001Good evening and welcome to the Morsel Graded School Board of Education business meeting August 12th, 2025. Uh before I have a moment of silence, I'd like to uh say something. As we begin the school year, the new school year, we extend our heartfelt best wishes to all students and teachers. May this year be filled with curiosity, growth, and success. Your dedication to teaching, to learning, and teaching shapes the future, and we are proud to support you every step of the way. Education is the most powerful tool which we can use to change the world. Nelson Mandela, let's make this year extraordinary together. Thank you. If we may have moment of silence. Thank you. Pledge of allegiance. Pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One
002nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. All right. Approval of the agenda. I'll entertain a motion. I move that we approve the agenda as published. Second. I have a motion and a second. All those in favor? I. All those opposed? Motion carries. Approval of the minutes from the June 3rd, 2025 and June 26, 2025 meetings. I move we approve the minutes as presented for both meetings. I have a motion. Second. I have a motion and a second. All those in favor? I. All those opposed? Motion carries. As we begin uh this board meeting, we are reminding of the next board meeting which is September 2nd, 2025. that will be held instead of here because of a conflict will be held at the performing arts center at uh 6:00. And now
003item number seven, staff reports. Thank you, sir. First up, we'll have Dr. Royal with his report on maximize opportunity and achievement. Good evening, Mr. Whitfield. Dr. Gardner, members of the board. Tonight, I have a few updates both from athletics as well as curriculum and instruction. First, from our athletics, fall sports have officially started at our secondary schools. We're excited to see successful seasons for all of our student athletes and our coaches again this year. Uh the weather has not been cooperating as we've had some extremely warm temperatures to begin practices and now the rain. So again, our teams are trying their best to get out there when it's safe. I'd like to take a moment to recognize and welcome. We have two new middle school athletic directors in Morelgraded School District. At Selma Burke, we
004have Miss Amy Basinger. And at Morsel Middle School, Miss Alexis Hoppers. We're excited to have them on board with us. Also like to congratulate Miss Susie Hudson, soccer coach at Moresville High School. This past summer, Coach Hudson was selected to serve as the head coach for the West Girls soccer team in the annual East West All-Star game during the week of the NCHSA coaches clinic. She was joined by two Morsville High School girls soccer players, Riley Alexander and Cameron Klein. On to some updates for curriculum and instruction. And you'll hear quite a report from Miss Connley and Dr. Wade later on in the agenda this evening about our summer programs. Um but some things to highlight. During June and July, Miss Connley and Dr. Wade led sessions for each of our schools around the school
005improvement plan process. Dr. Gardner kicked off each of the training sessions with an overview of the four disciplines of execution. And then the training highlighted the lead and lag measures associated with our school improvement plans. As we start the school year, each of our schools uh are in a very great pla very good place as far as a school improvement plan uh the design process uh this week. Dr. Wade, Miss Connley, Mr. Oral, and myself are meeting with our principles to go over their four goals as an initial read. Um and we feel like we're in a very good place this year uh as far as the timeline with our school improvement plans. Uh this past summer, 50 staff members from our secondary schools um they attended the capturing kids hearts training. Uh that was
006later in July. As always, we heard a lot of great feedback from our staff members who attended and the trainer was very complimentary of the group as well. So we're excited to continue capturing kids hearts with our middle schools and our high schools within the district. Early last week, our schools hosted successful openhouse events. Uh we received a lot of positive feedback from families and schools. Just from an observation standpoint, this year's openhouse events may have been the strongest attended uh in our school's history. Administrators have started their classroom universal walkthroughs, but our official scoreboard tabulation will begin next week, August 18th. And lastly, our K8 schools will start their inschool clubs by the end of August. And Morsville High School has their annual club rush event next week for students. At this time, that
007completes my report for maximizing opportunity and achievement. Any questions? Any questions? Thank you, Dr. Roy. Thank you. All right. Next up, we'll have Dr. Albert with Safe, Happy, and Healthy. Good evening, Dr. Gardner, Mr. Whifffield, members of the board. I'm here to provide an update on Safe, Happy, and Healthy. Over the summer, our EC department evaluated students, developed IEPs, and provided professional development, including a well- attended one-day EC boot camp for EC teachers and teacher assistants. At our opening EC staff meeting, we had a guest speaker talk with our department about her journey as a person with autism. Her message was deeply impactful as many of our staff left the meeting invigorated and ready to work with our most vulnerable students. She will be back to present during our district PD days on how to
008work with children with autism in various educational settings. As you recall, Ayardell County recently invited proposals for the use of the opioid settlement funds. Our team invited I'm sorry. Our team developed a comprehensive student wellness and intervention program to address substance use, mental health challenges, and attendance issues among our secondary at risk students. Working with deputy county manager Rodney Harris and county manager Beth Milton Milton, Miss Pharaoh, Mr. Babbot, and I presented to the county board of commissioners. and we requested funds for an additional social worker and a clinically licensed student wellness interventionist. At last week's meeting, the board expressed strong support and approved moving forward. We are now collaborating and working with the county and partners behavioral health to establish these positions and move forward and plan for next steps. While it's not a
