the other board members told you that he had evidence that critical race theory was already

028being taught in our schools which we the parents know is true and he asked you if he could provide it to you and you would change your mind you stubborned about it thank you miss frank next up pauline bruno [Applause] good evening thank you for allowing me to speak my name is pauline bruno and i live in pinehurst i would like to speak tonight on panorama and why i am so against it panorama is teacher development a survey platform and a very invasive plan into the minds of our children it is digitally tracked and follows our students forever and always members of the school board are you truly comfortable with funding this outright indoctrination of our children have you actually gone to their website and read their mission statement it seems to me that you

029do not realize that you have the power to make decisions and sit here because it is the people sitting back here who gave you that power do you also realize that we are not happy with your performance according to the pilot in news and observer september 5th 2019 moore county schools math proficiency is 44 how do we teach our students to compete in a global world with a score that doesn't even reach half our reading proficiency is 52 percent our overall testing rank is 125 out of 226 out of 290 in this state are you kidding this is more county we cannot allow so many students to graduate who are barely capable to read and to do basic math how many of our students are going to college and taking remedial classes in math in

030reading or both they are sitting in a class with the same content that they should have learned in school think about the amount of time and think about the amount of money that is being wasted we have dire issues in front of us why would you ever bother with this panorama teach our children stop the nonsense thank you mr pickens mr pickens i would ask that you hold your applause i know that you're enthusiastic but mr pickens couldn't even hear his name excuse me miss harmon i think it might be necessary this consider this a first warning this is a business meeting first of all public comment is more than welcome but it is a business meeting i've asked that you please hold your applause mr pickens could not hear his name called because we

031are on a timely basis tonight and trying to move quickly through speakers to give every one of you a chance to speak i ask that you cooperate mr pickens next all right thank you very much um just going to read from the north carolina state constitution article 9 concerning education section 1 education encouraged religion morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind schools libraries and the means of education shall forever be encouraged the north carolina law explicitly states that what local school board should encourage it is important to remember that educating students is a partnership between the school and the parents the moore county school board appears to make an effort to exclude parents from being an active partner in their child's education the mcs does not have a consistent

032and transparent way to communicate with parents they fail to educate parents on their rights and overstep their authority the mcs fails to create an environment in schools conducive for parental involvement inclusive of all stakeholder curriculum committees and other adver advisory groups we ask the school board to provide ways for community and parental input into every aspect of the mcs these schools belong to us the taxpayers instead of in skirt encouraging social emotional learning surveys and the ideas that america is inherently racist the board should follow the north carolina statues and encourage any public school teacher or administrator to read or post in public any public school building classroom or even excerpts of portions of writings documents and records that reflect the history of the united states including but not limited to the preamble of the

033north carolina constitution declaration of independence united states constitution mayflower compact national motto national anthem pledge of allegiance the writing speeches speeches documents and proclamations of founding fathers and the presidents of united states decision of the supreme court of the united states acts of congress in the united states including the public published text of the congressional record the state board recommend recommended programs for the memorial day and veterans day that enable students to gain a better understanding of the meaning and importance of our sacrifices of our military moore county is the home of families who sacrifice for this great nation it is a slap in the face of this to the students who have parents or relatives in the military to not learn the history of this great nation we demand that a more county school

034encourages religion morality and knowledge necessary to be patriots the moore county school board needs to be proactive and close loopholes for indoctrination or it will happen the moore county school board needs to focus on literacy and mathematics the moore county schools have overstepped their boundaries of authority and power we ask that you return to your original purpose if you do not you are in violation of the north carolina constitution article 9. thank you thank you miss marzelli again i ask you to hold your applause uh for our next five speakers would come forward aj marzelli uh jared dent jimmy pratt nancy ellis and vincent gordon yeah but i want you to block us good evening first i would like to thank the board for passing the resolution to delay the new social studies standards implementation

035this is a victory for our children however delaying is not enough we must reject the new social studies standards altogether these standards are laced with critical race theory social emotional learning and inaccurate anti-american propaganda the fordham institution institute graded the new social studies standards for north carolina and gave them an f for historical content and a d minus for civics we can do better my question for you is have you read the unpacking documents does anything in there concern you not only what is in these documents but what is lacking in these documents particularly in the six through twelve american history section as a moore county voter and tax payer it sure as heck concerns me some of the rhetoric in the patent packing documents have been tamped down however it still does not benefit

036our children it is still clearly politically charged divisive and packed with leftist agenda american history must be taught in an age-appropriate progression and it must start out with basic with a basic love and understanding for our great country we expect you as a school board to enforce teaching that is based on facts and american values that every student must be taught secondly i'd like to touch on the issue of mass for the upcoming school year enough is enough children all over our county are enjoying their summers hanging out with family and friends playing at the pool eating at restaurants hanging out in large crowds going to sporting events out on vacation et cetera and they are doing it all without wearing masks how do i know i see it every single day all over our

037county and all over our state and the very few that i do still see wearing masks that is their choice and that is exactly how it should be in our schools a choice we have enough data to understand that masks are not only harmful to our children they do little to prevent the spread of covet in the classrooms even fauci said masks don't work if teachers want to be protected from koben they have had ample time to get vaccinated to play into the theater of mask wearing again for the coming school year would be an absolute joke a research center in florida just recently conducted a study on face masks of six children and found a whopping 21 pathogenic bacteria present on those face masks many of those pathogens are known to cause illnesses like

038pneumonia bloodstream infections meningitis uti strep throat tuberculosis and even sepsis sounds pretty accurate to me considering daily my children would bring home their mass and hand them to me and they would be completely soiled dirty wet and smelly and covered in mystery substances and fluids it is disgusting and completely unnecessary please stop forcing our children to wear petri dishes on their face and let them breathe fresh air especially when per the cdc statistics coven children age 5 to 18 have a 99.9995 chance of survival thank you thank you mr marzelli that last speaker was awesome so obviously we're uh not too happy with you guys otherwise we wouldn't be here and obviously you need to start getting bigger venues because this is not going to stop you are not doing enough to combat the implementation

039of the new social studies curriculum from our schools in fact you're attempting to make it worse the more county schools kindergarten social social studies pacing guide is embarrassing if you're if you believe five and six-year-olds can grasp concepts like and i quote identifying cultural practices in local communities and around the world or to summarize stories of positive character traits through the lens of empathy resilience and respect to contribute to the community now these by themselves don't sound all that bad and i can agree with that however it is the exact same language that is littered in the crt marxist social activism that is being proliferated throughout our our country and this county whether you want to believe it or not you are not paid to turn our children into activists none of this is age-appropriate

040material it is instead a way to promote the social activist thinking in our children this language is littered throughout all of this we have over 200 years of examples of american exceptionalism and they are clueless about who dr dr joseph warren was in his place in history of course that is why you guys leave it so vague and continue to put not publish any of these documents which we would like published as well as any of these panorama surveys that are just utterly dis disgusting and divisive you must not approve to teach this new curriculum that is infected with this racist marxist anti-american hate as was stated before the fordham institute gave the state uh the north carolina state's social studies curriculum an f on historical content and a d minus for civics an f

041and a d minus in history and civics that is disgusting what are you guys doing this is unacceptable you'll have your chance calm down let that go i'm sorry um to bring about uh so the only thing you and your colleagues are leaving out of the teaching which i'm sure he'll tell you all about here in a minute are the two types of people who help bring about communism in this country are the unwitting agents and useful idiots which ones are you guys you have no more excuses to allow this into our system if martin luther king jr's right-hand man wyatt walker warned of the dangers of this kind of teaching in 2015 then we need to quickly and drastically change our our efforts um mr levy you spoke before in the closed session you

042were 100 right about your camel or elephant analogy i don't know you could use a frog one as well about how to keep it in a boiling pot but anyway i agree you start letting in a little bit of this at a time and eventually the entire beast will enter so please continue the good work and then also consider maybe getting cameras in our classroom so we can actually know what's going on in the classrooms mr pratt or it's actually mr pratt's turn i'm sorry i want to no i'm sorry i haven't out or it's mr dan's term i'm i'm so sorry i'm here again to discuss children and masks in the school system in june betsy tilson ncdhhs state health director stated that there were four metrics that would be used for criteria regarding

043the issue the first was that coveted rates were low however she gave no firm rate figure as a metric and gave no indication if this was a state or local rate second she stated that more research on covet 19's impact on children was needed she once again gave no time frame for any research to be assessed by next she tied removing masks in school to vaccination status data from that time showed that 19 percent of children ages 12 through 19 had been vaccinated miss tilson did not give any figure that would indicate what percentage of children in the 12 to 19 age group would need to be vaccinated for masks to be made optional given that as of june 45 of adults in north carolina remain unvaccinated teen vaccination figures vary from 10.7 to 25

044percent based on what i was reading and should the vaccine be approved in the younger age group it will likely be even lower statistics from north carolina in june showed there was a zero percent death rate in children up to 17. let me repeat a zero percent death rate may's data showed less than 50 children infected with the virus recent studies from the united kingdom that will be submitted to the joint committee on vaccination and immunization the department of health and the world health organization found that children face an extremely low one in five hundred thousand risk of dying from coronavirus in england just 25 under 18s have died from covid which equates to two in a million experts said young people with pre-existing medical conditions such as heart disease and cancer and severe disability

045including cerebral palsy and autism have the higher chance of becoming seriously ill from the virus more than 75 percent of the children who had died had chronic conditions while two-thirds had more than one underlying condition and 60 percent had life-limiting conditions but the scientists from three top british universities said that this risk is no higher than the risk from influenza so if we didn't have mandatory mass for influenza why are we mandating mass for coronavirus as i've stated before this issue of mass on children cannot be looked at strictly from a coveted viewpoint is there any consideration for the students mental health particularly in the very young children who are transitioning to a new environment for the first time is there any consideration for the need for young children to learn phonics and reading moore

046county has an average reading proficiency score of 53 percent and it's likely this data was prior to the pandemic the state of south carolina passed a law banning school districts from requiring mass in june the harnett county board voted school board voted to make masks optional and what are the parents who have been given no clear metrics and no clear dates by the state for when masks will become optional what if the parents who want their children to be able to learn phonics correctly and not fall behind in reading or have a normal transition to school such as those of children in private schools or in south carolina our government has failed to provide any information to allow them to make an informed decision for them mr dan mr pratt [Applause] uh i'm here tonight

047to break the black code of silence carter wilson said the purpose of an education is to teach a child to think and do for themselves right now a significant portion of the black community and black students believed that the republican party fought on the side of the confederacy this political race the indoctrination is deep in that deep in our community and it's sinister and the reason is that way is to create a permanent black underclass to milk for votes and profit from the time a black child is born that is if he can get born they are saddled with racism and the political class rised them dr king spoke of this group that's behind this in our community dr king writes that in the middle dr king writes i stand in the middle of two

048opposing forces in the black community one a force of complacency made up in part of negroes who are drained of self-respect in a sense of somebodiness by a few middle class negros who because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by surgication have become insensitive to the problem of the masses if you want to teach a black kid a black child every school board needs to recognize and understand the environment they are coming from i myself i am a real victim of racism i fought racism in the streets in the military through the government through the legislature and in the courts i see racism different than than defined by the political class and the news media crt means to me complicity race theory and that is what

049should be taught and they shouldn't mind because they have no problem calling me uncle tom jam go or sell out history when there's no agenda is it will recognize all who contribute in the 1950s a 15 year old black girl named claudette colvin did the same thing that rosa parks on the same bus line before rosa park did hers it was claudette coven case that went to the supreme court and ended segregation on the montgomery buses but she was not good enough to spark a movement her family was poor and had a our house because of a complicity they robbed her of her self-respect and her sense of somebodiness she moved to north carolina and became a prostitute some 72 years later that same complicity was at work here in moore county in the 1980s

050a discrimination lawsuit by two black mall county correctional officer against the moore county prison led to lawsuits against the most powerful clan group in america those lawsuits brought about the first promotions for blacks in state government and it brought down the biggest clan in america the klan part can be was reported by every news organization in america and a free overseas but those who write the first draft of history decided that history cannot record what went on at the moore kind of prison this complicity of racism ignored what happened in war county prison what went on there was removed from history thank you mr pratt ms alice [Applause] nancy ellis i speak in support of the purchase by the southern pines land and housing trust of the southern pines primary school site my reasons include

051the following when appraised the aberdeen elementary school and southern pines primary school were appraised by the school board's own appraiser at approximately the same value thereby providing a sound basis upon which to substantiate the southern pines primary school site's fair market value the amount being offered by the trust matches or exceeds what more county schools will receive from the final bid on the aberdeen elementary school the area of west southern pines has long been denied the rights and services afforded other adjacent and surrounding areas the sale of the southern pines primary school site to the trust presents an ideal opportunity to make it possible for west southern pines to revitalize itself the sale of the southern pines primary school to the trust would exhibit wise stewardship of more county system assets and demonstrate a spirit

052of cooperation and long-term gain the purpose of the southern pines the purchase of the southern pines primary school by the trust would make the sale an easy one while also freeing the school board of deferred maintenance or dealing with land parcels the purchase of the southern pines primary school by the trust would foster benefits for our entire community the sale would increase economic prosperity of west southern pines and more county residents the sale would increase the availability of enriching cultural experiences the sale would honor the intent of the original purchases of the property decades ago the sale would afford increased exposure to an appreciation of african-american history the sale would forge bonds of relationship throughout disparate groups members of the more moore county board school board please vote in support of the trust purchase of

053the southern pines primary school thank you thank you before mr gordon begins that'll ask our next five speakers to come forward ashley corsino martez norris laurie roddenberger ken carlson and vic alla mr gordon vincent gordon southern pines land in housing trust dr grimsley madam president members of the board i want to begin by thanking numerous supporters who not only have given their time but money with an account that we started with actually 267 dollars to raise over half a million dollars this is a grassroots effort that is now supported by citizens churches institutions across the county with varying ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds they came together in one cause to lift up one community and that it helped itself in this county and i wanted to kind of repeat that it helped itself that's that's that's

054kind of what we want it to do donations range from 75 cents to 150 thousand dollars with the same sweat and determination when six thousand dollars have been raised in 1924 and hundreds of thousands of dollars raised to help pay for a gymnasium and we found that we have also helped pay for the blanchy carter park so pretty much the entire parcels this community is now has many supported from west southern pines and and from the surrounding community and they feel like they're vested at this point in time because of our fundraising is still moving in an upward trend especially over the past several weeks uh we are we have increased our offer from 458 and i know you realize that we recently took 525 thousand 000 uh and that's four to 17 acres this

055is more than what the aberdeen primary sold for in the open bid process which was one of the measures that we determined that we should actually consider as fair market value anything less than 17 acres we need the opportunity to discuss when making the decision to accept 525 000 versus any more than that 525 thousand dollars because that more might not get you what you really are looking for so some of the things we need to consider first of all uh ariana i think the guard made an excellent presentation of what she mentioned as far as what can happen with gentrification we need to consider that don't let's not forget what she just mentioned and what she said don't forget her appraised value was based on making being a free and clear of all encompasses

056and so that you got to remember that 685 000 that that was put up there was was free and clear of all encompasses that's not what would occur any buyer will require you to pay real estate taxes that would be 18 000 or more that you got to consider that you got to come out your pocket and pay um we can accept the title with the restrictions uh we will buy will of someone else who comes in build affordable housing for teachers or housing teachers can't afford thank you very much thank you ms corsino i would ask again that you please hold your applause hi um i just wanted to come today first to advocate for the sale of the leon trust which i know a couple people have already spoken about but um i

057honestly think the right thing to do would be sell it to them for one dollar sell it to them for one dollar and let all of their money that they've raised so that they can start their programs now there is a place that is in our county called the artist league of the sandhills and i work there and i get a very low we all get a low rate for our uh our studio space because the city of aberdeen rents the space to us for one dollar a year and it adds so much to the community so to have the idea that more arts programs and enrichment programs could be brought to that space um you know it's just i'm just dreaming of you know the food trucks that are going to be parked outside

058i can already smell them and you know i want to sign my kids up for the cooking classes um i have a friend who would be able to do the sewing classes so you know it's like let's just get it into motion you know you guys all talk so much about loving history i love history too i think historic preservation is really beautiful i actually attended an arts program growing up in my hometown that was a repurposed high school that they use for art spaces and now they have concerts there that they have a partnership with a local tavern and they do you know i bought tickets for super two years ago with my dad for a hundred dollars you know i mean this is something that we can keep the ball rolling with all

059these ideas but it starts with uh you know first of all like i said the right thing to do would be sell it to them for one dollar but if you're not going to do that then i would think that you should do it for the offer that's on the table right now um and then number two keep the military liaison and i think that should be a fully funded position i think that should be something that somebody you know that we increase funds for um so i did some artwork for you guys too to kind of just drive my points home start that these persons specific or just generic they're generic you can test them around didn't even read it you didn't even read it i looked at the front i will i will

060study it when they come back okay um this one does say save west southern pines local history or our military liaison or west southern ponds well okay the front is don't tread on me yeah sell to the southern heights land trust for one dollar so don't try to don't turn on a military liaison and don't try to west southern pines and then four more dreaming this one is come and take it more county citizens for public health and education come and take it my history books knowledge is power with the list of books systemic racism tolerance human beliefs feminine 1001 feminist theories crt is real rights versus alternative rights tact versus tactics anti-racism is pro-public health thank you all right our next speaker martez norris hello thank you very much and i am against critical

061race theory i was brought up as you could tell by my accent i was not born in north carolina nor alabama i was born overseas under socialism and you don't know how much it permeates right up to every day in your life what can happen so i am totally against it one thing that i can just reach from from the lieutenant governor mike robinson he is against it he's against it because he said we need to teach our children how to think and not what to think also that he has noted that the critical race theory has been crafted to those on the radical left with the explicit agenda of being divisive promoting left-wing ideology and indoctrinating our students within public schools and i take it back to children and i've seen what goes on

062overseas i have family over there and when i go and we talk about what the way was going on in this country and now it's permeating and trickling down in the local schools i find it disgusting moreover we do need religious liberty if you think for a moment that we will not become eventually like the soviet union what was then the soviet union or what is going on in china then i suggest you think twice as a matter of fact part of panorama and cassell it actually the persons who started it they got investments from china so if you think they're not going the chinese are not going to tell us how to invest in our country think twice get educated when it comes to religion liberties most americans have not read the bill of

063rights they are misinformed the founding fathers wanted freedom of religion not freedom from religion we would have a much stronger republic the more county schools focus on teaching reading and critical thinking and writing it's important to know how to write often teachers administrators and elected officials do not have an accurate understanding of the constitute on the constitution the bill of rights and how to lawfully govern we need freedom of speech for the press as well i'm not going to go into all the details that we have needs to do we also we need to do the education to make sure that the children are educated that when they leave school they know how to read and write i volunteered in the schools and some of these kids did not even know how to write i