009done deal yet, um we are, you know, looking forward to working with the county and um and with the partners to develop the plans and it looks like everything is going to be moving forward fairly quickly um with county. Okay, that's those are not recurring funds. The the proposal, the initial memorandum of agreement with the county was it was going to be for three years. Okay. what that looks like moving forward. As we as we plan, I'll I'll continue to update you. And at that time, that concludes my part of the report. Any further questions? Thank you. Miss Coon's up next with Recruit, Grow, and Retain. Good evening, Mr. Chairman, um Dr. Guard, and members of the school board. All right. Um, so one of the strategies for our recruit, grow, retain um, plan is
010to make sure that we're immersing our staff in new staff in um, Morso as they on board. And so one of the steps that we implemented this um, summer was to host a new employee orientation for all employees. We have historically done that for our certified teachers, but this uh summer we invited um new employees. So, we had 65 full-time employees who came to orientation on the 29th of July and um they were able to hear from the Morrisville graded schools leadership team. They were able to meet um other staff and uh hear from um the board of education to um and to interact with some of our community partners and vendors. and it was a great um experience and um we really enjoyed getting to that that camaraderie. Um the orientation continued with uh
011training for our uh teachers and our certified staff the next two days and um our stellar curriculum and instruction team provided uh great uh tips and topics that teachers could take into the classroom um day one to use. And so, uh, very thankful for again for the board of education being there, but also for our curriculum and instruction team, our HR team, um, particularly Miss Busel and Miss Russell, Miss Talon for getting staff on boarded and planning a great event. Um, also the staff really enjoyed the bus tour that was led by Mr. Whitfield and Miss Bender. Um, that was that was great to uh for people to see our community. Um, one of the things that we also want to do is to of course recognize all of our employees, not just our new
012employees. So on September 5th, our big part of living and working in Morrisville is football Friday nights. So uh September 5th is Morrisville Graded School System employee appreciation night. So we encourage all employees to attend as we support our high school uh football team. Um, also I would say that our schools wanted to note that our schools have begun um the the year being fully with in a really strong position being fully staffed in classrooms. Um we have a few exceptions for hard to staff in secondary with um EC science and automotive but other than that we our classrooms are um fully staffed and it's really exciting. that's uh the strongest it's been since I started working here and so very proud of the principles and their diligent work um over the summer um and
013of all leaders who worked to make sure that that happened. Um the other item I wanted to share was that the state did pass a mini budget bill. Uh it was signed into law on August 6th last Wednesday. We will have more updates in the near future from our finance team on that. And that concludes u my recruit go retain report. Any questions? I think that first home game is Hawaii night. So wear your Hawaiian shirt. I don't know the thing. Okay. Any questions or comments? Any questions? Oh, it is camo night. It's what? Camo. Oh, it's camo. Camo. The first game is the 29th versus Al Brown. September 5th. That's the Okay. Well, if employees want to wear camo, feel free. Not camo. Camo like camouflage. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank
014you, Miss Green. All right. Next up, we have Miss Mlan with Cultural Relationships. Good e Good evening, Dr. Gander, Chairman Whitfield, members of the board. Dr. Gardner. Oh, Gardner, I'm so sorry. That's okay. Gander. Oh, Lord. Um, today our 2526 annual public notices went out to all families. Um, this is something that we are legally required to do under both state and federal law. and it will list all the things that um everything from different statutes that we have to follow to certain like if you have a title N complaint that is listed in there. So there's a it's 20ome pages long. Um but if you lose track of the parent square it is also on our um website and can be found right under the parent and student dropdown. Um, each year Department of
015HHS regional nurse does a site visit to our district and kind of does an audit. I am pleased to report we received a good report and our nurses were were well praised by that team. Um, in addition, nurse Ashley Kleiner, our MGSD lead nurse and the nurse at Moresville High School completed a 2425 nursing report for us. And just a few items that I think are interesting. Um, our nurses saw 23,751 students this year. Um, 92.7% of the students that they saw return to class. And that's important because if they're returning to class, they're not missing instructional time. Um, this is actually an improvement from last year's 90.3% and it is above the state average of 89%. Our nurses served 146 students with a chronic illness. They served 94 students who receive at least one
016medication a day and they served 230 students who have orders for emergency medication. So, we appreciate um nurse Kleiner starting to kind of look at that data for us so we can see um how we're doing in those areas. Um we will be having our welcome back to school picnic in the park on August 28th from 5 to 7 at Liberty Park and that um formal invitation flyer parent square will be going out Thursday. Um I cannot stress enough how much we need our parents to fill out the infinite campus registration. Even if your child has been with us all of their years of school and they're now a senior, we still need you to go in and make sure you're doing that. Um that feeds into parent square and that gives us all of
017the updated information we need to make sure we can reach you in an emergency. Um that you're getting any changes in classes and everything in parent square is based on the information you put into infinite campus. So we really need to stress that we need our parents to be sure they're filling that out for us. So other than that, that is it for this evening. Are there any questions? TA, can you clarify? I've had a lot a couple questions about Infinite Campus. When you fill out the registration form, it is not a requirement to to have to download that app. The the prompt tells you to download the app. So, a lot of parents have been very confused about what's the difference in the Infinite Campus app, the Canvas app, and the parent square app.
018they do not understand if they need all three or do they only need one or two. So, um I will actually I'm going to let Rob kind of talk about the Infinite Campus piece of it. Um but no, they wouldn't have to download it. They can go on a website on a laptop and do it, right? But it'll prompt you to download the app, but it is not Infinite Campus is not needed for to track your students progress on a daily basis, right? Like you're using Parent Square and Canvas for those two things. Infinite Campus is more of a registration site and as a parent, what would I need to get off that app? Right. For Infinite Campus, that's really our just our student information system. And the most important thing is initially that people
019are looking at that, making sure the data is accurate, updating data, but they're still going to use parent square and canvas like they always have. Did P school ever even have an app? I guess maybe they did have a parent portal, but we didn't utilize But and that I think that's the confusion is if Infinite Campus is the replacement for a power school type of a thing, they don't understand why they're now being prompted to download an app. There's some confusion with that. Like a lot of people give up on it and be like, I don't want to download another app. I already have two. And so maybe that's why some people aren't completing the registration for it is because they think they have to do one more app on their phone. And we can
020send something out. We're already measure watching Canvas and parents grow on a daily basis. They don't understand what the third one would do for them. Right. Right. I have a question. Didn't you have to do the infinite campus to do the registration before school? Was that not part of it? You should have. Okay. But I mean technically you can come to school even if you haven't. We just now need you to do it. So does that mean that we have parents that have not done the registration yet? Yes. Correct. Okay. Do we know how many? Holy shikes. Okay. In comparison to when we did Power School, we'd be looking at our at our old system, we'd probably be looking at what, like 100% before school started because we were also used to the old system
021or No. No. We still even with the old system, we spend some time the first month of school getting people to fill it out. I think people are really having a hard time understanding what it actually does. I know that we understand that it's replacing the old power school system. they just don't get maybe it's like this is your old form you had to click through a thousand times. Yeah, I think I think there is some also disconnect when people see register. They're like, "My child's registered." They go to Morrisville, they've gone to Morrisville. So, that's the other thing that I think we need to try to make sure. I don't know how to fix it other than maybe an info commercial. Any other questions? I mean, I found the email helpful on how to
022do it because I didn't know at all. So, yeah. Like like I said, I just think it's not understanding that if your child already goes, they still need to I reached out and I was like, do I have to download this app? Why is it going to replace parent square or right canvas and it doesn't. So I did it on my laptop. Maybe that's the disconnect. Yeah, you didn't you didn't read all of it. Thank you. All right. Next up, we have Dr. Smith, who will be giving our annual opening of school report. Alrighty. Well, Dr. Gardner, Mr. Whitfield, members of the board, love you tonight. So, I do bring you the opening of schools report. Uh, so hang on, it's a little long. I apologize. Um, first of all, from all of our our
023different areas from before and after school, um, we have approximately 175 students registered for before and after after school at all five of our locations. And as of today, we are fully staffed. Woohoo. Um, from our maintenance department, you know, maintenance has been busy over the summer as always and especially now getting back to school, but we've had several large projects that they have completed this year. um Morsville Middle School air conditioning replacement, paving uh over at the complex and painting parking lots, various places, a new chiller at Woods, um and an uplift to the mobile unit uh for prek at South and I'll be talking to you all about that a little more later. Um we've also updated our mowing contract to include more things like weeding and and other things. So, as we're
024catching up on that, we're getting a better handle on on taking care of the beautifification of of our schools. Along with that, mulching has occurred at some of our schools and we'll get the rest of them in the next few days. Our painters have been busy all summer as they are during the year. So, we've had several big painting projects. I know we painted all the bathrooms at Morsville High School this summer. Um, and so other painting projects are ongoing uh throughout the district. Currently, we do have two openings in maintenance. Uh, one for an HVAC uh technician and another for a custodial coordinator. Uh so if you knowbody anybody's interested please reach out to Mr. Neil uh for that one. From the area of safety we have completed all of our safety lockdown drills