064was very lucky i had one kid who was very good at numbers and i started teaching her how to translate a number from one equals r and e i was able to translate that for her so she was going to be passed on to a higher level class then rather not to knowing that she didn't even know how to read and she was being passed on that's wrong and you're part of this school thank you miss morris miss rosenberger first and foremost i want to thank the board's policy committee for the new policy titled ensuring dignity and non-discrimination and the superintendent's support of the policy committee's recommendations to be implemented tonight this is a giant step toward protecting the children of moore county from hate and the resulting unhappiness that hate causes next i want

065to warn anyone listening about certain factions within our society who are systematically using words to try to make it seem like they care about children and people euphemisms that are to elicit specific feelings of compassion and concern for others such as equity social justice diversity and inclusion and culturally responsive teaching when you hear or read these words or phrases the hair on the back of your neck should stand up the people using these words and phrases want to destroy american society as we know it one of the ways they want to do this is through social emotional learning another euphemism is not to be confused with social emotional development which for example an infant notices other infants and children a young toddler enjoys playing alongside other children an older toddler participates in play with other

066children that's development children inherently love one another they don't think about it it just happens by asking a child how well do you get along with students who are different from you now a child has to stop and think about how someone is different whereas beforehand differences may not even have been noticed sel surveys are detrimental to the positive social emotional growth of children they are an invasion of privacy why is moore county school district doing them what does panorama education offer mcs options for diversity equity inclusion content you feel it comprehensive sel content sogo pros options for diversity equity inclusion content qualtrics pros diversity equity inclusion module has sel content i would like to see the reasons and reasons for and positive outcomes of any surveys given to mcs students before spending any money

067on survey software any of it there are 30 administrators working on these surveys perhaps more county school system has become bloated and some cuts are in order the money could be used to actually educate our children thank you mr carlson and again this is my last request we will simply adjourn the meeting if the audience does not cooperate certainly that can be done all it takes is a motion i have asked that you please hold your applause such that the next speaker can hear his name called and you're not cooperating mr carlson you are up next i have three or four points i'd like to share the first one is authority everyone in this room is under authority such authority is either a purely human construct or it stems from a higher power those are

068the only two alternatives number two the united states is a unique nation we are the only large nation and maybe the only one at all that was founded after peaceful discussion and common consent on the premise that there would be no state religion now that was peacefully done our laws would be formulated by elector representatives yet each citizen would have the right to choose his or her own his or her religion or personal ideology the third point is that governmental laws can never fully regulate human behavior and this is particularly true when it comes to human sexuality because it's a rather private area of our lives for example the divorce laws vary quite a bit in each state there are principles but they vary a lot this does not mean however that human sexuality can

069be separated from human morality what we do in this area can be harmful or helpful wholesome or destructive right or wrong good or evil for example the notorious love triangle is the root cause of many murders when i was teaching science in maryland a specialist was sent into one of the classes to discuss human sexuality i left the classroom and when i returned something like this was written on the blackboard if this subject has anything to do with a higher power then you cannot receive the information you need from the public school system no state religion which would include a state acting like a religion means more freedom not less a freedom which includes personal responsibility that is if the state doesn't have it doesn't dictate a religion there's more freedom to choose i will

070close with these words from jesus whoever then humbles himself as this child he is greatest in the kingdom of heaven and whoever receives one such child in my name receives me but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble it is better for him that a millstone be hung around his neck and that he be drowned in the depth of the sea thank you mr carlson uh as mr uh allah comes up our next speakers are i believe it's matt erlader earlier erlocker okay shannon davis uh someone simply named mary m i would need a last name mary m meredith uh and nancy basinger and elizabeth degrayer mr allen my name is vic allen i'm the shop teacher at calvary christian school i've talked to you a couple times the

071last time i was here i remember the kids were given awards and given presentations the one presentation that was given an award was given to a young man who wrote who gave a presentation on whitewashed christianity i was just wondering if he put islam in there would he have been allowed to do that number two there was a little girl that was talking i couldn't really understand the presentations from your government school kids but i did catch a little bit she said that 25 of the students that attended moore county schools did not feel safe we just rolled on by that that's a quarter of the kids that come to your school don't feel safe i know they don't feel safe on your government buses i can tell by the the traffic going to the

072schools to drop them off and pick them up so something's wrong when a quarter of the people the kids that come to your school don't feel safe i'd like to know why that was from the mouth of babes i got that out of the way the other question the main question is there god or not when you were elected you took an oath you took your you put your hand on a bible and you put the other hand towards god and you swore you were going to uphold the constitution and you're going to look out for the people of moore county you swore about that all of you probably attend church and you're taught however your organization leaves this out the whole thing there's no god here and without god we can do nothing with

073god we can do anything so as long as you're like that now these people ain't going nowhere critical race theory isn't going anywhere they got a lawyer right there that we pay for that's going to make sure it stays here you know i was i was criticized that i did not that i i'm a religious fanatic well we we started our school 50 years ago because we saw this coming and if you want to send your kid to religious school i'd i'd send him there well let me tell you you're sending your kids to a church the government school is a church and it's taught human secular humanism has no room for god none and it's going to fail the only thing i can say is get out leave start your own school because this

074is a failed system that's going to destroy you your kids in this nation and that this is a this is a pretty kind meeting this is happening all over the country right now your ideas are dead we're going to turn back to god and we're going to save this country without god we can do nothing and you know that if you attend church thank you mr allen mr urlocker [Applause] say a few words about the audience please want to try to correct it mr uh hensley would like your attention for a moment as well again we've asked that you hold your applause this is a business meeting mr hensley although i would never vote in the meeting to adjourn the meeting to due to disruptions uh we are an organization and we are a country

075of law and order the chair has the power to have people removed from this from this room and i would have no objection zero objection to the chair having people removed who continue to disobey the regulations that this board has set out thank you mr locker thank you madam chair mr superintendent my name is matt erlocker and i spoke last time and i'm i'm back there's just a couple topics i'd like to cover with you first one real short because there's plenty of been plenty said no more masks we know so much better now than we did 16 months ago and masks have been established to be more harmful to children than beneficial that's i don't want to like i said i don't want to go into it there's been plenty said and we're supposed

076to be smarter than the average bear here secondly i do appreciate the time that you've taken in the debate on the panorama platform but i got to say looking at the notes for tonight's agenda i got gotta say that we i need to restate my request that we don't renew the panorama contract there's nothing good about panorama we just heard some uh other remarks about some of the other platforms being considered the public outcry is not going to go away as long as there is any linkage through the content of a survey through the content of the supporting documentation or teacher professional development or money trail frankly to anything that has to do with critical race theory or any of its proponents or any of the agencies or public figures that have a lot of

077money behind all these things that's all i want to say about that the main meat of what i want to talk about right now is on lack of transparency and trust we used we in america used to trust most of our institutions because they were acting on our what we felt was our best interests most of those institutions no longer have our trust and unfortunately the institutions behind education no longer have our trust you've heard some of the reasons tonight america has always been a mixing bowl full of different peoples from different lands different ideas different religions none of which seem to be allowed to be spoken of you just heard a speaker to speak about one or two of them we are supposed to be able to tolerate each other with our ideas as

078long as we can still get along after the conversation's over with well the conversation's been over with for a while now and we no longer get along and the school system's role in that cannot be overstated i i mourn what would our at national level at our state level and in many many places i've lived i used to be in the military i've lived quite a bit in quite a few places education's not there anymore and i don't want us to continue on the path that we're on right now i'm not going to re you know restate the constitution i'm not going to restate what we said about crt or marxism however as somebody who did read all of almost 1100 pages of all the unpacking documents the k-5 and the through 12. i can

079say that right now my time's running out but trust is not going to be present on this path and as for improvements i say open the curriculum development process open it wide open dr locklear spoke earlier today about how there's supposed to be a public portal and next month don't worry thank you don't wait for next month miss davis my name is shannon davis this is my first time coming to a school board meeting i would like to introduce myself as a with the help of the lord and lord lord willin i'm a future candidate for the board that i speak to today i want to take the advantage of the freedom that i have at this moment in time that if i win the seat that i'm running for i would not be afforded

080at that present time be not due to your rules but due to the rules of our country where i would not be able to pray openly i want to pray for you guys for your wisdom and for your strength for the everyone here is and we're we're just in such despair we have a fight that we have in us that it's needful but we're not doing it the right way we need to be like jesus because that's just what i want to do i'm just going to pray lord i ask that for the remainder of this meeting that we would be respectful to each other that we would listen with open hearts pray lord that you would encourage us that you would help these board members lord give them strength give them wisdom lord and

081the decisions that they're facing god whenever they signed up for this position they had no idea the pressures that they would have our teachers our faculty our children our whole entire nation country and state are going through such turmoil right now and the only the way that we will survive as a nation as the greatest nation on earth at this moment in time is with your help i pray lord that you would bless these people that you would use them that you'll give them rest lord from the heavy burden that they carry i thank you lord for the burdens that you've taken for me for the freedom that i have and the freedom that we're all able to enjoy lord if we would just choose to accept it thank you lord for your love thank

082you lord for dying on the cross for us for shedding your precious blood to save us for our sins help us lord to see who you are help us lord in jesus name amen thank you miss uh it's mariam that's a hard one to follow this is my first time here so i'm a little nervous i hope i can get through as a resident of moore county i'm disheartened to see what is happening in north carolina school system particularly with regards to the lcl program and in particular the sel surveys many of the questionnaires are invasive into the parent-child dynamic and have no business being incorporated into the school system the fact that the questionnaires are not listed on the school website for the parents review prior to the children's completing raises suspicion do you

083realize the parents have have had to make an appointment to see these documents and are not permitted to take them off the school premises also it has been the responsibility of the student to opt out if it's even possible why are these questionnaires been so secretive who has access to these surveys how long are they being kept and what are their purpose why aren't the parents consulted as to the completed surveys it appears that the school system has taken the parent out of the equation and that is not the school's job to decide what is best for the child's interest are you aware that according to an article dated january of 2020 that they are looking to combine sel with global learning where they will refer to our children as global citizens and according to

084unesco this will be referred to as global citizens education an example of an activity given for k-2 called for a game called go fish where children were passed a bowl excuse me of gold fish crackers of sharing equally after passing the bowls students compared the number of goldfish each had had then they came up with a new way so that everyone one had equal amounts in the next turn in the end the teacher then distributes equal amounts of goldfish to each student this is concerning on several levels one being that our children are not referred to as united states citizens but as global citizens and the equal distribution of goods is the foundation of socialism and possibly communism i'm requesting that the contract for panorama be cancelled until parents have better knowledge as to who

085is administering and housing these documents as well as the ultimate goal for these surveys the money saved by canceling this contract could be used towards the funding of a better social studies program which according to the fordham foundation institute rates the proposed social studies standards for north carolina as a d minus to an f in closing i'm requesting one to cancel the contract and sel surveys until further research and buy-in by the parents two stop the proposed social study standards which have a failing grade and three in the mode of transparency let's place cameras in the classrooms so parents may feel comfortable with what their class their what and how their classes are being taught thank you for your time thank you miss basinger um thank you all so much um this is the first

086time i've ever spoken before the board um i'm a grandmother to twin grandsons and i've just started noticing some things that seem very invasive to families sexual questionnaires asking personal questions that about their sexuality these questions should be this is a personal thing this should be between a parent and their children the other thing that i was concerned about haven't been able to sleep at night i'm just a grandmother but i have taught in more county schools and in texas schools is is the vaccines um one of the twins just had a pacemaker put in if if these vaccines are required of my grandsons they could possibly have a side effect of myocarditis don't want vaccines forced on my grandsons and at pinecrest they they started to give some vaccinations and i grew very alarmed

087at that because that's not the business of the school system to give vaccinations so i call this call the school i call the administration building and they they were very nice and and listened to me so those are we don't know the long-term effects of the vaccinations nobody here does um children should not be separated if they have the vaccine or don't have the vaccine i i do want to thank the school board in the past i my my children had excellent education and i want to thank you so much because um they they enjoy their school years here in moore county so i want to say you all in the past have been doing a great job but the way things are going right now parents need to have more input and and things

088will get right again and i just want to thank you all for in the past the the great education that the boys and my children um have had at union pines west pine and i'm hoping it will continue at pine crest but please stop the invasive sexual questionnaires and the invasive before mr greyer takes the spot next speakers are marissa mullaney ruth caldera cynthia downs john zumwalt and candace candice we need your last name that's okay do we need a last name okay when you're ready good evening my name is elizabeth degrave and if you've recently read the pilot newspaper you may have recognized my face i am one of the 3 600 plus military family members in moore county that have benefited from this important military liaison position that is now currently in jeopardy

089i retired from the military last year from a remote location in europe having been assigned overseas for approximately the last eight years when i left moore county and route to those assignments my children were not school age however when i returned last summer i would have had an incoming sixth grader and an incoming fourth grader thankfully i have many friends here in the area and i have spent most of my military career in this location and was informed of the redistricting process i quickly reached out to moore county schools in order to petition for my older son to attend cranes creek this year so as not to attend one middle school for one year only to switch to the fall another school the following year and my request was immediate a granted this military liaison

090position is an extremely important position and should not be eradicated from the moore county schools this district military liaison role is of the utmost importance to military families in moore county schools without this position there will be an immense amount amount of guidance and communication lost to military service members like myself i would have unknowingly had to endorse switching my child to a school without the military move that is usually attached to that our children already make enough sacrifices due to our military careers losing this position will just increase potential difficulties for our students in the future i hope the moore county school board members recognize my personal story and how i benefited from this integral position and changed their minds with regarding to eliminated this highly essential position being a veteran herself rowley understands

091the the ins and outs of our military and i'm grateful for her service and sacrifices and her immense efforts to support the military families across moore county i have worked with her personally in this liaison position on the moore county schools military family advisory council and i am the sixth grade exceptional child teacher at cranes creek middle school i look forward to interacting and supporting this position and interacting with her for many years to come and i hope moore county school board does as well thank you for your time thank you miss mullaney i'm here to speak on the benefit the military liaison position has for military children and for the moore county school district first i'd like to say that mr hensley was correct when he stated that quote military residents are smart both

092my husband and i hold master's degrees mine in physical therapy in his and atypical warfare from the naval postgraduate school my husband is also a green beret in the special forces so we're not afraid to stand up against oppressors however mr hensley was incorrect when he stated that we did not need the military liaison position because we have support groups in social media to help each other no support group would have helped my family with the discrimination we experienced when we transitioned two kids to this district we supplied our school with my son's iep and informed them that our incoming kinder would need a 504 plan for his multiple health conditions prior to the start of the school year however the school failed to implement a 504 for eight months until the military liaison stepped

093in the iep team failed to provide complete evaluations for my son's reavel including neglecting to perform classroom observations because they didn't have enough time two disciplines performed the same standardized test within the same week invalidating the results they had no recommendations or plan for progress monitoring to make sure that my son was making adequate gains yet they wanted to deny him iep services the principal stated that quote he doesn't need math support because when he gets to high school there's an app that'll do his math work for him thankfully the iep team had invited the military liaison to the meeting to help deal with me who they thought was a difficult parent she witnessed the poor treatment and discrimination i was experiencing and stepped in she brought my son's case to the district for review

094and he was found to indeed need more not less iep services my son has thrived this year due to having proper services thanks to rowley being his advocate i also believe that rowley protected the district from potential litigation for the school's failures for implementing a 504 plan to keep my child safe at school and for failing to provide sufficient evaluations for my son's iep as they are legally bound to do military families are unique in that we are required to move frequently and no parent can memorize the special education laws of all 50 states hence why the military liaison position is imperative instead of using other schools lack of support for military children as a reason for eliminating the military liaison position our district should be proud to set the standard for all districts servicing

095military families and in my last 24 seconds i want to briefly touch on this unmasking for next school year my one child with health risks has not left the house since the start of the pandemic because he is at high risk for dying from coronavirus and if mass are not mandated for unvaccinated children it wouldn't be safe or accessible for him to attend school thank you thank you miss downs i'm sorry i might have got you out of order that's okay hi my name is cynthia downs i live at west end and i would like to echo most of the feelings that i hear from the parents here i think all of us parents taxpayers voters are representing people that could not make it i have personally talked to teachers in my neighborhood that said

096i can't be there let me know what they vote on panorama i have talked with others in the community and they couldn't come but you have a lot of people here and i really feel like we're all each of us that are here are representing thousands of others that have similar feelings i've got bad news and i've got good news uh from reading the panorama cassell sel framework um it's hand in glove with crt as you guys have known we're all learning that now i think parents are confused they're overwhelmed if i were not retired if i had young children at home there's no way i'd be able to read all that stuff i know there's an opt out somewhere on this survey but where is it i don't know i don't know that the

097parents know and i have heard of students that were convinced by their parent not to do the survey and then got to school and were re-convinced to take the survey so that's the bad news i do have a a question about the reasonable expectation of privacy and i did read the privacy clause in the do not track signals from the cassell privacy website it says there's a do not track setting in an opt-out setting that may be offered by your browser however cassell reserves the right to change that in the future without notice to you it also says um please that we while we strive to protect your personal information neither casell nor any of our service providers can ensure security of any information any such transmission of information to cassell is at your own

098risk is that something that we want to put data of our children in to what they say will follow them forever when i used to work in the school system there was a permanent record file and it was locked up there was you couldn't get in there that's something that we need to we need to lock it up we need to not do the contract with panorama the good news is that the funding for this panorama comes from you the local school board the state school board cannot the board of education cannot tell you what to do it is your decision and i certainly hope that you're able to make the correct decision because the parents and the taxpayers are aware of what's going on and and we're we're going to fight it whatever we

099can do thank you miss caldera hi this is my first time talking in front of you and i know that anything in this world can get done when it's not done with a personal interest in other words the people out here are not picking on you as an individual it's the decisions you're making and they and i know i feel that we ask you to represent our children and when there's no common sense there's no reason there's no digestible effect of what's going on it just screams don't do it and this thing where they're going to document everything for their kids and they're going to spend 150 000 to survey our children and document it and put it in and who knows what not a server that's probably that secure as being one of the

100people that got on the blacklist when they got into the data in washington all of this stuff that we called private years ago we want everybody to kind of be able to get to seems so wrong it's like common sense it says it screams don't do it and then when we're going to survey our children to find out if they're rich poor if they're whatever all the information is and i did not read it all but you want to survey that why don't we put the money into giving them special education more education more classes that kids need to read better to have math better the machines are not going to be the answer a person has to be able to be on his own i always taught my children know what you have to

101do and then if you decide not to do it and use a calculator that's fine but if you don't know the answer's supposed to be 10 times 10 is 100 the calculator is wrong and you won't know it and that's what our children are facing today you talk to some of the children they don't know math skills they have no clue they can't i gave my grandchild my written letter i wrote them a letter they said honey i can't read this it wasn't printed where are we bringing our children what level are we giving them to face the world and it's not a personal thing we're fighting for our children thank you thank you mr zumwalt hello i'm john zumwalt and you're the school board and i'm glad to be standing here before you and