025at the schools with our staff as we do uh each year. We will do those drills throughout the year uh at each school. We do one every quarter. Um we've also contracted for uh traffic control uh continuing out at Selma Burke until we get that traffic light in or do gets that traffic light in. Um and also at Morrisville High School at Blue Devil Boulevard and at Park View. We've also fully implemented the Rave app. We talked about this last year was the notification um app app that we have. It's another app, Miss Panel, but for our staff to get notified. Um if if there is an emergency at school, I don't even know what that one is. Well, it's for our staff at school. So, in case something happens, they get a notification. So,
026we're making sure all of our new employees get signed up for that. So, it's actually very it's very user friendly, very uh very good for us. Um, we've also signed a a two-year contract with the town of Morzel to renew our school resource officers. So, we're very happy about that. And I believe yesterday our last uh SRO started at our elementary schools. So, we're now fully staffed with with SRO's. Also, if you'll remember last year with our uh safety money, um I ask you for approval to purchase new walkie-talkies for all of our schools. We've got all the repeaters in and we are have got some of the walkies out and we're getting the rest of them out this week. So, every school has new ways of communication. We'll also be able to talk between
027school to school. Every SRO will have one as well. So, a principal at one school could call directly to a principal at another school or Dr. gardener could pick up a walk-in, talk to all principles at once if we needed to. So, definitely increased safety uh in that area. From our school nutrition department, we serve 2,156 breakfast and 7,646 lunches in the first three days of school. So, on average, that's about 100 more meals than we were doing last year. At this time, um, we have heard from several families who have not received a letter confirming that their child will continue to receive free meals after the first 30 days of school. This is due to recent changes in the DHS guidelines. So, we do encourage all families um, if they think they qualify or
028not, that to fill out the free and reduced uh, online application uh, to see if they qualify for free and reduced lunch. Um, we are hiring some substitutes um, in school nutrition, but otherwise they are fully staffed as well. from our technology department. Um they've worked hard all summer refreshing devices and getting devices out to new staff. Um we've also been able to deploy almost all new students um their devices in the first three days of school, but that's an ongoing process as new students continue to come in. We're always deploying new devices. Um, technology has worked uh and responded to over 200 tickets um since the start of school just in five days and they've already closed over 150 of those. They'll continue to work on tickets as they come in. It's the the
029rush of what happened over the summer and everything to to get those fixed. And in addition to that, from a safety, security, cyber security standpoint, we we have uh implemented two-step authentication for all of our staff. and this includes the board as I've worked with a few of you. Um, but we now have two-step authentication for all of our our staff in the district so that hopefully nobody will get hacked. So, if you can get in, yeah, lock you out. We can help you with that. Absolutely. We can help you. From our transportation department, we are running a total of 34 buses right now out of a possible 39. Um, we have 3,963 students assigned to the AM routes and on average right now we're transporting about 2,200. I'm sure more will come uh as
030things settle in and about 3,764 students are assigned in the afternoon and we've been uh on average carrying about 2530 students in the afternoon. So again, as people get into their routines and parents decide, I don't want to wait in that wait in that car rider line anymore, our bus ridership uh will increase. I'm sure our number one goal this year is to get buses to school on time. Nearly all of our buses have have been on time um with about a 5 to 8 minute window there uh on a few of them. We're continuing to tweak stops and make adjustments as needed. things will get better and smoother as people learn their routines and as we continue to tweak routes. Um, approximately 3,500 of our of our families have signed up for Here Comes
031the Bus. They're probably the same ones that did the Infinite Campus. It is another app. It is another app, but um, it's very useful because you will know when the bus is coming. So, we do encourage parents and students students can sign up for Here Comes the Bus as well. If they have a a telephone or device, they can they can sign up. Um, here comes the bus is more reliable this year as we have put new GPS's on all of our buses this summer. So, we've done an upgrade there. We have uh about two to three drivers that are in the process of working of finishing their CDL and they'll be ready to go as drivers in the next uh two or three weeks. With that, we'll be able to add a couple more
032of those buses and then again um uh get more of our buses on time because we're not late because there's too many kids on a bus. adding adding a few more buses. Um I will say as a concern, we continue to have cars passing stopped school buses. In the first five days of school, including this afternoon, we've had 19 stop arm violations. These are the arm is out, the car goes past the bus. Um we are actively working with law enforcement um and to quickly and efficiently um uh report these. We are still working through the process to be able to issue a civil penalty um so that they would pay a fine. So please help us get the message out. Anybody when the ambers go on, stop. It's going to turn red. Just go
033ahead and stop. So please keep our kids safe. Um then u it was mentioned earlier, but um just a few notes about Infinite Campus. Um Infinite Campus is our student information system and it feeds everything we do. This is why it's so important for parents to fill out that registration so we have updated information. Um we're we're learning a lot about the system as we've converted to from one to another. But everything starts there and then all the data flows down from there. Um everything from student schedules to attendance to our bus routes uh to technology assigning devices to parent squares as Miss Mlan mentioned everything is dependent on Infinite Campus. Um it has been a huge learning process for us um and an adjustment for everyone. But I do want to say a huge
034shout out to u Mr. Oral, Crystal Brit, Ginger Hill Sickler and all the data managers for their hard work uh on that. It has been a monumental task uh for them and as this will be my last opening of school report, I wanted to say that even with all these opportunities we have uh we have this year and every year, it has been one of the smoothest that I can remember. Um, I want to publicly thank um Cindy Carricker, Todd Neil, Mark Reic, Eric Rabbit, Danielle Lord, excuse me, and Jonathan Farmer and Stacy Burfield for all their hard hard work and dedication. It's been a pleasure to work with all of you. And that concludes my report. Sorry. [Applause] You can stay if you want to. I apologize. And get and drive a bus for
035us. I do apologize. Are there any questions? That retiring gets you out of it. I still dream about calling buses and checking heads for lies. Doc, doctor, thank you for all that you've done for us from what you're doing now to when you implemented the computers, you know, to our students. You've been invaluable and you'll truly be missed and we're so fortunate to have had you for the time we did and and um I'm just excited for you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Are there any questions? Thank you. I feel like I should give you some. Hold on. All right. Hey, good evening board members. Um, we started off our school year with our annual convocation celebration at the performing arts center and we had a chance yet again to see a lot of school spirit
036on display. Special shout out to Selmer Middle School. Go teeing that up for you, sir, for their back-toback victory in the annual spirit contest. Also want to congratulate the following award winners. Our beginning teacher of the year, Mr. Ayer at Morsville High School. Teacher of the year, Mr. Howard at Selenberg Middle, our assistant principal of the year, Miss Callaway at Morsville Intermediate, and our principal of the year, Miss Dorch at South Elementary. [Applause] And finally, I'd like to take a moment to recognize Dr. Scott Smith. As he referenced, this will be his final board meeting before he officially retires at the end of the month. In 2007, a couple major events happened. when the first iPhone was introduced, and Dr. Scott Smith joined Moresville Graded School District. Since joining the district, he's attended over 200
037board meetings, worked for three different superintendent, and alongside 38 different principles. He successfully supported the district through the initial 1:1 implementation, which if you guys remember was those old white laptops, a little bit heavier, right? as well as led seven different laptop refreshes, including one in a global pandemic midy year with drive-through support. He supported almost every department in our organization, including elementary education, before and after school programs, technology, child nutrition, transportation, maintenance, and safety. Through his 18-year tender tenure, one constant is his get it done attitude and his desire to see things done with excellence, which is on display when he helped pull off that midyear refresh. Dr. Smith has built endless connections throughout the country through the onetoone initiative and endless relationships within our district. It goes without saying that Dr. Smith has