102i'll tell you why because i think you're doing a horrible job i really do i say that sincerely chairwoman we've uh several people ask you to please move this to a larger venue and for whatever reason you chose not to and you quoted your the attorney and the reasons why you didn't have to and i'd like to say there there are a lot of people in the hallway and we can't hear anything it sounds like a bunch of mumbling they're crowded they're sitting down they're standing up and a lot of them i completely disagree with their point of view but they have a right to be in here and hear what you all are saying look at you in the eye and tell you that some of us think you're doing a terrible job now

103in addition to us just having this little bit of time to speak to you you never respond okay that's your rule and you can change that but you chose not to and this business of not clapping i think is utterly ridiculous i went and looked in the rules the written rules and there's nothing there but you're in charge here even though you work for us you're in charge and you can remove anyone you want to for any reason you want to i think it's awful that you would think about doing that last thing i want to say is this i've invited every single one of you to come on the radio and have a polite question and answer session with me all of you have chosen not to do it except for the three newest

104board members and i know you don't like them being on the radio because you've posted get off the radio now i don't understand i truly truly don't understand why dr grimacy chairwoman the rest of you you couldn't come on and have a conversation with me if i were in your shoes i would jump at that chance to explain whatever you've done because you may be completely right and you could make a total fool of me if you were but i'm gonna tell you i'm very upset that you will not communicate with us you will not and i don't understand it and communication does not mean that you put out an email or you you talk to us it means we have a conversation and we never have that and i would like to ask you

105once again to please come on the radio you can bring your attorney if you don't want to answer some of the questions without confirming with him but it's a very sincere invitation and i don't understand why you won't do it thank you thank you before candace takes her place here our next five speakers jill is it langnair longair uh bob howell monika brown anthony mccauley and lowell simon candice is it monica monica brown okay candace hi first um wow uh i so many excellent speakers tonight i feel uh honored to be able to have the opportunity to listen and i hope you guys all feel the same and thank you for the time for our voices to be heard i'm candace i am a more county citizen and a more county voter last meeting many

106of us expressed our objections on panorama to which the vote was delayed i read that panorama was once again on the agenda and a brief discussion would occur about alternative platforms which looked to be a waste of time because the agenda continued to say that they were not comparable to panorama and the vote for panorama would then take place i must reiterate panorama as mentioned here before is a trojan horse it is a foot in the door to infuse crt and sel across all aspects of our children's lives i'm appalled and sick to my stomach these surveys are utterly intrusive and cross the line for parental boundaries it is abusive to to manipulate young and person impressionable minds ben carson said in a recent interview it was vladimir lenin a russian marxist who said give

107me your children to teach for four years and the seeds that i plant will never be uprooted you don't fight racism with racism you cannot put an expensive band-aid over a gaping wound and say you address the problem it was only it will only become infected and continue to spread if you want to address the real problem ask the real questions have the real conversations don't hide behind a masked political ploy with special interests who do business with communist countries with horrendous human rights for context let me say this i'm a daughter of drug addict parents and if i had taken these surveys in school i would have denied the problems i was comfortable in the life i knew and i loved my parents even with their faults it wasn't until later in my life

108that i asked why didn't anyone help me the surveys are not an effective or reliable tool and only create a bigger divide among students and additional work for staff it's about human connection the rise of technology is eliminating human relationships based on an article from the news observer north carolina's home school population grew by thirty thousand twenty percent increase over the prior year private schools over 3 200 additional children a three percent increase public schools saw five percent drop in enrollment following 70 000 students i caution you don't brush these numbers based on a pandemic pandemic exposed lack of thank you our next speaker is miss longair lung care i wrote very quickly because i was so nervous i apologize i'm sorry i am here as a parent of some more county students and a

109previous moore county student who had special needs and i work with military special needs families and i'm a former special education teacher there are over 2000 military students in moore county and it's growing all the time i mean more counties exploding and they are resilient and they are tough but it's not fair to just throw them to the wolves or to social media having an advocate for them with rolly samson and it's not just her it's her position although she has magnified it tremendously is is a benefit to their to our county and being only one of five in north carolina um is again it's a it's something to be proud of and something to boast about and for other counties to look at us and say we we need to model after that rowley

110is amazing with helping with special education for military families who are moving in from other counties and from out of state with ieps and 504s as you know or maybe you don't when you move to a new place then the kids have to get reevaluated and their iep has to get rewritten and sometimes the the accommodations and modifications that they have do not match up with what they had in the last place and it's really stressful for parents to move and have to have everything redone and anyway rowley is wonderful for working with those working with and for the military kiddos with special education needs she also helps with the interstate compact and graduation requirements they're different in every state and for kiddos that move here i mean it's it's tough if you've you know

111you've gotten what you think you need and then you move to another state and you're short or you um need something else and then behavioral health with all the military kids the stress that they go through you can't just tell them to find a support group or look on you know facebook or whatever actually most of them aren't on facebook because it's more for us old people and social support some kiddos i was on the um military family council and one mom reported that her son just decided he wasn't going to make friends because he was tired of having to lose him it was sad and if we support our military kids it just helps our community and a final thought from the military family forum that rolley organized is the goal is for military

112students to stay on the same track as their fellow students or academic peers we're not expecting special treatment just the same opportunities as students with longevity in the school system thank you mr howell good evening dr grimacy ms carter members of the board of education i'm bob howell from southern pines i need to keep my mask on for medical reasons but i'll speak clearly i'd like first to thank you for your service to the students families and teachers of moore county schools and by extension to all citizens of our community next i encourage you to embrace that larger context when assessing the educational opportunities afforded by the offer of the southern pines landed housing trust to purchase the southern pines primary school from that perspective you can appropriately value not merely the short-term financial gain

113that might be enjoyed by selling this facility to the highest bidder but also the numerous immediate and long-term benefits beyond the fair and substantial monetary compensation offered by the trust one over the past several years the trust has undergirded its comprehensive vision of a west southern pine center for african-american history culture and entrepreneurship with detailed plans for making that dream a reality two this critical component of a revitalized west southern pines both honors the rich history of that property and preserves one of the most culturally significant locations in moore county the site of the rosenwald school built in 1924 when that community raised half the cost of that land in school three that school and its successors symbolized the value that west southern pines residents have always placed on education that entails both academics and

114character and therefore has made possible both successful careers and meaningful civic engagement for the envision center continues and expands on this rich legacy by providing a world-class african-american history museum and cultural arts center educational enrichment opportunities beyond the classroom small business and development and entrepreneurial training and spaces for non-profit offices community gatherings ethnic cuisine and recreation five similar redevelopment and revitalization projects in other locations have shown that cultural and economic advantages ripple outward from the immediate neighborhood to the wider community and the entire region remember that the north carolina statutes governing such sales of school property require not top dollar but fair market value which the trust's latest offer significantly exceeds a short-sighted focus sees only numbers preceded by dollar signs an enlightened vision recognizes the enduring value of history dignity and promise for the

115future thank you thank you miss brown i'm here to urge each of you on the scoreboard to find the wisdom to and i quote engage in private negotiations with the land trust for the potential purchase of the southern pines primary site i have two points for you as vince and bob reminded us the trust's offer based on over 100 separate pledges and donations more than meets the site's fair market value moreover the trust has now demonstrated that it has resources and support to seize this opportunity the specific integrated plans for each building and the space in its planned west southern pine center is laid out in the trust memorandum and these are testimony to the resourcefulness and ambition of of the west southern ponds community and its many supporters in moore county and beyond second

116i ask each of you to pay special attention to the input you're receiving from the town of southern pines the primary school property is centrally located just a mile from downtown transforming the primary school into a center for african-american history cultural arts and business is the ideal counterpart to the repurposing southern plants elementary as the montessori community school each of these campuses has for decades educated students from all over town and played a vital role in its own community and as a center for sports arts and gatherings under local nonprofit ownership each historic campus can involve its community in re-imagining and rebuilding last week at a prayer walk to one and what at one school and an art sale at the other people spoke to me fondly and and with excitement really about their experiences

117as students parents teachers um as athletes etc at each of their schools so clearly if we we can embrace that idea that each of these communities can go from the past to the future i speak to each of you now also as a 24-year resident of southern pines grateful to raise my only daughter in war county and to pay for its excellent schools i speak also as a lifelong educator who takes pride that in my four decades on the faculty at unc pembroke i helped educate at least a dozen of the outstanding english teachers in all three of the town's public schools i now urge each of you to share my vision in a few years when i show newcomers and visitors the spectacular new southern pines elementary school i will show them with equal

118pride thank you miss brown if you have additional comments we welcome by email mr mccauley madam chair dr grimsy school board thank you so much to the moore county community thank you all so much for embracing what i do in this community i have ran my hips off dr grimsy in the last four years dealing with my boys okay i am the ceo and founder of males of distinction ladies of america youth organization here in moore county males is making achievable life enhancing strides i tell my boys they're distinct because they're set apart scenario in the classroom anthony read paragraph one i'm not reading nothing anthony go get out of here just go to iss get where's the school resource officer resource officer comes in he's a person of comfort they call me in man

119you can't throw the chair across the room young man what's wrong i can't read mr anthony teacher kept pushing him meanwhile his boys were laughing his boys were laughing at him okay so i i want to say we need to get rid of iss this is something totally different please don't forget the outside agencies that still need to come into our school systems on a regular basis i'm in place in a quiet place in the library not to interfere core curriculum classes on a daily basis in between those classes if a young man is at iss i love my school resource officers they are a place for me a comfort for me as well a mediator so i can get a young man and mentor him mentoring programs need to continue to be strong within

120our school system i have traveled the united states this summer on a book tour i just released my sixth book i went number one on amazon in 12 categories the impact of influence i'm promoting my book i'm sorry anyway what i'm finding i stop in school districts and i talk to people in the communities we are not up to par in this school district i see so many other things and i know mentoring we have i'm not talking about funding none of that i do this for free but we need to make sure that y'all uh keep the outside agencies on your list it's going to be critical that we're able to come back to the schools this year i am a vital part and i'm not leaving this community because y'all won't let me

121leave so i'm still here and i'm pouring into the community so thank you so much to the school board for what y'all doing and but i agree with the young ladies sell that school to us for one dollar because when i open up the jiu jitsu program on saturday mornings i have so many kids that have to rent a van an extra van to bring kids in the drone program i'm a drone pilot they can't afford sandhills community college they have me i can house it there sell this school and let us allow some other resources so i can keep these kids out of jail because we're going to end up paying for them another way i also teach at the jail uh helping men recover we're dealing with drug abuse and substance use orders

122now because they're falling prey i got sixth graders smoking weed we don't need to be doing that when they're not smoking weed they're throwing chairs across the room i deal with that and i love doing it because i'm a place of comfort i'm a giant teddy bear but i don't want them to know that so thank you all so much thank you mr mccauley mr simon remember we're trying to hold down that applause mr simon i knew i should have signed up after mr mccauley may never learn um not the first time i've addressed this board but i do thank you all for sitting through this moore county school board member bob levy the unum in this story has repeatedly shown his disdain for the taxpaying public the pluribus as well as his complete lack

123of expertise in the teaching of history the fact that he received a certificate to teach history is an indictment of our previous social studies standards under which he was tested mr levy's and mr hensley's shameless promotion of charter school indoctrination explains their fear of losing control of the historical narrative projects like the new social studies standards and the west southern pines land trust are clear threats to their right wing hold on information and the indoctrination of our young people mr levy mr hensley and mr holmes would like us to believe that america is a christian nation and so christian indoctrination is okay but that can only be believed if we accept the willful ignorance that they promote our founders made it very clear that america was not a christian nation and in fact that is

124in direct conflict with judeo-christian tradition the entire charters or freedom documents mention religion exactly twice and only for the purpose of telling us what religion is not allowed to do section 4 article 6 specifically says no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust on the united states and in the first amendment there's that pesky guarantee of freedom of religion congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof that's it see the american founders were concerned that religious indoctrination would destroy the very freedoms that we're trying to protect history has already told the story in 1657 colonial massachusetts banned quakers and in their puritan mercy explained what should happen to quakers who returned to the colony quote a quaker if male

125for the first offense shall have one of his ears cut off where have i heard that before for the second offense have his other ear cut off a woman shall be severely whipped for the third offense and they he or she shall have their tongues bored through with a hot iron in 1660 mary dyer received one of these christian judgments for returning to the colony after banishment upon her return mary was arrested thrown in prison and then hanged in boston and what about the eighth amendment the one about cruel and unusual punishment is it just me or does burning an internal lake of fire as taught by many of our publicly funded charter schools seem unusually cruel it's the hypocrisy of mrs levy hensley and holmes that should make a suspect of their true agendas

126it's fine to criticize indoctrination if that's what you actually mean thank you mr simon thank you at this point at the request of several board members we're going to take a five-minute break so we will be back in here at 7 30. oh that's 8 30 excuse me 8 30. sam walker jim simeon cat claudia i believe that's the last name allison mccloskey and b murphy thank you for that break i needed to use this i think you were turning yellow thank you first of all thank you it's it's a pleasure for me to be here i've never been to one of these before and i'm rather overwhelmed and i'm glad there's not a quiz afterwards i came to be another voice that supports the southern pines land trust and the possibility of something really

127good in west southern pines i know a lot of the people connected with that enterprise you've heard them i thought what bob hall said really nailed it in so many ways but i also know that this is a tough choice for y'all and my hat's off to you it really is you have an almost impossible job but you're doing it gracefully we hope and i'm also glad to say something good about the schools here when we moved back here in 2003 i had the opportunity to become involved in more county schools in fact i worked for moore county schools and i served children and teachers and principals and coaches in southern pines primary school southern middle aberdeen primary school aberdeen elementary school and pinecrest high school it was a real delight and what i saw

128was the caliber of caring on the parts of these teachers principals guidance counselors and the rest and what i saw back in those days was a certain civility of being able to get along and even if we differed we found common ground so my hope for all of you and my hats off to those of you who are here because you care about your issues and you care about your kids my hope for all of you is that you will find a way past all the politics and whatever rhetoric's gone before find a way to work together for the common good and if you support that southern pines land trust and somebody says to you after the fact well you could have gotten more money for that why'd you do it be able to look

129them in the eye and say because it was the right thing to do thank you thank you mr simeon good evening dr carter dr remissing board members uh staying here for probably the first time i've ever done this in my life now i've said where you are sitting and doctor excuse me opportunity to sit but i have not had the opportunity kid's fixing you up there jim kent's working on it there oh okay right now can i go again yeah all right well what i was going to say was i've had the opportunity to listen and have to listen as you have tonight very attentively to different points of view on different subjects in a wide range but i want to talk to you about one item and it's based on my past history as

130former mayor pro tem of southern pines town council town council member planning board member school superintendent and also executive director for the local chamber of commerce so i've sort of covered the waterfront there folks in different views but we're saying that i want to say that i think you have the opportunity to make a decision tonight that will greatly impact all areas of moore county not just west southern pines not just southern pines but all of moore county we have an opportunity to increase the economic opportunities for our community because there's no greater force within a community than when a community comes from within and it exudes its energies to say let's be better let's get better and that's what we've got the opportunity to hear tonight i get emotional folks but i want to

131share that the trust has made i think a very substantial offer for the purchase of west southern pines now yes you can say and i've said as i've said in each of your seats and i know what kind of decisions you have to make but you must make what is not just the best economic decision for the moment but what's the best economic decision long range what will impact will this have what will we be able to do for everyone by approving the proposal that has been presented to you by the trust there is no question in my mind west southern pines middle school will become the center of economic development for not just southern pines or not just west southern but for more county because it is the equivalent of boosting in every way

132possible economic development thank you thank you um miss claudia a little high school french i know right i could barely say it too i inherited that name um for i just wanted to say before we even started that i i never come to meetings i don't belong here there's so many issues and the amount of things you guys have to face are so dire every single issue that it honestly overwhelmed me i thought i was just coming to talk about the school liaison position and there are huge things with things that'll impact us for years in addition to my thing so when i look around the room and i listen to everybody i really feel the spirit of we the people so i'm so thankful when i can't be there as a military spouse who

133is exhausted i'm so glad there's people like you who are retired not even in the school system not even dealing with these things and you are still here so i'm so thankful um so i'm here for the military liaison physician and i really i don't come to these things because they're smarter people than me um i have two kids in the school system i'm a working parent and i have an exhausted green beret at home i bounce between being a parent to three to a parent to four in a good way right when he comes home it's an it's an integration thing he's exhausted he's confused i've got 20 systems in place down like how we stack the paper in the house he comes in and throws papers all over and so my kids are

134upset and the system's upset and these are this is a funny way to put it but there are so many more important things that get thrown by the wayside as well and we can't see these things a lot of times because these are micro problems that happen every day right maybe it's your kids attitude shifts just a little bit to the left or the right with the way they don't want to do something or the way they do something and it is so aggravating as a parent to deal with it i am so thankful that there's a military liaison position that can see these things before i see them because i get pieces of my kids every day right if i divide four by 24 if i'm awake 100 of the time which i feel

135like i am that's still only bits and pieces of my family and i can only put so much into them i stopped having kids so don't worry there's no more but i can't do it alone right and we don't just have normal soldiers here we have super soldiers the national standard doesn't even cut it for us because our husbands want our and our women they want to do the craziest job they want to be the nfl of the army right this isn't the normal army so if what i want to know is why can't we add more people to look out for my kids when they're being little terrors you know when they're interrupting classrooms when i had you know but my daughter cried for eight days straight one time at home her eyes were

136swollen just because her dad went to a training for a week you know when he came back she cried i can't do this job alone you know we need people like rolly she services i'm just taking the numbers that i'm getting and i'm seeing so i'm sorry if they're wrong 3 600 children are you going to tell me that if i put 3 600 children on that line you're going to ignore their parents are you going to ignore their little weird problems that comes up from having super soldier parents they made this huge sacrifice all you have to do is pay under a teacher's salary for liaison so please reconsider don't take her position away thank you thank you miss mccloskey she's still here my name is allison mccloskey i've lived in moore county most

137of my life and what you consider a local when my husband and i got married and we found out we were stationed at fort bragg we knew we would put roots in moore county most of our decision to raise our family here was based on how fantastic this school system is i'm here tonight because a few of you can't comprehend benefits of having a military liaison position in our schools our school system has over 3 600 military connected students for those of you who have a hard time with math that's a third of the students we have those students in every school district or in every school in our district these children deserve our support the military liaison position provides just to name a few support during transitions transcript reviews compliance with the interstate compact