038made a tremendous impact on our district and in particular the students that we serve. He will be missed and we wish him the best of luck in his next endeavors. Thank you, sir. And on Wednesday, um, August 27th, we're going to have a drop in celebration for Dr. Smith at Performance Coffee from 3:00 to 5:00 pm. So, anyone is welcome to celebrate his time in Moresville at that time. That concludes my comments. Thank you, sir. Um, apparently, uh, every time I don't know what it is, Commissioner Carricker shows up and I realize that I haven't, uh, recognized him. He is back here once again. We certainly appreciate your support. Thank you. All right. Uh, upcoming events, we've talked about a number of those already. The picnic in the park on August the 28th. Of course,
039September the 1st is Labor Day. We have an aundary number of activities going on in all of our schools here at the beginning of the year. So, I encourage um fellow board members as well as the public to uh uh show up and um support uh your children and your community by attending some of these events. Public comment. Yes, sir. We have few folks signed up tonight. Uh good evening everyone. This is the public comment period. For those of you who signed up to speak, I will call your name. When I do, I ask you come to the podium and um you have three minutes to speak. You have the lights on tonight. Yep. Okay. So, there's a little box there on the corner that'll be lit up and then when you get to one
040minute, you have three minutes. When you get to one minute, the yellow light will come on. When you get to the red light, that means you've gone too long. It's time to stop. Um as always, you your comments are not to be directed at anyone to attack anyone. They're not going to be responded to by the board. We expect you to use good etiquette in a quorum and uh speak your public comment period and then complete that and sit back down. Uh so that being said, the first person on the list is Gary Smith. Hi, good evening board, uh superintendent, everybody else. Um I just wanted to uh Oh, I'm I'm Gary Smith. I'm a parent of a student at South Elementary. Shout out to Miss Dorch in the back of the room. Um, I
041just wanted to highlight some of the success of the dual language immersion uh, Familia, which is a sort of parent group that raised funds to support that program. Um, and one of the things that happened near the end of last year is, uh, Scholastic, who does the book fair, had a big warehouse sale. uh and we were able to scoop up about 200 Spanish language books and distribute them to all of the DLI uh teachers across all the schools from kindergarten all the way up through fifth grade. Uh and each teacher took uh 13 books uh for their classroom. Um and that was funded by uh parents and and uh all the participants in the community. Uh we also got a great deal, but still the the retail price of all those books was over
042$1,600. Um, so it's a a real big uh boon for that program and and the teachers will have a lot more uh materials to teach our students with. So, uh, and then next Monday on the 18th, uh, the DI Familia is having their first spirit night of the year right across the street at Pelicans from 5 to 8 and that is on the district calendar. So, everyone can find that out and uh, attend and join us. So, Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next on the list is Ammani Jones. Hello. Hello esteemed members of the board of education. My name is Imani Jones and I am a proud student at Morsman Middle School. Today I'm honored to share my journey with the rewarding program tutoring program which has been transformative experience for me since 2019. When
043schools transferred to virtual learning due to co 19 I faced challenges in adapting to this new environment. However, reready provided me with the support I needed to thrive academically and personally. Intentionally, I struggled with small group settings, but through the program's guidance, I have grown with to work independently and confidently. This past year, I was thrilled to receive the most improved award in math, a testament to the dedication and encouragement from my tutors. The field trips we went on twice a year were not only educational, but also fun. incredibly fun boarding my honors beyond the classroom. Ready has also enriched my life by introducing me to sports, theater, dance, leadership and confidence building activities. I had the opportunity to participate in dance, acting, basketball and natural learning which has been an amazing experience. These activities
044have helped me develop skills that attend far beyond academics, shaping me into a well well-rounded individual. I stand before you today as a proud product of the Wii Ready program which has grown tremendously and continues to impact students like me. Thank you for your Thank you for supporting such activities that empower us to reach our full potential. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely, Imani Jones. And I just want to thank you to the board of education and to my grandparents and to my whole entire family. I love them and I just want to thank you for the opportunity to make to let me speak for all of y'all to listen to what I have to say about the Ready program. Good job, honey. Good job. Great job. Great job. Thank you for sharing.