138military connected professional development for all staff oversight of impact aid and aypyn funds and oversight of our student to student and influx services i'm in a unique position because i saw my military friends go through our system without the support i saw the struggle the lack of understanding i saw how hard it was for them because they didn't have the support the military kids have now the fact that there are board members who do not support this decision is ridiculous and dare i say unpatriotic it's a shame i have to stand up here and speak on this subject it's a shame a few of you do not support our military children and it's a shame that instead of having discussions like adults you jump on the radio or social media to run your mouth the

139military liaison position not only supports our military connected children but benefits all the children in our schools so stop wasting time do your job and focus on matters that actually need to be discussed a highly beneficial position isn't one of them thank you thank you uh beam uh before b murphy gets are you miss murphy um let me call the next group uh i believe it's dr megan numbus numbus did i have a taker okay all right uh gail scott olinda watkins al mcshirley dr tashima hackett so my name is brenda murphy and i'm a resident of southern pines and i'm very glad to be up here after several people have pointed out what a fabulous thing the um project for the southern pines primary school is and how um even if they only paid

140a dollar it would be a great thing but um i've decided that my role here is to speak in favor of the sale of the southern pines primary school to the land and housing trust in the following with the following information the idea that you're not getting the market value and you should hold out for more money this may nag you because it may come to bite you afterwards but it's not really substantive substantiated the um the assessment made by the new assessors did put the value at a higher amount than the previous assessors and that's what was reported in the paper but people have with good sense can see that the value of the unentailed part of the property was valued at 300 000 or 300 something that thousand dollars and the entail value

141was valued at less so the value of the unentailed property is less than the value of the entire property from the first go-round so the fact of the matter is the entail property is probably could be seen as an expense to the school board because it is entailed and someone accused people of threatening to take the school board to court if they ignored the legal documents about that but that is not a threat that's just informing you that that's something that you need to take into account it is not a threat you cannot just divide divest yourself of this property but anyway the point that i'm making is that the people who have been making contributions to this fund to buy the property it is my belief that you are that they have been been

142coming forth with the amount of money they have because they are happy to support the moore county public schools and if the land trust withdraws there or as we've refused the moore county school board will not make the amount of money that is on the table thank you thank you doctor and pronounce your last name again numbers number oh it's numbers okay thank you dr handwriting hi my name is dr megan numbers and i'm a clinical mental health counselor here in moore county i specialize in working with children specifically military children and since being in practice for the past four years or so i've helped over 300 of our military students i've seen the struggles that they face in our moore county school district from academics and ieps to moving to and from our school

143district to and from north carolina to having social anxiety making new friends and losing friends i've interacted with both the teachers and the staff members helping them understand the need the special needs of military students military children and students or military children families face a multitude of challenges on a daily weekly monthly and yearly basis of those challenges education has been consistently a top stressor for military families for the past you know decade or so we the blue star family organization has done a military lifestyle survey and the education has been a top concern so much so that it impacts our service members ability to do their job to perform when they're at work which is protecting our nation furthermore 50 of military families feel disconnected from their civilian communities and they also feel that

144their civilian communities don't understand the sacrifices that they make but moore county understands we understand our military community and not only do we understand miss sampson understands her position as a military liaison helps to bridge the gap between military and sibling support services like myself to help our military families and their children ms sampson's role so much more than just being a support person she offers continuing education for teachers and staff about military culture and how to support our military families and students and she also or you know advocates for them to other organizations i know this because we work on the military government counseling association board of north carolina and we advocate for the needs of our military families across the state um you know the character of our community our county and our

145nation is dependent upon how we treat our most vulnerable population and children are one of those populations so to eradicate this position the military liaison position would be to take away an integral support person that military families and children that have not only utilized but they rely on for guidance taking away this position also takes away the peace of mind that ms sampson provides military families with the reassurance that the military children's education is a top priority for moore county so research shows that when the service member's family is taken care of they perform better at work so increased community support for military children and families is correlated to more productive soldiers better functioning units companies brigades and battalions and a more cohesive military force so to take care of military children is to take

146care of our service members and our veterans that we all love so much in morrow county we love our veterans and our support our small businesses that are run by military families so let's show the same support to them to our students thank you thank you gail scott hi hi i'll be brief i don't have a prepared speech i just wanted to come and support the subject pines land trust for the acquisition of the primary primary school my my kids went there and my older daughter was here over father's day weekend and she learned of the project at the school and um from fenton and with nora over here and she was so on fire that not only did she write them a big check but she went back to la and she contacted all

147of her former students students that she went to school with and said what an exciting project was going on there now i was totally on board and totally for it but even though i thought it was great i was never that excited until she got so excited i mean i thought it was great and i was like a safe for it but when she got so excited it made me realize this is an awesome thing we have an opportunity to do and so i came to just say i support that and being here i've been in a school board meeting in about 15 20 years but it kind of reminds me of a movie on some family channel tonight and i just hope we have that fairytale ending thank you thank you um miss watkins

148good afternoon i just want to come and say to everyone is that we have been fighting for so long for the four acres and i'm you and the four acres of course you all may notice the 1924 deed now what we need is we need the money and that is the rest of the acres that we have been fighting for for so long and here in moore county we have been fighting so long for the four acres and lemieux the mule is the money piece that we need so we the naacp is asking you to take the offer of the sandhills land and housing trust thank you thank you mr mcshirley [Music] good evening i just want to have two points one is i wanted to enter this uh to miss uh sonja parker if

149she's here yeah here i'll i'll get it oh thank you i got i have several but i wish i want to make sure everybody on the board gets it and leave it up to the superintendent who else may have missed the uh yesterday's pilot story which uh i know being a writer when you see good writing you should pass it around second point i just have a second point to make that is i noticed a whole lot of people came up and talked about our children and i just uh olin and i have uh i have seven uh kids that most people in the room would call white i guess and she has uh five kids that most people in the room would call black although two of them are have a white and black

150uh parents so when people come to you and say our children our children i don't i don't know who they're talking about i want you to give that a little thought thank you and before dr hackett gets started uh our next speakers and i'm sorry i do not know what this name is it's a doctor al anok anubia anukia uh dr tamisha thomas roley sampson and then we have phone in callers good evening everyone again i am back dr hackett i'm speaking in reference to a mother of minority students here in moore county and have been for over 20 years a few weeks back my niece was in she's three years old she was in the back seat of the car and she was having a tantrum and as she was having this tantrum my

151sister-in-law she took her and she got something to eat and she began eating her fries she said auntie i love you i was just hungry i'm so sorry so if you had any psychology class you have heard of maslow's hierarchy of human needs and at the bottom of that hierarchy it states that if you do not have food if you do not have security if you do not have love or feel as if you belong or then you cannot begin to esteem yourself nor can you get self-actualization meaning that you can see yourself succeeding in any type of society so the fight here is not about critical race theory nor is it about panorama education it is about understanding filters filters simply means that my decisions are based upon my experiences and until you live

152my experience you can't speak nor make a decision based on my experience so while you attempt to protect some children from being taught and experienced many are living these experiences every day see the difference is you have the ability to pull your children out of the schools place them where you would like when you're afraid of being trapped your children are being tracked and having these numbers follow them for years minority children are tracked daily by the vast majority of them that are placed in in school suspension by the vast majority of them that are placed out school suspension that are then labeled add or adhd or sit in a meeting with their parents because they are being disciplined performing a handshake because the team members don't understand their culture so when you don't acknowledge

153the experiences of some their differences or some are taught to identify their difference you make their experience or them null and void so in closing in a conversation i had with someone that i loved dearly i was told we would never agree because you want to feel everyone's pain my response as i was shocked was no i don't want to feel everyone's pain i want to validate everyone's pain because that is called humanity and that is what i believe the school board has been voted to do to acknowledge every child in moore county so while you are protecting some many are living these experiences daily and when you say we don't want critical race theory what you're saying is your experience is not important now if you don't agree with panorama take time to review

154something but what you do when you don't take things like panorama what you're saying is i'm going to keep more count and a bubble and i don't want my experience to be shared because i don't want anyone to know the real issues that are happening here so that is all that i have to say and thank you thank you um daughter would you like to pronounce your last name yes yes yes madam chair it's an honor to meet everybody i'm dr alan ubia first name is also a doctor so uh that's what happens that uh when my grandfather went into service was the army air corps and when my grandfather came out of the service of the united states air force and when my father went into the navy it was an organization called udt

155now unless you're a certain age you don't really know what udt was or is currently udt is a small group of soldiers called the seals and my dad was a comms guy i bring you greetings from the old north state capitol of raleigh north carolina i'm dr alanubia i used to come here all the time when i was little with 4-h and i ride horses and i get on the farm i do a program through nc state's extension program i belong with a group called network commerce association i want to complement mr john berea he's been a excellent statesman he's represented your county well as an architect it just so happens that my younger son my oldest son is a landscape architect i just want to introduce myself trustee at first baptist church been to

156trustee since 2002 i'm not a democrat i'm not a republican i'm independent and i just believe in the value of people and uh i'm a solutions guy and i know a lot of times people come here and a lot of people talk about challenges and they talk about problems now i'm not that guy i'm the guy who finds more value in focusing on solutions and what brings us together that we can use to build than the guy who focuses more on problems so that's who i am i wanted to introduce myself we're looking at intergenerational relationship development and i've been a trustee of the old church downtown raleigh in the corner of morgan wilmington it's the oldest church and one of the things i learned as a trustee is that we take the if we

157take and do business like we do on the football field the owner in the skybox is one age the coach on the sideline is one age the players on the field are one age and uh and the fans in the stadium are a different age but we all got one goal and that's the weird game and what we need to do as a community is we need to have intergenerational relationship development we need workforce development the two most powerful things that we need in this country we need jobs workforce development the trades affected by the silver tsunami okay we need our uh our elderly to be able to benefit from our younger people who can do a powerpoint presentation and we need the younger people who don't have the benefit of the history and benefit

158from our elderly and we bring each other into in a team and so for me i've done nc state i've pulled permits in excess of 50 million i've done new market tax credits but that's not what i'm here for what i'm here for is to say intergenerational relationship development is the solution thank you thank you sir i have a question everyone here is probably dying to know so are you a doctor are you name doctor oh do you have an are you i was my third all of the above thank you thank you so much you know my dad when my dad got out of the navy he was in psyops and i think it brought off on him somehow thank you um dr thomas thomas jump in the gun um hello everyone um i

159feel like a fish out of water i was in the office of dr alimia and he said come down to moore county with me what he didn't tell you is that he is the person that put the bid in for the aberdeen primary school he left that part out and so we are here because you will be considering whether or not i guess approving that bid and so i'm a community outreach person i love kids i used to teach kids i was once sitting where you guys were sitting i was a teacher mad about integrated mathematics at a meeting like this and this board they smiled the board i was looking at i got my pink slip next day so when i come into this room i see community a little tension in it but

160it's community no it's still smiling and i can tell that you guys are good people and so as the community outreach person i want you guys to say yes network commerce association can have that building and i want to tell you guys that i'm here for community outreach because we want to know what you want to do without any primary school we have to know what you want we want to hear what you want we want to know what this community needs and then i want to film it all because i want to say what what you guys are doing here it could it can really change some things and so we're not from this community we need people from this community to tell us what you need at aberdeen we don't mind working with

161the southern parts trust people they called us up the one you know who's been doing that building we came in and sat down down and talked to them the story there is awesome i love that story and you guys seem like a community that can really change the way things are done everywhere and i can film it all that's a shameless plug and your children because it takes a village and you guys are a village you are an american village so i'm going to end this by asking you to say yes we can come into your community and we can round up community members and we can build something that everybody likes and y'all can come in here and do business and the community everybody's happy wouldn't that be nice okay nice right because i

162was sitting where you were sitting integrated mathematics saying my kids can't read they can't count y'all passing down the school system this is going to be awesome for school to prison pipeline i was going out of my wicks and i went home and i wrote myself a curriculum and i found a man that could buy school and i want to find a community that has solutions thank you thank you miss samson i promise not to you know get us animated my name is rowley sampson i'm the moore county schools military liaison the position mr hensley has recommended eliminating in a june 22nd facebook post i'm also the parent of children who attended moore county schools without the support of a military liaison which negatively impacted their academic opportunities and emotional well-being at that time moore

163county schools felt no obligation to meet the needs of military children nor did they comply with the interstate compact it took eight years and three superintendents before military parents were able to establish the military family advisory council excuse me giving military families a voice it would take another two years before the part-time military liaison position would be created i consider it an honor and a privilege to be the first person to fill this role and i hope i am not the last every day i go to work with one thing in mind ensuring military children their families have a better experience than my family did while i appreciate the many messages of support from military families community members and more county school staff that i've received over the past few weeks my concern is not

164about my current employment but the long-term sustainability of this position i will not always be in this role and the risk of losing this position will always be a possibility as long as it is locally funded military families don't have the luxury of having a state-funded military liaison position like cumberland onslow wayne and craven county but moore county schools has as many active duty families as wayne and craven county schools instead military families have to rely on a local district to fund the position and invest in supporting our children more county schools has over 3 600 military connected students close to a third of our student population i also want to add that about 10 to 15 of our staff are military connected to compare the support of our students to a charter school with

165less than 200 military dependents is absurd the fact that a sitting board member would create undue stress for military families who currently rely on this position is insensitive and shows a blatant disregard for the unique challenges military children face in our schools our military students transition more frequently averaging six to nine schools before graduation they experience higher rates of anxiety and depression compared to their civilian peers they also live in households that have are continually impacted by war as their military parents have spent two decades in sustained combat military children deserve a seat or representation and military families deserve a seat at the table this is what that position means it provides military families a way to hold more county schools accountable on a final note to my colleagues you deserve better than board members

166that constantly call for limiting positions without understanding the impact they have on students education is not just about reading and math it's about meeting children where they are and ensuring they have the skills to succeed please know i am grateful for each of you and the professionalism you bring to our classrooms thank you thank you that concludes our in-house speakers we have seven people signed up to speak through only call-in of them have actually called in so i'm going to bring them in okay in order and then hopefully they'll this worked last time this should be christina mccall is christina mccall there thankful yes i'm here hello yes hello can you hear us i can okay my turn yes proceed hi i'm christina mccall by the way i am a moore county voter there is

167a large political influence to bring sel to our schools in 2019 alone there were more than 200 pieces of legislation referencing seo why do we want the government involved in developing our children's attitudes values and beliefs this is a social engineer this is social engineering and it will fail you cannot regulate the human mind no matter how much you spend trying to let's not fall into this trap get rid of companies like panorama this is bill gates and common core 2.0 only this time at zuckerberg and panorama common core cost us four trillion dollars and our schools are still failing nationwide parents this is another experimental education movement and our kids are the lab rats board members name one successful education movement that has come from a top down mandated approach the progressive education elites

168are once again getting rich off of us we don't need panorama to solve our problems or to give us surveys or treat our kids like a statistic do it in-house what is your goal establish your goal have an original thought and develop a solution why are you following along and throwing money at an empty solution again like common core this starts as a shell of a plan with no proven results of actually improving academic success our teachers don't need professional development out of a box whatever you do you've got to get off the hamster wheel stop checking off boxes and following along with whatever big government crams down our throats identify the problem and think for yourself to determine the solution you can't buy these solutions off the shelf it didn't work for common core

169and it won't work for this we've completely lost focus of our students academic performance and replaced it with a focus on social and emotional needs it's time for the seven of you to take a stand and make a choice get rid of panorama and to echo aj we're not going away so get a bigger venue thank you [Music] you might want to mute the stream it's a little bit delayed this should be cheryl christie bowman yes it is this string now thank you mute the tv thank you thank you she can go ahead she needs a prompt i'm sorry your love for the board of education you may proceed tonight many members of the public have addressed this sport on a wide variety of topics i could talk to you about the military liaison position

170but others have spoken on that much more eloquently than i can talk about the bid from the southern pines land trust but others are more knowledgeable on this topic than i am i could talk about crt and social studies standards but that topic is better left to teachers and educators to discuss we have already heard the disaster that comes with from uninformed pretending to be informed tonight today the board discussed a policy to ban indoctrination in our classrooms this proposal was made in spite of the fact that our teachers do not indoctrinate our children they educate them to propose that a funeral home director a gun dealer and an owner of a toy store should have the final say over what our teachers are allowed to teach proves how deeply this board distressed our teachers

171perhaps if instead of accusing our teachers of causing these problems which don't exist board members should spend more time in the classrooms actually listening to what our teachers teach if they did i'm sure members would come to understand that our teachers do not deserve either their suspicion nor their control but their defense and their support it's sad and shameful that we have heard so many members of this community take up this false narrative of divisiveness and distrust being put forth by these board members and used it to attack both our board and our teachers tonight it alarms me to hear members of this board openly attack accuse and berate our teachers and staff on both social media and the radio how will we be able to recruit and retain good teachers and staff when employees

172know they may wake up any morning to see a board member has called for their job to be eliminated on facebook or when they know their personal love life may be mocked and ridiculed by a board member on the radio or when they know they may be publicly accused at any moment by a member of this board for either unethical or illegal behavior with no supporting evidence whatsoever when dr grimacy inevitably decides to retire why should we as a community expect any qualified applicants for superintendent when everyone in this state knows that our board members constantly attempt to drag personal political vendettas into the public in the guise of personnel discussions which is legitimate should be held in private if this destructive behavior doesn't stop the entire system will suffer but it's starting to look

173like that that is the intention of this vile rhetoric i would ask this board to stop playing political games and instead focus on fulfilling their duty to enhance fund and protect public education in moore county i trust our teachers and i value our staff i believe we should support and protect them it's a shame that for the first time that i can remember in my life as a more county resident that what they need to be protected from is against the members of this board that is castle was starving thank you this should be kim wade um you're with the moore county board of education you must be i can speak now yes if you could mute any sound in the background it'll be easier for us to hear yes good evening my name is

174kim wade and i am president of the west southern pine civic club we want a walkable community where our residents are able to walk to a business and work in our own neighborhood we want our children to have relationships with business owners who look like them and live in their neighborhood in order to do that we have to create business opportunities to residents who earn less than 15 an hour business spaces available in our local commercial district are not affordable to people who earn do not earn a living wage the annual living wage for a household in north carolina is sixty thousand dollars a year the median wage for sixty percent of african americans in the west southern pines district overlay is less than thirty five thousand dollars a year the lifespan of a dollar

175in the asian community is 28 days in the jewish community the lifespan of a dollar is 19 days and the lifespan in the african-american community is approximately six hours american buying power is at 1.1 trillion and yet only 2 of every dollar an african-american spends in this country goes to black-owned businesses the only businesses we have available to support our essentials do not invest money back into black communities and do not fill a need or an obligate obligation to do so north carolina earns over 112 million in arts entertainment and recreation with all our talent and visual and performing arts we need a platform in western pines and we want to tap into that industry how do we do that we create opportunities recreate jobs and business that can supplement minimum wage jobs when the

176spectators drive through our neighborhood and wonder why we need repair it is because parents are trying to keep food on the table the rent mortgage and utilities paid owning the southern pines primary school and converting it into a business complex cultural art and education center we will have an opportunity to create a self-sustaining neighborhood we once knew owning our own florist doctors office ice cream shops bakery just to name a few we are not zoned to own and operate these businesses within our neighborhood why do you want to deny us this opportunity to use this commercial building to develop the economics needed to grow a walkable success the community thank you commercial building to develop the economic media through a walkable success sustaining community thank you this should be lynn thompson could you mute anything

177in the background yes i can can you hear me yes you're on with more county school board you can proceed okay thanks so much um i just first want to say thank you all for serving on the school board and for taking the time to listen to all of these public comments i know you've already had a very long day and you certainly have had a lot of people giving you advice so i'll be very brief in preparation for this meeting you had many documents to read and my hope is that you had the opportunity to fully and carefully consider the memorandum and support of southern pines land and housing trust offer to purchase southern pines primary school sites this document provides a very comprehensive justification not only in terms of a fair offer but

178also for the many educational cultural and economic benefits to the community to support you in the action to direct the staff to enter into private negotiations with the land trust for the purchase of the southern climes primary site thank you so much yes you're on with the moore county school board i know you left a voicemail could you give your name we couldn't quite get it from the voicemail yes my name is kia corson thank you you can proceed okay hi i just wanted to point out that i'm a more county voter a more county parent i'm a military parent and i'm also a minority i just want to state where i am standing because i think i've heard a couple of people throughout the talk tonight who don't seem to be as connected to

179the community though that they have a lot of input to give um i've also heard a lot of people talk about racism and and addressing that without discussing actual racism in the community we have proficiency rates for black students in moore county that are abysmally low and standards are low across the board i've spoken to a number of graduates from different schools in our area who've gotten to college and learned that they're the only ones who can't properly write a paper even though they passed high school english with a b i've seen quite a few teachers and advocates legends of their dedication to critical race theory despite the fact that it's been around for decades and has never once proven to help minorities or paranormal which makes us feel good but does not actually produce

180results for those of us that care about helping minority communities i'd like to see more time and money spent used wisely and instead of investing new inventing new curriculum with equally low standards if we're dedicated to addressing racism let's talk about actual racism um let's bring in accomplished civil rights leaders there are some who live in our very community instead we have people who merely champion causes on social media deciding what our kids should learn about these things when they don't have a connection to our specific community we're not raleigh we're not charlotte moore county is small it's unique and i think our needs should be addressed uniquely i'd like to see money spent on mentorship programs for kids from fatherless homes and work study programs for the kids who have to help support their

181families if we want to see minorities succeed we need to raise standards not lower them or change them we need to integrate into a cohesive society and not try to segregate further i'd like to see our parents and students be able to evaluate teachers in schools to speak back about and give constructive criticism about their educational experience whether they felt the time and money was well spent we do a lot of surveying students to see where they are but we don't do the same in letting our teachers um hear feedback from the parents and students that they serve about how they feel their time is spent on that education we have proposals to simply check diversity boxes and inclusion boxes but i'd like to see more real issues plaguing our specific community get addressed i

182think we're very fortunate to live in a small community and we can talk to our neighbors we can find out what they need but i don't see a lot of that happening um i'd like to see more conversations between people from different income brackets and political spheres so that these kids can be addressed as individuals instead of having these standards thank you guys for listening and thank you for taking the time for this meeting thank you you are muted you can mute or unmute yourself by pressing star 6. that was the last caller that concludes our public comment period uh here at 9 22. all right at this point we are going to move on into uh action items um our first one is the discussion and sec second reading of new and revised policies

183for approval uh mr levy i believe you're going to make that presentation yes um and uh thank you thank you madam chair i would first like to say thank you to my committee the policy committee which consists of you madam chair and also mr denison as well as myself um we worked on these new policies together and we're rather proud of all of these all of these new policies which we've come up with i want to highlight two of the policies for the board the first policy is a policy which should should be helpful in preventing um critical race theory in our schools there is a bill called house bill 324. house bill is not doing too well in the state legislature but thanks to especially the work by mr dennison as well as the

184rest of the committee we have uh come up with uh with a policy for our local board which mirrors uh hb 324. what it does is it it bans uh the teaching and the promotion of the following that one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex it bans the uh the promotion of the concept that an individual solely by virtue of his or her race is inherently racist sexist or oppressive whether consciously or unconsciously that an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partially because of his or her race or sex that an individual's moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex that an individual solely or by virtue of his or her race or sex bears responsibility for actions committed in the

185past by other members of the same race or sex that any individual by virtue of his or her race of sex should feel discomfort guilt anguish or any other form of psychological distress and to further uh ban the promotion of the belief that a meritocracy is inherently racist or a sexist belief or that the united states was created by members of a particular race or sex for the purpose of oppressing members of another race for sex additionally we have come up with uh with a an employee personnel policy which says that employment or volunteer service with the school system does not preclude an individual from participating in political activities such as registering and voting campaigning for candidates or issues running for or serving in public office attending political events and contributing to partisan groups or

186candidates but these political activities must not one take place during work hours involve school system funds or materials or make use or make use of an official school position to encourage or coerce students employees or others to support or oppose a political party or a candidate in addition we have proposed the other the other changes to our policies which appear in the miranda attached to the agenda the committee makes the motion that this be adopted and that further because the title of the agenda says it's a first reading uh we we further move that we waive a second reading and adopt the proposed policies as presented this evening and that does not require a second i believe madam chair that's correct that's correct are there questions or comments concerning the the policies madam chair i

187have just one comment with regard to the proposed policy on ensuring dignity and non-discrimination i feel that we have policies in place that address discrimination and we have um staff who if we allow them to uh be in their expert role and and stop micromanaging um i believe they will follow the policy so i i do not agree with with this one particular policy just the one policy yes other comments or discussion uh madam chair just to just to respond briefly i think that what we have heard here tonight is that we have a public which is concerned uh about something called critical race theory i don't think i think we we debate a lot of what critical race theory is and uh and and oftentimes we don't get a definition of it this defines

188i believe what the public is concerned about and it is important that it get into our policy not as as a as a mallet but as a as a way to guide our students and staff as to as to the philosophy and the policy of moore county schools it is important to recognize and ensure dignity and non-discrimination and these days perhaps we could have uh not perhaps years ago we didn't need to bring in such a policy but today we definitely do as it needs to guide our staff our students and our our teachers into uh into what is what this board expects and that is uh dignity and non-discrimination mr dennis yeah i'd just like to make a comment this is no reflection on our staff or our administration because from my point of

189view this has been our policy or included in other policies that we have this is just to make it very clear to the public what what we expect our teachers not to do to keep critical race theory stuff out of more county schools but i just want to emphasize that no reflection on our staff at all um because you know we have we have critical race theory hasn't come here in a big way yet so there may be individual things but we'll find out what those are and correct those with individuals but uh i think this is needed so the public understands that we're we're not in favor of the things uh and the practices of that are associated with the critical race theory other comments yeah i mean i'd have to agree i think

190um we practice this all the time anyhow in our schools um it's just kind of repeating what we do um and as as far as what you were saying i mean i don't i trust the teachers and um what they're teaching and i don't think they're trying to do anything politically um for their own agenda i think they're trying to teach history and trying to teach facts um but so i do agree with um what you have right and i think it's in our policies anyhow um you just kind of have it in one little section very clear yeah are there comments then we will proceed to the vote uh the motion is to adopt the policies as presented waving the um option of second reading um do we have a second you don't need

191one we don't need to because it came from it came from committee um so at this time all those in favor of approving the policy new and revised policies as presented to say aye aye opposed aye the motion carries 6-1 i will now move on to the presentation on the state required mental health plan madam chair staff has an update uh as requested by the board this afternoon staff has an update with your permission may they present that dr locklear and whoever else may be assisting you to follow up on the boards on the board's request yes yes sir they'll be here but as as noted earlier today we don't have any additional information to share except for the request of if we could outline the cost of the mental health plan ms dedman has

192been able to put together a spreadsheet that miss may's already put up on the tv there and she's going to walk us through that but it's important to note as we said earlier in the presentation that there's no new cost associated with the implementation of this school mental health improvement plan that's required by law and acquired by the state board policy but she's going to walk us through that all of these items have been already been implemented or would be admitted either way so i just want to point that out as we did earlier mr steven good evening as you can see on the screen these are the costs associated with the items that were listed in the mental health plan as dr locklear said they were already here it's just that this is what

193i've included in the mental health plan the first various curricula are there on the top the goal of the week zones of regulation etc are the things that we have purchased so far noting several are zero the positivity project i checked with that principal today and she indicated that she had chosen to not renew that positivity project opting instead for the one called six minute sel that was an outlay of s of nine thousand dollars last year um and that's uh gives us the um rights to it's a it's a book but it gives us right the rights to the book for the whole district just a reminder that social emotional learning is simply teaching children to be responsible to get along with others and to make responsible decisions about their careers the next sections

194are about the screening and the training and if you see that the staff training is zero the signs of suicide we do pay two thousand four hundred dollars a year for that for our secondary schools um the suicide severity rating scale the student risk screening scale those are also free the bigger expenditures are the managements and the tracking we've had educators handbook for several years at about 16 000 a year frontline behavior and social emotional learning um not learning social emotional management system is simply a way it's an add-on to what the nurses already use to track the students that they see and it allows us to share information about students in a safe way but then so that each other our counselors and psychologists and social workers know how the students are doing what

195are some critical events in their lives so they can follow up and keep them safe and then the other the last list are the frameworks that we use um we have a social emotional framework positive behavior intervention and support we've been doing for many years multi-tiered system of support i need to point out that that's not just specific to mental health it looks at our it's a school improvement framework and it looks at providing multiple tiers of support for all of our students in academics attendance behavior and social emotional learning it's also a way to ensure that if we have a student that we suspect has a disability we can look back and have a framework and we can show that these students did have some interventions they did have good teaching so we'll we'll

196be able to decide with good data whether they're eligible for special education or not as i said before today the facilitated assessment of mtss is that assessment that we do and then the shape is the school health assessment that is specific to mental health and that is also free we do that every year there are several grants that are reliant on that self-assessment so any questions i have just one follow-up question from our presentation earlier today you had indicated that our plan was a requirement at the state and federal level um state level what what is our debt do we have a deadline for submitting that plan to to the state um we the the um idea was to adopt and implement the plan on july 1st and then we are to submit it so

197there's an upload through the portal the safe and healthy schools portal and that is due by september 15th okay and do we receive any type of feedback uh from the state i mean that's a good question since we haven't done it before okay i'm not sure so it's a new requirement it's really nice to know yeah i don't know we'll answer that question later yeah when when you upload it into the portal you answer some questions and then you upload this document and then i'm assuming that we may get some feedback but then we're also required at the end of the year to report on what we've done the prior year and what our plans are for the following year and so just to be clear you have to actually be implementing the plan when

198you submit it yes and just tell them what you're doing so it's not like they're going to approve it or disapprove it you just have to have it on file that you're doing it yeah yes yes i don't think that i don't think they'll disprove it they won't say this is wrong or change it i don't think this is similar to what all the other districts are doing so i'm hoping that it's not so different i'm hoping it'll be okay mr hensley um i just have a couple uh really observations uh i'm not even sure they're questions but my first uh my first uh statement is uh this morning when i when i asked for it seems like three days ago that's actually that's not true but uh doing the people's work is never a

199burden anyway so really what i'm interested in and it's beyond the scope of this i just asked in the context of this i think that you know we need to know what the price tag is for offering mental health services within more county schools and obviously it goes far beyond this is the delta to implement this plan on top of what we already provide it would be nice to have a number that here's what mental health services cost but we'll save that for another day i would like i would like to say this even though we had an explanation of this plan uh i still don't understand it and you know i haven't sat down and taken you know a couple hours or an hour or so to go through it but you know there's

200a temp this morning well from here down is action but then i got to some stuff that well from there down was an action it seems like there was an action section i would like to i would urge my fellow school board members um miss thompson asked when is this due it's due september 15th i think that we should table this so that we have more time to as a board to really read it and understand uh what what we're signing up for and and look if if if if we read it and we conclude okay it's just an administrative report of what we're doing and what we're going to do within the context of what we're already doing great then we can improve it next month but i'm not in a position right now

201to say i know enough about this to vote yay or nay but i do know it's important enough that i should understand it well enough to say yes i endorse this or no i don't so are you making a motion to table yes so i will make a motion to to table this uh until the next board meeting second there's been a motion made to table the consideration of the state required mental health plan it's been appropriately seconded is there discussion let me uh let me echo what mr hensley said but um because one of the problems is that we got this all of this um on friday wasn't i believe thursday thursday um and you know um i don't think i saw it until friday and this is quite a thing to go over

202and quite a thing to understand now i do understand that that panorama was figured into this in the past but you're telling us that it is not going to figure into it in the future am i correct on that so um if you if you let me try to give you the big outline it took me a long time to get through it too to figure out what they wanted at each spot so i understand that for sure the first part is the needs assessment and it's asking for data from each of those any any data we have as part of our needs assessment in order to inform where we needed to improve so we used our old panorama data to inform our action items needed so i put panorama in there for what what

203we had done previously just to let them you know to let them know that we had had this training and we did use that that data the survey data to inform our action items just like i used the shape assessment for example so using the shape assessment is looking at our overall health assessment system and from that we concluded that we needed that the front line management system which we'd known already that just formalized it because we definitely need a way to track our students and be able to help them when they need the help so the first part is simply a needs assessment and then that informs our action items so then the second part is what are you doing already and so those are the things that we've already been doing like for

204example the signs of suicide we've been doing that so that's the second area that are with our current initiatives and then starting on the page six is the aligning with the infrastructure um and so i aligned with the things that we were doing with um with our showing that we were in alignment with the rest of the schools so we i mentioned the i ready system during that part where it was talking about the academics because it's important to look at the whole child and so we want to be able to have a spot where we can look at looking at the child's academics as well as the child's mental health needs so we can take good care of the students so that's where that came in and so that was aligning it together to

205the infrastructure so the four components really of it are our universal supports so it's kind of like the mtss multi-tiered systems of supports there's the universal support that all kids get which is teaching them about being responsible and getting along with others and making responsible decisions teaching them good academics and then also the big the biggest change for moore county schools is this training the required training program and that's part of the step one the universal supports because all the all of the um people who work with the with the kids are required to have this six hour training program that's why it's considered in tier one or the core supports because all this all the staff who contact the kids would have that that's the biggest change we've the other things we've had then

206the tier two component is supplemental support so when there is a student who looks like they're struggling a little bit the teacher notices this child seems to be a little bit off today needing a little more tlc um you know checking in a little bit more then that's our supplemental support seeing the counselor and then the third the third tier is the kids who need more intensive supports and those are almost always referred out to community members and that's just a matter of a referral but we it's what they wanted us to do was have relationships with our referral sources not community members community agencies community agency thank you community partners thank you i i i understand and so we have good relationships with them so that when we refer a student to santos pediatrics

207for example we can call up katie tucker and we have permission to share with the parents and we say katie this is what we see and she's saying this is what we see how can we help and then we can offer a continuum of care for the students did you leave parents out on purpose until just now or or where do the parents fit in in these in this continuum yeah thank you thank you doctor yes thank you um as as soon as as soon as there's an issue i mean parents are involved with the um with the core instruction and the parents if there is an issue at tier two then parents are involved at that point as well um and that's always the first step is to the teachers are asked to call

208the parents and then if there still continues to be concerns then counselors can do and social workers could do some follow-up so excuse me for leaving out the parents is it possible perhaps the parent comes to us absolutely that i remember happening frequently and most often the teacher and the parent are at their wit's end and they're asking for help together does this happen more frequently or less frequently than often than otherwise um teacher referrals versus um teachers i you know i i can't i don't know that it takes by the time the teacher makes a referral is the parent aware there's a problem absolutely that's what i'm getting at the t if the teacher has a concern then the teacher's first response is to check with the kid and check with a parent but

209but still i'm going to go back to my original question and by the way i appreciate this because i i'm i'm learning all the time okay there's a lot to learn and one of the things i appreciate you and your staff staying with us on this very very very long day it's above and beyond um you know but it first of all is panorama or the survey system an integral part going in the future talking about in the future do you see that as an integral part of this mental health program the panorama is and if you if you want to say something um about that you go ahead yeah let me just say yes surveying is a part um now let me mental health plan and it's really fun continuing to connect with our

210students and ask them how they're doing and getting feedback from so just a simple answer is yes sir okay i would add too that surveys are an integral part in our evaluation of these programs uh we have educators handbook that tells us the number of discipline referrals that we have it tells us the number of suspensions that we have and it gives us the and the number of in-school and out-of-school suspensions the number of other interventions such as anthony it tells us how we respond but it also tells us what the nature of the the problems are um the shape excuse me what's the one with the uh the nurses use the um front line that that gives us a sense of what the what the um what kind of barriers are confronting our students

211what what are some of the things that make it hard for them to learn and then then we have interventions that we can do at the local level and then we got to know when to call for help and and to have partner agencies to work with so the intention here is identifying children who have obvious difficulties with with learning because they're distracted by something and then we just try to find some way to get them get that resolved so we can get their attention back on on their core content so surveys are a way that we get macro information about students so we can evaluate you know what what are our needs and make that assessment and and we talk about that data we assess that data there's a lot of the data that

212doesn't inform us at all and we move on but then there are certain areas that show red flags and that enables us to target um what it is that we're doing and then once we do target it we can find out later if it worked or not take away surveys we're left with what educators handbook i mean you asked for ways that we evaluate these programs today you take away surveys um yeah they take away surveys but you're limiting our very capacity to answer your very question my my my concern is is this my concern is that through these surveys and through these platforms we're doing a and six hours uh training for teachers we're doing a massive mmpi or something similar to uh with with all of our students a mass psychoanalysis of all

213of our students and that to me is extremely invasive uh i'm concerned that i want i want one person once said well we've got to check the kids who have quirks and their personality those quirks are individualism and viva individualism you know i i i don't want a mental health program which is going to do a mass psychoanalysis of our of our children just for attending schools that's i i i don't i want our our schools to be a place of reading and writing and and uh health care should be done i believe uh elsewhere so just to clarify that um the the the sel survey is not an psychoanalysis or uh it's simply asking how comfortable they feel at school so that we know what we can change um and so the um mmpi

214is much more no i i understand i understand i understand that and then the training for the teachers is is a matter of explaining how to do a safe um a safe classroom and make the kids feel comfortable and how to notice when a student with mental health issues having a problem and how to how to manage the classroom appropriately and then you know triage the students who need more supports and and how to engage the parent and how to engage the parent yes yes and also remembering that um public schools has long had embraced social emotional learning and health for for a long long time um decades there's guidance standards that have um students that were responsible for teaching students about career awareness and responsible decision making how to get along with others how