045Yes. Great job. All right, next up is Courtney Ste. Good luck following that. Uh good evening uh Dr. Gardner, uh Mr. with Phil and the board and all you um greatly appreciate the time that you guys given us an opportunity to speak before you. Um I just want to introduce um my name is Courtney Ste and uh I represent the Justice League of Morrisville which is compromised of three outstanding communitybased organizations. Know your self-worth uh the Gators as the football and team pressure. Um, our mission is simple but vital to bridge the gap in self-confidence, athletics, life skills, and education. Uh, like Dr. Whitfield says, education, uh, is powerful and it can change the world. Um, we are here tonight to talk about why our mentoring, reading, and tutoring program, the We Excel Leadership Academy,
046is not just important, but urgent. We want to we want Moresville to be a safer place for our kids in our town. That starts with giving our children the tools to succeed. Teaching respect, integrity, self-control, become reasonable citizens in our community. Reducing our reliance on substitute teachers who are often unqualified to teach core courses. building a community that our young people will want to return to where they could be active, productive residents. Right now, um I I believe I have a couple people that can agree that we are facing a crisis. Uh maybe not a physical war, but an educational war. Uh so what can we do to better our students uh and fight this crisis back? So, we have some uh up top-notch uh community uh leaders that's here that's in this community that's
047ready to fight, ready to battle. We're not saying what we could do. We're saying we're ready to do it. Uh we just need a little bit of help to to be able to set the foundation on this uh tutoring program. Uh here I have my daughter Mariah. Uh we always speak nightly. Uh she's a a straight A student at Morrisville Middle School. Um and she's like, "Dad, what do we do to help?" And and it just poor it just it sad me to hear my daughter selflessly saying what I could do to help others. I want her to take the time as we got 30 seconds for her to speak on the behalf of what the tutoring can help and how it will help. The benefits of being in a reading program is it meets
048the students where they are and supports them to where they need to be. It also provides structured learning and comprehension strategies for students that learn at different levels. I believe that this reading program could be a stepping stone to the many pathways kids are preparing to make their futures successful. Thank you. Thank you guys so much. Mr. Chairman, that concludes the public comment period. Thank you. Items for information. Yes, sir. We will start with our 2025 summer programming updates with Dr. Wayade and Miss Connley. All right. Good evening, Dr. Gardner, Chairman Whitfield, members of the board. Um, tonight we're going to provide a quick overview of our 2025 summer programming across the district. These programs served our students from kindergarten through 12th grade, focusing on academics, enrichment, career exploration, and transition support as well. We're
049going to share some highlights and some enrollment um numbers and as well as some initial um data outcomes. So you can go ahead and kind of see that these are some of the programs that we'll be discussing um and we'll be reviewing. Note though that we will not be reviewing our summer testing data points at this point, but we'll review that with you guys at our school improvement board um meeting. So first with our Y readers program, this is a six-week program. We serve kindergarten through first grade students across all three of our elementary um schools. Our goal for enrollment was 83 students. Um but our actual reoccurring attendance was 67 which is really um we we were hoping for about 70. So we were pleased with that with that amount. Um our Y-reader students
050were assessed at the beginning of the summer with our star reading assessment. That is a requirement for from our partnership with with the Yreader program with the YMCA. So that data our in initial data we have but our our in data we have not been able to have received yet from the Y readers but we will update that as well when we get that. Um do want to highlight though that they had 772 books read at the site over the summer. So just over that six six week period. So you can see a couple of pictures there. All right. And the next program Oh go back Dr. Wade. She's really excited about summer programming as well. So, our read to Achieve program that serves our second and third grade um students across the district as
051well. It focuses us 72 hours of reading instruction is what we focus we focus on. So, you can also see we had a goal of 130 students and our actual number was 120. So, again, we were really pleased with that enrollment number. Um, some of our highlights that you can see is that our second grade students averaged at least a a composite growth of three points. That's doesn't sound like a lot, but really our goal for summer is just to re basically maintain. So any growth at all is is a huge celebration. Additionally, our third grade students have another opportunity to work towards their read to achieve proficiency. And so we had two students over the camp um that did meet that that read to achieve proficiency. So that's super exciting. And if you'll go
052on to one more, you can see a couple of pictures. We had a lot of great um activities. We we had some butterflies that they were able to h to hatch um and and release. They did um we focused on different sea animals. And so you can see they did some salt watercolor. So it's just a really great time for our students where we can really focus on the academic, but then we still have some of that fun enrichment and art um at the at the end of the day. All right, I will continue with our traditional high school summer school model program. MHS ran a seven and a half days 7 day half day session uh and NF Woods did our fiveweek session which are both typical for us for the past few years.