215to manage yourself there's helpful living standards there's the safe and healthy schools and there's the whole child so it's it's a there's a lot of um you know a lot of initiatives out there from the state and even the federal level that does you know does support the idea that having healthy emotionally solid kids learn better they learn their academics better they're more successful in school they're more successful in college and career there's even some research that shows that the kids that have engaged in direct social emotional learning actually have better salaries after a couple years out of school okay we're not going to resolve the philosophical discussion tonight okay and there will be a line by line item budget analysis and the that information will be available at that time um what the superintendent

216has recommended is the board's endorsement of a plan that's required by the state mr anderson had a question okay no that's that's okay okay yeah and so i what i want to do is if if tabling it will just give the board more confidence to look at the information that's available i think there's a cliff's notes version that ms deadman has presented tonight with the dollar signs off to the side mr hensley you'll see that you were headed in the right direction when you started at five million and you're moving down it's uh well again i i think the difference was i was talking about the comprehensive costs of mental health the mental health plan itself now you can see is a little bit different it's a piece of that and and so there the

217state has something in mind that it wants to see us doing and so these are the things that that address what that criteria is on that template and so that template is not a reflection of all counseling and all social work activity and all psychologist activity because our psychologists do a lot of testing special ed eligibility testing as well so there's a recommendation on the table madam chair um we we need to have the plan submitted to the state in september we do need to be in a position where if we're going to provide what what training we are going to provide to teachers needs to be ready for when the teachers arrive in august is that correct all right so without board endorsement we're in an awkward position where the state is requiring a

218plan that that that we we need to have in place in order to execute that when teachers come back are there any additional questions or comments i just have one thing to clarify sorry so the question was asked is panorama is panorama uh required for this plan and it was answered yes but i think the more correct statement this survey is surveys with data analytics behind the ability to analyze them as required not necessarily a given platform you're required to have an assessment sure that that informs the programs you execute and then assessment to see if they worked or not and and my assertion as superintendent is is that you need a survey platform for that correct but it's not necessarily panorama right it's not necessarily panorama and yes sir that's the next item on

219the agenda and i was going to mention that it doesn't have to be just because it says panorama before because it's it's kind of like a menu is what i'm looking at it so it's an improvement plan it tells you what what we've done what our strengths are what our needs are and then it continues to to go down of what we continue to plan on doing so to me it's just basically right there in front of you i don't think we need to wait on it i don't um at the end it's it's saying that we need surveys not necessarily has to be panorama but that's just what we were we had in you know before so i think that's probably why it was there so i i vote for that we just we

220vote yes or go forward on this all right we have a motion that's been appropriately seconded which is to uh table uh the what's it called the mental health school yeah i might need a little mental health absolutely yes um and so we will need to proceed to vote on that um motion so make one other comment certainly mr dennison uh just this won't preclude us from still letting administration know if we find things in there uh before you know it really goes full scale so this will not delay what in the the teacher training is going to be first aid yeah i think first aid the mental health first aid which i went through myself i will still get an opportunity till that the administration know if we don't agree with everything that's in

221there or specifically what we don't agree with are there other comments all right then let us proceed to vote all those in favor of tabling the approval of the mental health plan until the meeting in august say aye aye aye all opposed all right the motion carries emotion is defeated 4-3 um let us now move on to item c which is the survey platform contract so you've taken no action okay sorry i'm moving on didn't table it you need the items okay so we have not tabled it so is there another motion the motion that we move forward to approve the to approve the mental health plan is there a second very good uh is there further discussion i i just want to clarify one thing and this was discussed earlier this morning is that

222there are no this is just to reassure people who may not have been tuned in earlier and that is there are no implied tasks and there is no additional authorization in this plan it's continuation of what we're currently doing is correct and we are currently educating the whole child um all right so we will now we now have another motion on the floor which is the approval of the mental health plan um barring any further discussion all those in favor aye all right opposed no i believe that carries did you vote [Laughter] motion carries four to three all right now we'll move on to the survey platform contract and we have discussed this at great length this morning of course we've heard quite a few speakers um mr levy it feels very passionately about it

223and has mentioned he wants to passionately speak again um but are there others who might like to speak before we let him be passionate let's all do it before you how about that mr holmes it won't be long just stay brief bob i'll stay but but i'll defer to there were some people that wanted to speak yeah i actually do have something um and i don't mind if i can go ahead and read it um just make sure it was on uh last month i wanted to put a hold on the renewal of the panorama contract because we were just going around in circles with this conversation and frankly it wasn't going anywhere first let me apologize to seth um my intention was not for to put more work on your plate frankly my intention

224was to stop the conversation that wasn't going anywhere and i have trust in the school system and certainly do not want to micromanage you at all so i i wanted to apologize to you putting the renewal on hold also gave me time to check out why some parents were linking crt with panorama i also wanted to do some research on other programs out there and i will say many like skyward i checked out blue surveymonkey i even checked out qualtrics had many great qualities and they all they all gave you that one big platform but many of them were like you said earlier were business oriented they weren't just school oriented i really spent hours researching um panorama in fact i was up till about one in the morning one night and my husband had

225to come get me so it's um i've really done a lot of digging and um because i see the parents had concerns with it um aaron fewer and i might be saying his name wrong was the founder of panorama in 2012 he wanted to create a platform that that all schools districts could use no matter how rich or poor their county was many schools that do not have the funds can never hire a consultant to look over paper data he created this platform for all school districts to be able to use this platform lets the county school and a classroom see how they are performing it gives feedback to a teacher about their classroom and what they can do better to date the platform is in 900 school districts the one thing i was hearing

226last month was it was funded by mark zulk um zuckerberg whatever his name is and he's promoting crt because of his political agenda mark also gave 1.2 million dollars to stanford medicine scientists so they can continue their study on immune diseases and he also gave three billion dollars to run the all the cure all disease project google yale ashton kutcher a plus grade and soft tech also fund panorama my point is is the how of something that gets funding funded doesn't matter to me if it did i probably wouldn't be eating at a few restaurants or shopping at a few stores right now what matters the most to me is if it is providing something that is useful and beneficial for our school system panorama makes it possible to see how students are doing across

227math literacy core academics attendance behavior and college and career readiness so educators can correlate coordinate action to support every child panorama is partnered with kindness counts which is about character education all of this lets teachers have a 360 degree view of each student to understand what they need and how to help them thrive school and district leaders can interact with the data as a macro level to understand performance trends educators can also go from identifying a struggling student to building an intervention plan right in panorama and monitoring the progress over the course of the intervention cycle panorama helps schools measure measure non-academic factors like the social emotional learning safety belonging and family engagement some reason sel and crt are getting coupled together but i will go over what that looks like in more county schools

228i saw some of the questions that were floating around and some some were from other school districts which i'm sorry somewhere from other school districts may have used and some of the questions that i saw stemmed from a risk behavior survey that the old board did not approve of and we did not use moore county schools does a great job for letting parents know i'm not sure where people were getting that we didn't because we allow them to view the questions at the school online they even commented through the parent portal and paper copies were sent home in folders stating that there was will be a survey in all and and also an all call goes out to your from your school followed by an email at any time you can opt out of the

229surveys now if some parents are saying that the teachers are making the students take the survey then they need to be addressed to the principal and the board of education nothing will be corrected or solved if the administration doesn't know about it i looked at our september 2020 board meeting when the panorama surveys were on the agenda all the questions were there as i mentioned before we do not approve we did not approve the risk behavior survey we did not we did approve the s sel and climate culture i printed them out right here and if you want to see them i can pass them around as well or you can go on to our september meeting 2020 and look and they're all right there i will highlight that some of our seo questions were

230like this and i kind of did it through each category and i won't i'll try to make it real quick so i know it's really late um 6 through 12 we're asked if you fail to reach a goal how likely are you to try again that was one of the questions another one was how likely are you to change your way of thinking about your behavior or putting forth effort in the past 30 days how often did you listen to other points of view if you walked into a classroom upset how many teachers would be concerned overall how do you feel i'm sorry overall how much do you feel you belong at your school how often do you worry about violence in your school that was six through twelve questions three through five how often

231do you stay focused on the same goal for several months at a time how often did you compliment other accomplishments how respectful are your teachers to you how likely will it be that someone at school will bully you online those were some of the sel questions here are some of the one sample questions that panorama gives you on their site to use for their grades that we did not use but they they have them on their site if you wanted to use them some of them were how difficult is it to stay focused why don't you like what don't you like about school and what is your favorite subject so they're very short they're not as in-depth as i think ours were the climate control survey was based upon if you strongly agree agree or

232disagree some questions were about were what grade you were in and are you treated with respect by classmates do you feel safe at school or do you feel students receive different punishments for breaking the same rule there are 37 questions so i won't go all over i won't go into all of them as you can see there was nothing about crt in those questions moore county school created those questions and they may use questions from panorama but the questions that they created have to be approved by us the board they also get viewed by the public one can argue panorama has questions you can use for a survey that may be more relatable to cr crt but we do not use those questions like i said before we do not put we put a hold

233on the risk behavior survey last september but looking at those questions they had nothing to do with crt as well they were focused on drugs suicide drinking vaping and sexual activity although many of the questions were uncomfortable they didn't promote anything in fact the survey may be something that we may want to revisit at a later time our county uses panorama as we seem fit to use it it is a tool in our toolbox it is a platform it's not a curriculum any survey for the students always gets approved by the board of education i haven't even mentioned how we use it for our staff which is a game changer as you can see how satisfied our staff has been at our schools i apologize for this long comment this evening on this matter but

234i wanted the public to know that i did do my due diligence on this matter i do not see anything wrong using panorama i saw no signs facts data saying that our school system more county schools is using the platform to promote crt i do not care what other counties may use it for around us or even that are oh or even at our state superintendent which he does use panorama um i just care about more accounting schools than what we do so thank you sorry for being so long madam chair i yield miss paul well my talking point sorry i i pulled it i told the lady she said exactly some of the things that i was uh prepared to say are you sorry that's that's okay i i can't object to somebody who's

235talking a long time [Laughter] just to echo some of what stacy said um the questions are multiple choice they're not they're not you know fill in the blanks the questions she she read there are four responses there and they pick one of the four responses almost once in a while sometimes frequently or almost always so you know it's hard to indoctrinate somebody if you have a multiple choice they don't write down you know stuff but the surveys are important uh the use the survey we would not do last year the youth risk survey that that has information in there and that's the only survey that would contain the student's name and the only reason we do that we have to know what students are having problems i mean how how are you going to solve

236a problem to the students we don't oh mr denison please i need to correct you on that no we never have the student's name in the youth risk behavior survey not the uh the uh um suicide service the seo the scl i'm sorry yeah i'm sorry the competencies portion of the seo because those questions were so the wrong one so it was the sel students names are not on on the other ones right and so there's no purpose stuff there but the important point is uh the students can opt out of the test and as stacy said we need to ensure that all our teachers understand this because i too have gotten comments for uh the student said they didn't want to take the test and the teacher said they had to take it so

237we have to make sure that's not happening students can opt out of all tests correct they have the option to opt out all all surveys we're giving students have an opportunity but we mean that we thought we meant that we've heard some stories uh during this recent uh spat of debate that we've had and that does concern me because somehow we didn't communicate uh somehow somebody missed the memo uh somewhere along the line obviously there's some there's some basis and truth to some of those but we need to get that should we continue with this we need to get that message out better that if parents don't want to opt in then that means nobody at school should be in any way compelling the child to take take any one of these services the students

238can students excuse me excuse me not only the students but the parents opt out yes yes yes all right from each and every survey yes yes not seo okay so what what is what is what is that what is scl okay so i'm sorry yeah you're bored thank you mr levy yeah okay for surveys that contain one of the uh eight criteria in the pupil protection amendments pupil protection privacy uh rights amendment amendments okay thank you neil uh that relate to things such as uh illegal activity which would include drugs and alcohol if you're under 21 right or sexual activity political affiliations there are eight different criteria so if there are any questions involved in the survey that contain that type of content parents must be given the option to opt out okay all of

239our surveys are voluntary so because our seo survey and our climate and culture survey do not contain any of that protected criteria as content we're not required to let parents opt out although again they are all voluntary any student who sits there says i'm not going to take it they sit there and they don't take it however moving forward if the board feels like we would like for parents to be allowed to opt out of any survey you know we'd be glad to to move in that direction yeah i think that's interesting but that's i would just like to point out i'm rarely in this role that uh the policy concerning uh how we administer uh surveys and the and whether people can opt in and opt out is beyond the scope of this particular

240adoption of this platform you're exactly right mr dennison did you have additional comments or questions no no additional ones do you have any i just again i want to point out a couple things that were discussed this morning that some of them are not on the brief and two things one is that um that the um that moore county schools is not going to purchase the professional development portion of panorama therefore we're only purchasing the survey and data analytics portion that's the first thing and the second thing is and this has already been pointed out is even if this is approved today this doesn't approve the surveys as ms caldwell pointed out and as all the board members know from previous meetings but the public needs to understand is if this is adopted today then

241uh that again uh approval for any given survey rests with the board uh so anyway i just want to make those different student surveys we do have the sample questions for the teacher working condition survey we use with our teachers and the classified working condition survey we use it for for that we we hope that we can continue correct correct right just to clarify i heard a comment uh from one of the speakers about parents seeing the surveys uh the pair the surveys are online the surveys are in the schools and you know we don't say you can't take it i mean they have and and this is weeks in advance before the survey is ever given so it's not like something we're given the survey here's a survey we're going to give it next

242week it's never like that the dates are known well in advance and we have have weak stuff for the parents and ourselves to look at them before the past three years what we've done is we come to the board and seek the board's endorsement of the surveys and to seek parent and community input on the surveys we spend the next month with the surveys posted online and invite a parent and then we bring come back the next month with that feedback for the board and then the board has made their decisions all right mr levy yes uh just one thing and i'll say it now so i'll make sure i'm at least six days six working days ahead of time or whatever that number is i would hope that at our next board meeting we

243place it on the agenda that a resolution that parents or children may opt out of any survey they wish um and that then the form uh be designed uh if if that's appropriate uh to send home to say ahead of a survey here's your opt-out form you can opt out or opt-in whatever you want to do and i'll support that sir okay so rather than on the agenda would that not be something to send to policy uh if you wish to have adopted as board policy but i don't know that it's strictly necessary to i mean a resolution wouldn't carry any weight though i mean the the board could simply take action to approve a motion to direct the administration and take certain action that would be a policy could follow and a policy could

244follow yeah but i i would like before we start our next school year next school year because well i'm going to vote against this i i don't know i have the feeling that it's going to pass uh but but still i think it could be made stronger by uh by having uh this resolution i'll get with you and we'll figure out what what the topic and the executive summary sort of like yes we did with uh um just listen what mr lee if i understood it correctly it's uh revisiting our survey policy our survey are opt not about the surveys themselves with the opt-out opt-in understand so i think there's broad interest on the board to take a look at that at least the new members so my suggestion would be we put it on

245the agenda at a future time it needs to be timely and we get a brief on what the previous policy is we have a discussion as to what we'd like to see and then we can refer to committee after has been a brief and kind of everyone's thoughts and then let the committee kind of take all that in consideration and come back with changes in policies right and said i'll get with mr levy and we'll figure out what direction we're going and i'm prepared to direct that administratively in the meantime okay that would be fantastic into discussion and then it's a matter of building the framework around it all right but let me okay i was just going to call go ahead with a question no i just i i feel i have to answer

246uh miss i did i really have to answer the the the previous arguments um uh basically we've been talking about a survey but panorama is not just a survey platform it's sort of like saying um uh you know we want to uh we want to have this wonderful book called to serve man it's a cookbook um if those those people those people are either old enough to remember the twilight zone or those who watch the sci-fi channel understand what i mean uh the the bottom line is that that that panorama is not sel it is not social and emotional learning it is transformative sel and i'm using their their term not my term transformative sel and what you are buying when you buy panorama is a whole program including webinars and while we are not

247going to purchase the professional development portion of of panorama those webinars are free and what you do with the webinars is if a child is is for instance falls uh to a certain level on some sort of arbitrary social emotional uh social emotional gradient then you're supposed to send them to these webinars and these webinars discuss uh everything from uh uh so so-called social emotional learning but they include anti-racism which is another way of saying racism uh in our dystopian world um i i also underline the fact that if you look at panoramas website the first thing that you see are their proud association with the san francisco unified school system and the new york city school system these are not school systems which we want to emulate and what what happens if you listen

248to some of the webinars because i've signed up for some of the webinars and what they are are leftist leaning um uh so-called uh anti-racist dogma uh which uh which believe and i'm i'm using their terms that uh that students are oppressed and because they are because they are oppressed uh they need uh to the the the caucasian children need to understand their oppression and uh the children of color need to understand that's the reason why they're oppressed and that we so-called help them out of their oppression nothing is farther from the truth we are all given an equal opportunity here and that is what our goal must be panorama is out of sync with the goals of the moore county school system panoramas i've said before and i'll say just one more time their

249particular uh trainer for uh weight that trained wake county and also trains other yeah i'm gonna say it because because they're proud of it they're proud and and this trainer is proud of her association with uh with economic development in cuba and right now there are riots going on in cuba because because in that and i'm using john kennedy's words that imprisoned island uh is a place where people swim or try to swim 90 miles and drown trying to come to our shores this is not the kind of company that we want more county tax dollars to go to and more importantly what they theirs their surveys their seminars their entire program because it is an entire program is not something that moore county should be a part of we need to push back we

250need to vote no we need to say we'll take another platform but we need to send a message to our taxpayers that we're not going to go along with this social emotional learning which is which is transformative social emotional learning which is trying to transform our children i don't want to transform our children i want our children to transform us by equal opportunity and by arch by our children using that equal opportunity to to become better than we are and to achieve higher and and and and and to achieve uh their their their loftiest goals that's that's what i want and and and i want someone who will support both america and our capitalist system not uh not the socialist system of cuba submit we'll keep that woman out of here you know do we

251do webinars no just one point of clarification on that and that we we do not to my knowledge at no point as any student ever assigned to take a a uh a webinar from panorama those students are assigned to take webinars that's and we have a new policy tool it's part of the point of view this morning was that the webinar the access to that was made voluntary for teachers it happened it was listed on a menu it was uh it was listed on a menu that was true when mr henson pointed that out but it's certainly not one that we've initiated effort to to move people towards we did have the training webinars and that's excuse me training webinars uh that we will not do in the coming year and and one of the

252one of the problems is as the person as i pointed out earlier if you if the camel's nose gets it starts to get in the tent the rest of his body is is likely to follow and by the way they also have social they also try to do social emotional learning for teachers okay it is an entire program of transformative social emotional learning it is not what moore county schools should be doing and because the board has the you have the discretion to approve or deny the the uh the survey so if it's something that the board is not comfortable with certainly make those changes [Music] i make a motion that we follow the recommendation provide it to use the platform and the platform was there second second all right the motion was made by

253ms thompson seconded by mr dennison barring any further discussion we'll proceed to to vote all those in favor of the adoption of the survey platform panorama say aye aye opposed all right motion carries 4-3 all right we'll move on now to item d capital projects uh madam chair my recommendation stands in um recommending the board consider a motion to approve the two projects that were presented to you today mr levy is deferred to him on on his amendment and if there's any questions that any of the board members have with respect to that mr uh barath and i are available to answer them otherwise we have nothing to add that we did that we presented earlier today okay so we are returning uh i think actually just to the item of activity buses no ma'am

254no ma'am this is a package of two bids i mean two uh awards on using esser funds we we package these together correct but mr levy just wanted to return to the part of it that part of it here's here's what i would suggest uh madam chair if someone could move to uh to adopt the superintendent's recommendation i i can't do that and seconded i'll move to amend all right is there a motion motion to move to adopt superintendent's uh recommendations all right motion by ms thompson second by mr dennison um is there a discussion yes i would i would move to amend the recommendation as to the school buses uh to and um to add uh with in part with our fifteen thousand dollars worth of savings uh that we're getting for having uh

255uh not having to pay the uh the price we thought we were going to pay to add seat belts or proper restraints to those to those buses madam chair uh the when a child is going 60 miles an hour on a bus and standing up in the aisle which i know they're not supposed to do but uh i've ridden buses all our kids have written buses when they're standing up in the aisle and a drunk driver hits that bus that kid is still and that bus abruptly stops that child is going 60 miles an hour through that bus and that child is going to get hurt uh seat belts have been used in automobiles since 1967. they have they've been mandatory since they have been they have been used prior to that they have saved

256lives they will save lives on our buses i know we have some of the best bus drivers and i know we try to do the most careful things possible but students students on buses need that extra protection and so i would uh submit that we would we would add seat belts uh to those buses are there other comments or questions mr hensley you look like you are got one did you make a moat i i made a motion to amend it i think there needs to be a second need to be a second i will second your motion that is all okay all right the motion for amendment uh to add that the uh extra funding remaining after the purchase of the buses would be applied towards seat belts for the activity buses is there

257a discussion about this motion the superintendent before it offered recommendation on the amendment certainly uh i would recommend that the board not approve the amendment uh and uh for the reasons i stated earlier today with all respect my fellow bob on the uh on the diaz there's an argument that can be made for restraints and i made an argument today as to when we look at the nature of of bus accidents the potential for fire in this case is much greater than that of impact and there is a lot of research that does support that but if you look at the ntsba website you'll see that that they do not make clear recommendations on restraints and they make reference to the need to evacuate and that restraints might be a problem but i can't use

258the ntsba website to prove that point one way or another what we have here is a precedent that i think we need to apply to all buses with a plan that the board commits to making sure that if you're going to put restraints on these two buses you need a plan to eventually get them on all buses and so if i might use the metaphor of the camel and the nose under the tent i think that if the board wants to invite the camel in that's great but i want you to be willing to pay for everything not just these two buses so i would ask that if you want to go down that path either do it right or don't do it at all and let me uh let me make one one observation

259you know there was a there was a car named tucker uh and then that car they put seat belts in the 1950s and the argument movie was made about that that's right a movie was made about it and the argument against seat belts was whoa if you put it in and we don't put it in and there's a a um there's an accident with one of our cars and we haven't put it in then we're going to be found liable yes you will be found liable because the smart thing to do is to put the seat belts in and by the way there are two agencies of the federal government one is the national transportation safety administration and the other is i believe it's the national transportation administration uh nitsa uh basically recommends us basically

260says that we need that we need seat belts and buses the the other agency is not is not as sure the bottom the bottom line is that that the most recent accidents of buses uh have carried with them recommendations for putting seat belts in buses and in this argument is different from panorama because i think that if you start with a little bit of panorama you're going to get a lot of panorama but i got to tell you something if you start with a little bit of seat belts you might get a lot of seat belts and that would be a good thing chair call the question call the question okay uh at this point and what we would be voting on is just the amendment if i'm correct mr amy correct all right so

261the amendment was to add that the excess money uh saved on the purchase of the buses would be put towards seat belts um on these particular buses and actually that the seat belts would be that that the seat belts or proper restraints i'm using the term seat belts it may be seat belt and shoulder harness or whatever a proper restraint is uh that it that it actually be purchased okay um are there okay so the question has been called i've stated the question all those in favor of the amendment to the motion say aye aye opposed all right uh the motion fails um we now return to the original motion which is the approval of the two capital projects with bid results barring any further uh commentary we will proceed to vote all right is

262there a motion yeah there is a motion yeah yeah we got that yeah a long time ago i think we all just vote i think everyone just voted aye to vote when they met nay as well just it was right she said opposed so that's that's perfectly fine we should have said okay so the motion is to approve the two capital projects all those in favor opposed all right the motion carries 7-0 uh we now move on to the final yeah final upset bid for the old aberdeen primary school i know we have people in the audience waiting to hear and madam chair the administration has nothing to add to its presentation earlier today but mr barath and i and legal counsel are happy to answer any remaining questions board members might have are there

263any questions madam chair i would just like to make a comment we heard earlier today that we began our upset bid process for our aberdeen primary school back months ago and i believe the figure mr barath was 000 that we started with and we went through the process over months and we have now received a offer for 473 thousand one hundred dollars from network commerce and i would like to make a motion that we accept their offer uh second but i i would ask that um how did council want us to word this um well it's up to the board but uh we do have some the uh the the perch interested purchaser had sent mr brass and requests for some minor relatively minor adjustments to the purchase contract to move things along if you're

264if you can delegate to the superintendent the authority to approve any final changes on the understanding the price and the property description will remain the same we can get this done quickly you don't we don't have to come back to you next month so so so long as the price remains the same price on the property description i think yes uh that that would be an amendment that i i would go along with and i guess she would go along with it so we have a motion and it's it's not really an amendment it's just that well that's the motion that i think she and i are making the question hasn't been called so i forgot i've missed who made the motion if ms thompson agrees with that she could say she could thumbs up

265and that could be the motion absolutely all right are there any other further discussions we'd like to clarify for the public record okay um either legal counsel or mr barath will the school board receive 473 100 for this property are there any deductions that will cause the board to receive less than that amount just as with the sale of the southern pines elementary site we do have a realtor fee that will be reduced from the net once we have the formal closing as i did with the other project i informed the board of the final closing cost and which point my presentation would be updated reflect that as final as well and use your microphone on i think it is yeah it doesn't sound it but it doesn't sound like it okay thank you john

266all right that's all i know madam chair i have one question so i understand that during the due diligence period the uh the uh would-be purchaser has the absolute unilateral right to cancel with no penalty due diligence canceled during the due diligence penalty period with no penalty what rights does moore county schools have to cancel the contract if we approve it what rights do we have to cancel it and with what penalty i'd have to review the contract to answer that question i don't john do you happen to know i'm trying to flip to the section right now i would if we'd have to look it up yeah sorry i didn't think of it for real estate generally none real you have nothing yeah usually usually not right it's the it's the it's the buyers

267it's the buyer's option you know during the purposes during due diligence you might discover something you weren't aware of that really materially changes um you know the deal and and it's an escape valve for the body so section uh items uh should seller fail to perform any of sellers obligations under this agreement within 15 days after receipt of written notice from buyer or in the event of a monetary default seven days the buyer shall have the right to either one to terminate this agreement receive a return of the deposit or two to specifically enforce this agreement against seller provided however that if specific performance is unavailable then buyers shall be entitled to pursue any other right power remedy available so i think the answer is none yeah correct right yeah because what what we want

268is money and which is very simple to give and what they want is a piece of property which is kind of complex you know exactly there's a bunch of nuclear nuclear waste on the site that changes things from buyer it doesn't change for you how much money you're going to get but i just i didn't want to make one observation there was a young lady who came before the board who was extremely extremely articulate uh with regard to this property and uh still here i see her i see her in the back and i want to congratulate you because you knew exactly what to do which was to get the money together and to pay the right price and you're going to get a school and you're going to benefit the community which is what

269you said you're going to do and i wish uh that others would learn from you i think what you did is is a fabulous thing and i'm personally happy to sell the school to uh to your organization and if i may just to uh to mr hensley's question i did just expand the contract there is a um default provision um that so either buy or seller can default if the buyer defaults in a material obligation under the agreement then the board can terminate that'll have to be a default like failure to pay the deposit that sort of thing but you do also have an ability to terminate under that provision all right we have a motion on the floor um and it has been properly seconded all those in mr levy no i'm i'm not

270right no you seconded the motion though yes i did yes yeah oh i didn't know what you're going to do you seconded the motion we're going to set a timer on mr levy i'm going to get a debate i thought you wanted another speech no no i will say though you know we've we've paid no attention to who was making the bids um as we've done this upset bid process because that was handled by mr barath and the and the realtors but i have now gone online and looked up network associates is that the proper term network commerce associates and you have some marvelous projects all right someone call the question call the question all right mr holmes has called the question all those in favor of proceeding with the uh final negotiations on the

271sale uh allowing our superintendent and attorney to complete the sale process right so on the understanding that price and property description would remain the same correct all those in favor opposed motion carries 7-0 congratulations [Music] all right let's now sell some more uh the next one moves on to the southern pines primary school appraisal and offer i will ask ms may to open up a new document that i just created based on the conversations that we had this is it there was a lot of red lines on the document in the appraisal so i just removed those quickly and blocked him out so you can see from the village appraisers again just for clarity as neil tried to point out reaching the screen earlier what the three parcels that village appraisals appraised so yeah the

272parcel 1a off to the right and that's indicated in the red block to the right you have the center uh double the size almost block and that is parcels 1b through 4a and then the one on the far left across the street as parcel 4b so just for clarity of everyone again just there's a lot of discussion and questions on this so if there's any confusion hopefully this will settle that to understand the properties that were contained in the appraisal and that's the only update that i have to the presentation from this morning all right comments or questions or a motion madam chair i have a motion mr hensley um first i'd like to start off if i could um moore county schools has been at this for over a year and a half the

273report here says december 2019 the school board authorized private negotiations with the southern pines land trust year and a half is a very long time i want to start off by saying for my very first meeting i thought that there was a very natural compromise to this whole to this whole uh situation and if you listen to the residents and i've listened intensely from a december meeting on i've listened to the residents of west southern pines and really everyone coming to make the case and when you listen to the people who are truly speaking from their heart uh three things came out the importance of the auditorium to the community that auditorium has been used for for weddings it's been used for funerals and everything in between also the uh the four acres with the

274deed restrictions uh even miss watkins or linda watkins mentioned the the four acres earlier today and uh obviously and also that four acres was also the site of the rosen of the rosewald school rosenwald school and if i could direct everyone's attention up here out of the 17-acre site the four acres is there it's labeled as parcel 1a so i would like to make a i'd like to make the following motion and the motion is twofold the motion is to authorize the superintendent and staff to part one begin to go begin private negotiations with the southern pines land trust to purchase the four acres more or less known as parcel 1a simultaneously to begin preparing the remaining 12 acres more or less to sell to the highest bidder at a public upset bid thank you

275is there a second second all right the motion has been made by mr hensley seconded by mr holmes uh is there discussion or are there questions i would just like to make a comment madam chair um i've heard i i'm with mr hensley and listening to so many speakers in the community coming out various meetings and listening to their plea and their passion for um recognizing what the sandhills um tr sandler's housing and trust is trying to accomplish um with with just the culture and um and the business opportunity for economic development they have in the area um i would really love to see the um the group be able to purchase that's property comments or questions yeah and um in this and i agree with i'd like your your amendment i guess it would

276be a resolution but um i i'm conflicted because i think that we should just go into private negotiations and see what really matters to them if they want the entire one or if they want just that little partial and just give them i mean it's not that we have to approve it but i just think that just giving them the option of both and just kind of going into private negotiations on that just from hearing some of the people today i don't know if if they want the entire property or if they're just looking to have that one section of that four or five acres so i'm a little conflicted there other comments or questions well yeah i know that the uh that the land trust wants the entirety of it there's no question that

277that is what they want um but unfortunately we have to think of all the students of moore county as well as the interests of the uh of of the people of west southern pines i think this forms a very very good compromise because one of the things that they're saying that everyone is in favor of uh of of the land trust buying this piece of property at a very very low value so long as the children of moore county pay for it and that's really what's happening i mean let's look at the county commissioners did not give us any additional money because they thought we already had enough money or whatever they thought i know that we have some uh some some problems with that the town of southern pines is saying yes we want

278to have this new thing in our town but they spend a million dollars on a dog park over near the airport and they don't they don't offer a single dollar to the to the children of moore county and to the people in the northern part of of moore county who need a roof done on their gyms or uh or to um the to the even the pine crest high school which apparently needs needs another roof and the like you know i want to be generous and i personally i think what they're asking for is a worthwhile project but everybody's got a worthwhile project so long as they're spending other people's money let's compare that to what was done here by by the aberdeen primary school at the aberdeen primary school some people with with uh

279with i think equally important community objection objectives said okay we'll raise the money and we'll pay what will enter into the bidding process they just they didn't want to be political they wanted to do what was necessary to raise the kind of money that was necessary and quite frankly we didn't know i don't think i knew anything about them they said we're good enough that we can raise the money and we can enter into that competitive bidding process i think that if the land trust had done that and concentrated on on on on doing that they'd have an entire piece of property by now they didn't the first thing that they did was they said oh the appraisal that we got is too low and we're going to go after the appraiser's license that's what

280they did they said because we don't like the appraisal we're going after the appraiser's license and when that didn't work out they used the guys the the appraisal that they attacked they attacked exactly to justify paying paying a low price for the piece of property and by the way our appraisal i think is very low because our newest appraisal is is as of january 1 of 2021 and we all know that we're in the middle of covit at that point in time and if anybody has ever tried to buy a board foot of lumber or have seen the current real estate market if you can find a house to sell on the real estate market okay you know that the price of real estate has skyrocketed so yeah i want to be generous but i'm

281not going to be generous with with other with the children's money but i do think it's a worthwhile project and i think that if they they also believe it's a worthwhile project then let's enter into negotiation for the four acres let's give these people the four acres uh let's hope that they can make a a good cultural landmark a good cultural museum and then let's use the rest of the property for the benefit of all the children of moore county and i think i think mr hensley's compromise it doesn't make everybody happy it doesn't make me happy because i wanted that entire property capped because i believe that it's necessary for the expansion of our schools and especially for our pre-k and especially for additional space at pinecrest but i believe if we'll all compromise

282a little bit we can all get something and it will benefit the children overall submit so total are there other comments over this way i don't want to overlook it all right so just to clarify i don't i don't want uh i don't want one of mr levy's comments to get everyone's hopes up you said give it to them you meant to sell it too i mean i mean yes thank you okay thank you so much so the the the two pong compromise i was willing to leave it at that but now that we're opening up discussion of of perhaps something else then i i feel the need to make a few more comments um and the first comment i'm going to start off with is something that i said at the very first meeting

283and i've said it publicly several times and that is no one has done more for the residents of west southern pines than the moore county board of education and the more county taxpayers the moore county board of education and the moore county taxpayers just built a 33 million dollar brand new school on the doorsteps of west southern pines the moore county board of education and the moore county taxpayer paid paid to connect carlisle street to morganton road the moore county school board we sold southern pines elementary to a community a public community charter school whose specific mission is to assist lower social economic children unfortunately many of those come from the western pines area so so the moore county board of education the more county taxpayers and the children of moore county have done more

284more for west southern pines than anyone else in this county as as mr levy pointed out southern pines their mayor came here cried crocodile tears and then left but she didn't offer up a dollar to help this while the same time they were spending millions of dollars to buy a glorified dog park so we've done enough other issues are and these these go directly to the point is um evaluation some of the uses of the property that southern pines land trust that have proposed such as restaurants uh commercial shops and this and that change zoning so all of a sudden okay let's talk change of zoning if if the intention is to change it to commercial then half a mile 600 yards up the road certainly no more than half a mile land commercial land

285is selling for three quarters of a million dollars an acre so i would submit that the southern pines land trust wants to buy it zoned ffr change the zoning to commercial which we already know there's the 20 acre parcel that's valued at 13 million dollars that's in that adjoins west southern pines and we know that property in morganton park half a mile away sells between three quarters of a million a million dollars an acre so if the southern pines land trust wants to buy 17 acres and rezone it for these other purposes then we are doing a disservice to the moore county taxpayers the other thing and i can't help but point this out if you look at the gis there's four acres right across the street owned by church of our lord jesus christ

286of apostolic faith right across the street so why don't somebody approach them and talk to them about buying their four acres so this cannot all be done on the back of the moore county taxpayers and the back of the moore county board of education we've done our part i think this is a great compromise there's four acres as part of the original restricted deed is where the rosenwald school is there's the auditorium there's the administrative building there's two-thirds of a gym and two-thirds of a of a classroom building are there other comments questions i normally i try not to weigh in but i will say i i truly stand on the side of the land trust uh i admire the proposals the proposals that they have put forth they are very far-reaching they may or

287may not be reachable but the the planning is there and i commend mr gordon and the troops that have stood with him uh through whatever long process this has been um [Music] i i too like mr levy question where is the town of southern pines in this uh i won't mention a dog park i think it's a nature preserve but um you know i think if if the town really is concerned about their continued well-being and growth and economic status and uh becoming and remaining a world world-class resort mid-south resort as they as is called they need to step up to the plate as well and this would be an opportunity that that the town could dig into its coffers and perhaps come aboard with uh the southern pines land trust and show this that

288side of town that that you are a part of things and make something of this moment to help a very fine group take another step forward so i do question where the town has been and why there has not been more support forthcoming from the actual government of southern pines yes sir i i would like to make a comment too i i was really torn with this decision really tough decision for me but unlike what a lot of the political people are doing parties are doing i think we have a compromise uh we had to make a compromise uh not one way or the other but at least now the compromise is that there are four acres there you won't be able to plant everything you had before but at least there are four acres

289there on on the property with the 1924 deed that you can do something with because um and the other we we do get the finances for what we need for the kids so it was a compromise agreed i'm not happy with doing either one but i'm happy with doing something is there any further discussion madam chair if i could just um ask mr hensley for clarification if the board's going to prepare to vote on the motion um it was a two-part motion the second part was to uh can he read the whole motion uh i don't have it verbatim but it was something the effect of uh to authorize the superintendent and and attorneys to begin negotiating with the trust for the sale of what's been designated here is parcel 1a let's let me go

290back to mr hensley and let him bring and then the second the second part was the uh and we can get the exact wording point but my question is the second part was to prepar to begin preparing the remainder of the site for upset bids i assume that that is just preliminary you don't want us to actually put the site out for bids yet while we're in discussions with the trust i assume because if if it doesn't work out with the trust you'll have more lands to sell you may have an entire parcel um so or or are you saying you want to you want to go ahead and and start the upside-down process i would assume we'll go ahead we can't we can't start the upset bid process because we're not going to give

291them half of a administrative building or three-quarters of a gem what we're going to have to do is we're going to have to negotiate with them to do a lot line adjustment so that they can get the entirety of the buildings uh within their four acres so it may be four and a half acres and at that point then we will be able to uh to put for upset bid the remainder of the property but it has to has to be a two-step process that's what i had assumed it was it was a two-stage not not do these at the same time correct you'd be getting ahead of yourself and mr levy's got the justification correct because uh depending upon the negotiations of parcel one a there could be some minor lot line adjustments right

292okay so the motion is to you want to read it again uh uh well i'm just i would i would say to authorize uh the superintendent and staff and board attorney to begin to negotiate with the trust for the sale of uh parcel 1a and to uh initiate take initial steps to prepare to uh put the remainder of the site for upset bids at a later date with that effect all right barring any further discussion we'll proceed to vote all those in favor of the resolution as presented say aye aye opposed aye the motion carries 5-2 caldwell and carter abstaining or not abstaining voting no it's it's getting late oh it is getting late question for legal counsel uh when we uh negotiated the sale of the montessori of the um southern pines elementary school

293to the montessori school the board gave us some parameters for negotiation do we need that um as an act of the board or do we proceed with the question yeah well at this point we we don't that's a good question the board could take further action i mean as i understood the motion was to negotiate which means the board's not saying go ahead and sell it to them for whatever the superintendent thinks is a good price we would negotiate and come back to you with the best offer we could the board could certainly set some parameters on that you could say no less than you know x amount or or set other parameters on on our on our authority to negotiate that's up to the board and that's only if the board desires correct but

294i i i would just leave it to council as is we get you the best deal we can get the best deal then come back and then we're not asking you to ink the deal right you bring it back chris and we'll see if it's a good deal if it's not i i don't know okay very good thank you thank you all right can we take a five-minute break i hate to say that but i got to get up and move just five minutes it's 11 o'clock at 1105 we start back we're recessed for five all right we have two final items on our board action um the next one is our position on the state mass mandate we did a great deal of discussion with this um during our work session and heard from

295our board attorney about legalities associated with it and i think that through our work session we arrived at the decision that mr levy is going to succinctly explain yes basically yeah basically i think this is a compromise it is not all that is not all that i want and is not all that it is it is more than perhaps some other people want um but what i would suggest is and what i would move is that we have a jointly signed letter where all the members of the board who wish to do so may sign essentially urging the governor to change his mass mandate but reserving our right to declare especially in our next meeting that masks are optional which if the governor does not do anything and i understand that the governor sometime in

296the middle of this month will revise his mass plan one way or another so we don't want to jump the gun so the letter would be from our board whereas the moore county board of education is fully capable of regulating persons within its buildings and vehicles and whereas the moore county board of education and not the governor is best prepared to make such decisions whereas the governor pursuant to his emergency powers and through the the health and human services toolkit has ordered that children and certain school personnel wear masks without the concurrence of the council of state whereas it's no exigent emergency now exists that prevents the moore county board of education from properly regulating mass squaring whereas sb 220 which by the way is the is the legislative act which enacted the toolkit whereas

297sb 220 has by its own uh terms expired whereas most venues allowed allow mass optional attendance by children and adults including but not limited to cinemas sports venues and and public gatherings the moore county board of education requests that the governor remove all mask mandates from the public schools and allow local boards of education to regulate pedestrian attendance and other attendance in its public school buildings including but not limited to the right to make face masks optional moreover more county schools reserves the right to make such masking optional at our next business meeting or at any time the board deems fit and that's would be the letter that we would send to the governor um and uh if the governor does not act why then i would intend to make a motion to make masks

298optional at our next board meeting are you making this in the form excuse me are you presenting that in the form of emotion yes sir if i may just once the first portion of it i'm not saying i'm not saying that anybody agree with me right now to um so the motion is that that chair draft a letter right that was going to be my question if you just read a specific language and i hadn't seen there are a few things i would tweak a little bit well it's not it's not that's the gist of it but it would be the emotions to authorize the chair and super down i would i would authorize the chair to to send a letter to that roughly to this effect i would give the the chair lee what

299she's an english teacher literary license but not too much [Laughter] literary license to do what she deems word economy all right mr locklear doctor um is there a second okay everybody's eating now thank you very much i appreciate motion by mr levy second by miss thompson um is there further discussion the only discussion i would the only points i would make is the letter should go out by the end of this week and and the other thing is i would appreciate if it got staffed around because i've got some bullets that i would like added so you know you can choose how to do it you can send out bullet points and hey are these what you want and we could add a bit you know we got to rapidly staff this because then we

300have to get everyone's signature that's great i'll we'll contact miss potter about getting uh well hasn't been approved yet but about um how to handle this in the best way uh all those in favor all right opposed motion carries 7-0 so mrs potter i will be in touch with you tomorrow or within the next day all right we move on to our last item which is uh yeah you're not planning to give a report are you no no no no no no oh oh oh mr levy helped me draft him it's a doozy okay bob report now dr grimacy you're out of order again we're now moving on to the establishment of a board position on the social studies curriculum um this is as a follow-up to the resolution that we have already submitted to

301the governor to our state board of education to um members our representatives both in the house and senate uh in raleigh um such that we are asking them to delay the implementation of the social studies standards for a term of one year and or reserving there is no end or and and reserving the right to make a decision that pertains just to more county if such standards are not delayed so where where are we going with this i have a i have a conversation yes i do uh i would move that we delay the introduction and implementation of the curriculum the curriculum not the standards but the curriculum for the new social studies uh standards for one year or until earlier um until earlier authorized by this board but nothing in this motion shall restrict

302the implementation of the new high school course requirements and that would be the extent of the motion is that does that cover what we would need for it to cover with with the high school course changes help i believe the motion as i understand it mr levy would be delaying the implementation of the curriculum related to the standards that's right um my con honestly my initial response to that is that it's very difficult to con to not how do you implement standards and not curriculum well that that would be what we'd have to really wrestle with as a staff and miss miss gephardt can join me if she has anything that she can maybe answer as you work through this but that would be what we would really wrestle with there versus a recommendation from

303the board to delay the implementation of the standards well i would prefer to delay the implementation of the standards but but i understand there's legal there's that's a board that's a board discussion we know what the board we know what the board wants and they're trying to help us find a a path that enables our teachers to be able to teach social studies be as compliant as possible as they can with the state regulatory the state's regulatory authority but still recognize the complicated situation that our teachers are in right now they're trying to help so let's see what ms gephardt thinks as dr locklear said what it's going to do then is they're going to have this set of standards with no guidance or support with these set of standards so it's going to be

304you've got these standards since the curriculum documents would help support what the pacing and all of that that we've aligned with the standard or help and the materials that we've put together are to support the implementation of those standards so you're what you're suggesting and and the board is in this position because i've helped them get here so i have to i i can't sit back and just listen now i hold the tightrope it's in the guns of navarone i hear gregory peck saying you're in it now and you can't get out okay so i'm in it um i'm just trying to help them get to a place where they can make the next more serious statement they want to make from last month but they still recognize that our teachers need to have something

305that they can use to teach and they would prefer that we proceed with the existing curriculum they would prefer that we not be bound by the new standards um in the in the current state of confusion that exists um and um and and and but at the same time delay implementation of the standards and and they they have recognized as you can see with mr uh levy's uh draft resolution he's recognizing that at the high school level there's no way to avoid it because they've changed the course sequence and that's nothing we can find a middle ground on so what might be our best uh just one other yes i can make a suggestion we can still develop develop the curriculum but only implement the high school part well we have to teach social studies

306in k through 8. so so the i the idea is what will the children be doing on the first day of school what social studies will they be learning on the first day of school and what work can ms gephart do with teachers in august to prepare them for that that day mr hensley yeah so it's my understanding and again i'm the new guy but it's my understanding so so they mandate the new standards uh we developed the curriculum so the course of action as i understand it is day one we start teaching we teach last year's curriculum and an interesting thing about the social studies standards is there's my understanding is there's no end of grade testing for social study standards so if we teach the existing curriculum where's the harm where's the foul

307well that's that's exactly that's exactly what i was thinking and actually in in talking to the um to the to the state school board member um she she was under the impression that so long as we teach social studies that is all that is necessary but the the bottom line is we want to teach last last years last year's curriculum okay and um uh and and that's that's how we're going to implement this the newest standards as of right now but using last year's let curriculum make one other comment now remember eric davis and uh katherine druitt talked and katherine is going to be making a presentation at the state school board meeting in august um and they're discussing chain revising the present standard so well let me let me put it this way excuse

308me can you can you implement last year's curriculum uh with it with this resolution can that be done well with this resolution though there is dr locklear is correct there's the awkward it's hard to straddle you either have to go ahead and and i use the term testing the waters today when i mean testing the waters i don't know that you can just put your toe in you you might have to go up to your up to your shoulders and just say we're gonna locally direct our staff to not implement the state standards use the existing or or more positively not not not worded negatively but to to continue teaching the current social studies curriculum just stick with that curriculum in k through 8 and to implement the new course sequence in high school and

309if you stuck with just directing us to teach the existing social studies curriculum k through 8 and and authorized us to teach the new course sequence in high school our folks could that would be enough direction for us and then you all would accept the political cover on that i'm not looking at neil for a reason um and um and and then our teachers would at least get some clarity on what this board authorizes them to do going forward and then it's between you and the state board and not necessarily between your staff and dpi then that is fine so so we will so my guess my resolution is to delay the introduction and implementation of the state standards for social studies for one year or until earlier authorized by this board but nothing but

310but we're also authorizing and stating that nothing here shall restrict the implementation of the new high school course sequence yeah social studies course and that so that would be my motion to delay the delay the standards for a year because quite frankly quite frankly and absolutely we don't know where we're going and we don't know what we're teaching and it's july and and in six weeks we're going to have to teach what we don't know well and they may pull the rug out from andres they're talking both the general assembly and the superintendent's talking about well we may just uh you know call it off in the bottom of the ninth so so the so the bottom line is mr levy yeah we need to get a second for your emotions okay i'm going to

311continue with discussion uh is there a second and would can you re i i know what your motion is so it's to delay the implementation of the social studies standards and it could be that it could be that or it could be to direct the staff to employ the local curriculum to continue using the local social studies curriculum through the next year and then then your statement is not as direct about not teaching the state standards uh if you choose to do that that's fine but but but she would which what she just said is she that's something that they can't follow and and and i understand that because your original the original emotion you noted was kind of you doing both at the same time right right you can't do that right just making

312a motion that said implement 2021 curriculum continue to utilize that for the next school year and k-8 is one of the more clear correct agreements and and then to move forward with the course sequence in the high school that we have to do that doesn't prohibit that that's a more clear motion that doesn't have our feet in both both ball fields okay it's a decent compromise and so moved especially because it's so late okay mr hensley are you seconding then is that yes okay i have a question so if it's mandated aren't we breaking the law if we don't you don't ask well so it's a i mean we've had some closed session discussions about the difference between the standards and the curriculum i'd rather not you know sort of hash that out and open

313but um i think if if the focus is on the curriculum you clearly control okay um so that's why i do like kind of going back and forth dictating to staff what to what to do for the curriculum on day one pending further because the concerns i heard in the work session were about the time inadequate time to study the dpi uh you know documents they just rolled out um and that the board would like more public input and like to study it more themselves so you know you that's the board exercising authority of your curriculum we're not saying that the state board doesn't have authority to promulgate the standards of saying our curriculum is going to be as follows for the time being um i don't know what more to say than that well

314the only other thing i'll say is and i said this this morning but if you read the you know one thing that struck me on the k through 8 standards or k through five standards was they were teaching people to make a different you know be it activists or teaching second graders be an activist how do you do change in your world well as i said this morning we as a board one new social studies standard we're going to implement is we're going to make a stand to make a difference in our world and that is telling the north carolina department of public instruction if you want us to do stuff in a timely manner then you're going to get us the stuff that we need to do it in a timely manner and if

315you're delayed then too bad we'll do it next year so we are implementing that part of the social studies standards we're going to stand up and we're going to make a difference and and when they when they get their act together we'll follow them but until they get their act together we have children to teach being a little bit concerned about being a law breaker since it is our board is charged with following the um guidelines the mandates if you want to call them that that come from our state board and dpi um what is the latest time that this kind of decision could be made and not just totally wreak havoc you're past it i want to be real clear about that we're well because we've already put so much time and effort i

316think by now you know we don't take summers off we try to get our vacations in and stuff but this is a busy time of year for us if we're doing our jobs summer is when we really are putting the timing in between when we get out of town that's about it and we only do that this time of year because you can't do it the rest of the year so i think that we we're well past that so i i want to i want to make sure that that ms gebhardt and dr metcalf and dr locklear miss faye and the others get their due reward out of this um but but we we do need to know this sort of thing like now okay we really do because when the teachers come back we've

317got to know what to tell them they need to know what their lesson plans are going to be i understand that uh and i heartedly agree as a former teacher you don't want to get it the day you're walking in um so that that helps me make up my mind because i have ultimate faith in our teachers and our curriculum planners and if they have taken these new standards and created a curriculum that follows the guidelines that we have put to them especially ones past tonight then they will be teaching the curriculum that we want them to teach in the fall regardless of what comes out of raleigh and so i have faith in them for that matter now does raleigh need to learn that they can't be dragging us all over the place yes

318they do but i don't think that sacrificing our students in their history classes and the work that our teachers have already done is necessarily the way to do it um we may have to go up and pin ourselves to the door of the the building on is it salisbury street whatever albemarle building wherever dpi is and and let them know that they can't just run over us in this way over and over and over again but i have faith in the curriculums that have been completed this summer so i would i would feel good about going ahead with them because i don't think we're going to have teachers doing the things that they're being accused of doing and i would point out that what the work that they have done is not in vain because

319the work that they have done so far can be utilized later on but what we're doing is we're teaching kids on the run we don't even know what we're going to teach them the dpi doesn't know what their what their they're six through twelve six through twelve i guess uh standards are going their six through twelve unpacking documents are going to be we haven't uh we we haven't given our teachers professional development um much much less uh they haven't completed uh their um their their their pacing guides for six through twelve um this is no way to what this is no way to run a railroad and we've got to say no we know what last year's standards were and what last year's curriculum was let's do last year's curriculum last year's standards and when

320dpi gets its act together whenever that's going to be then we'll bring ourselves along but our kids are not guinea pigs for dpi and uh and and our kids when when dpi yells jump we don't yell how high okay we have to say we represent the students of moore county and they need quality education so i say let's delay these standards for a year and um and and and the kids will get that quality education other other comments questions questions they have worked on it though right six through twelve okay yes ma'am they have remember we talked about the unpacking documents were supplemental our teachers typically only look at those just to consult to make sure that they've gotten everything that they need to have so they we actually have 6-12 pacing okay and curriculum

321unit guides and i might and i might add that those things aren't even going to be front-facing so that our parents can take a look at them until after we've started teaching them so so you know we're we're saying to our parents well we'll let you know what's in the bill after we pass the bill and uh that's essentially what we're doing this is no way to treat our parents i hate to say it but it's always been that way i mean i think about the math curriculum that they sprung on us in july and i had to learn it by august and parents didn't get any say in that math well you know it's always been that way but but darn it you know some let's let's change things i get it but it's

322you know you know let's not let's not let's not bow down to the to the lords in raleigh let's say that we control our curriculum and we and we're going to give these kids uh and the parents the respect that they're doing but i think that you just made the point we do control our curriculum and that curriculum has been developed in the course of the summer workshops so we can have faith in this curriculum we developed so so long as our curriculum obeys their uh obeys what they're telling us to do but by the way they haven't figured out what they're telling us to do yet they're not telling us anything to do the the well then if they're not telling us anything to do then let's delay the standards of course of course

323they're telling us what to do it would be helpful for staff if we could take the vote before the end of july um if i could just just remember they've been working on the new standards okay so the work they've done is on the new standards they've not been refining the old ones the time has been invested now that's not wasted time because you all asked me ahead of time wouldn't that be wasted time no we we've got that work in the bank just in case the state says you've got to do the new standards this could delay the front-facing curriculum because we've been working on the new standard curriculum being the one that's front-facing so you may have to give us a little bit of community might have to be a little bit patient

324with us we might need some extra time to do that aren't we still want to do that but now if we're going to change the curriculum we can't you can't be changing this every month on us and and you know got to jump around so if we can make a decision and stick with it the the board will just direct us to use the local curriculum if the state board has any questions about it they can take that up with me and this and the local board and leave our teachers and principals out of that i i think that would be that would go a long way with our teachers to just give them some comfort that that they're going to be able to teach something that's not going to keep them in the middle

325of the culture wars here the last piece um is just that the course sequence in high school i think the resolution covers both areas and so i do under these circumstances uh i i do offer my recommendation for approval on that okay as presented by mr levy you know the approval and the regular before that his motion his motion i i am recommending approval to delay it his motion all right mrs thompson has called the question um can i restate the motion i'm not sure that i can there have been several formulations yeah i think that's it and it's they're they're they're somewhat different um mr levy is your is your motion to delay the the to to delay the implementation of the standards for k through six it's not standard can i take a

326stab with this okay use the existing curriculum for k through 5 and implement the new standards or k through whatever and then implement k through 8 and then use the new implement the new standards for nine through twelve or just the course sequence just record just the course sequence not the new standards that'll give our teachers the flexibility they need to adapt what they need to do to make the course sequence work so yeah because as i mentioned before then the board is giving instructions to staff on the curricular materials that are totally within your control at least arguably so i think that's a little bit better positioned than than sort of i mean you've already got your your demands and and requests and urgent requests to raleigh to delay implementation of the standards you're

327on record of that i believe there's still legislation pending and may know um to that effect so we'll see anywhere so we'll see if that if that pans out but this this way you're just directing staff on on the ground so we're not saying we're going to delay we're the same staff this is going to use the old you use last year's curriculum except for the course sequencing and i'm recommending mr hensley's interpretation which is what mr levy said a little while ago yeah what the superintendent mr hensley said very good all right so the motion was mr leaves and the second was mr hensley's uh with this motion so mrs thompson has called the question uh do i need to try and restate the motion no no please know what it is okay all

328right all those in favor say aye aye all right i think that was five i believe raise your hand please four all those opposed okay the motion carries four three all right dr grimace you don't get to give a report i'm sorry thank you madam no matter what you wanted to say um we didn't go to board comments and do we have to that's would you like to move that we admit maybe why don't you why don't you why don't you why don't you make me first oh no i'm going to give you going to give you guys a present okay okay i'd like to like to thank the staff for uh for uh for doing a yeoman's job today and uh that is all i have to say you can move to adjourn oh

329i i would i would move to adjourn is there a section or another second okay all in favor all right we're done thank you