053These both focus on small groupoup instruction and we are focused on credit recovery not new credits as well as attendance recovery. We did see a significant number of credits recovered. We are on par with previous years in in those numbers and we did have the opportunity to celebrate 11 summer graduates this year. Um so we are very happy with the success from those uh programs. Our CTE summer camp is another program that we have locally allotted dollars to. We did not receive a state aotment for this as we have in years past, but this is an important part of our CTE program that you heard about as part of our local plan as well to build CTE opportunities and incorporate our strategic plan emphasis on uh our students being uh three E by the time
054they graduate and building that exposure to hands-on uh career ready skills. So, we are very grateful that we were able to fund these two oneweek camps and our students who took advantage of this were able to roll through several different hands-on activities that all have something to do with a STEM course, but also feed into one of our middle school and or high school CTE pathways. And you can see that our attendance goal was 40 to 50. We averaged between that. We had a lot for session one. Session two is a short week. It's only three days. And so, um, we are potentially going to look now that we don't have summer retesting happening at moving that back a week so we can do two 4-day camps in the future. And our average daily attendance
055there was 98%. Every year, our CTE um, director, Mr. Wilson, gives the students a survey to see how we did and see what we can incorporate. And so, you can see um, that is right out of the the mouth of our participants uh, the things that they enjoyed about it. and um brazing copper. I had no idea what that is. Honestly, that was a brand new thing for me. So, they are getting some really cool experiences that we aren't able to provide during the school year. So, grateful for um the support of our CTE department in providing those enrichment opportunities for our students. There are some uh photos there. You can see that this is a very hands-on make and take type uh experience. And so, also I want to give special thanks to Miss
056Sarah Hensler. our CTE director was out on medical leave during camp and she had to step up and really run the whole thing last minute. So, well, not last minute, but new to her role, had just started in that role. So, special thanks to Miss Hensler for um helping make that happen as well. Finally, we had our um our orientations at sixth and 9th grade which help our students transition into new schools. We have student leaders who guide those tours, who walk our students through team building, give them a chance to see the building, walk their schedules, and this is a huge uh component of us getting our kids ready to start the school year off in a safe and comfortable environment for them. So about 70 to 80% of our students attended an orientation.
057We are very excited that especially as you get to secondary where sometimes the interest starts to die off that we are still able to maintain such high attendance uh at our orientations. Uh and at that time we just want to recap that these summer programs are an important investment that we put money aside for to make sure that we are addressing the whole need uh of our children in our district both from an enrichment and an academic standpoint as well. Uh we are grateful also for the support of our staff who work those programs, our community partners and of course our student leaders who are such a big part of that as well. And we are happy to answer any questions from the board that you may have at this time. Any questions? I just
058want to say like I know the reading piece is very important but near and dear to my heart I love the CTE program and I love the fact that I can't wait to watch our our efforts translate into more intentional choices as these children get to high school what they take in the CTE classes there. I I think really targeting those fifth through eighth grade students is going to in the next two to three years really help our kids achieve things that we haven't seen before. It will be more less of a oh I'm going to take this or oh I know I want to do this and it's going to be really good. We are very excited too that our fifth grade programming with the in school clubs will allow us to introduce some
059of those things as well throughout the school year so students who aren't able to come during the summer can still be exposed to those opportunities. Great. And you'll you'll see those plans start to transition too that they that they'll need. So I'm excited about that. very thankful that we offer these opportunities for our students because it's important and thankful to the staff who makes that happen. Everyone would like to take the summer off but um we can't do this unless people are willing to step up and appreciate that. Y thank you again. Next up we have our next set of policy updates with Miss Mlan. Good evening again, Dr. Gardner, Chairman Whitfield, and members of the board. Um, as you well know, MGSD works with the North Carolina School Board Association to ensure that our
060policies are um up todate and where they need to be in line with state policy and um legislation. Um, tonight I bring to you a group of policies that have been recommended to us by the NCSBA. Some are recommendations and some are havetos. Um, but these revisions have been made specific to MGSD in our district. This is for first read. So, as you look through them, please reach out if you have any questions and then we will ask for um a vote next next month. Any questions? Thank you. items for approval. Yes, sir. We're going to call Dr. Wayade and Miss Connley back up to the microphone as they will share our 2526 consolidated federal programs plan. All right. Good evening again. Um tonight we will present our district's consolidated federal programs grant application. This
061annual plan outlines how we will use our federal funds, including title one, 2, three, and four, to support student learning and meet the needs of our schools. This application reflects both federal requirements and our district priorities aligning resources to address our academic achievement, our teacher development, and support for our historically underserved students. We're going to give a brief overview um this evening of the funding sources and our planned uses um our planned uses for the financial piece um to complement the board summary that you should have already received in your packets. So, I will start with title one. Title One is our largest federal grant. It provides around $270,000. Um it it has provided s $670,000 this year. This funding is based on a percentage of students from lowincome household and is designed to ensure
062that children receive a fair and equitable highquality education. So our goal with these funds is to help close our achievement gap and provide extra support where it's needed most. So I wanted to talk a little bit about some of our plans for this this current school year that we are going to use with our title one dollars. So as we have in our past part of it is going to be to support our intervention specialists at our K5 um our four title one K5 schools which are South Park View MIS and East Moresville Intermediate. It will also support tutors to support during our core time and also during our enrichment remediation and intervention time. will be having those those um academic tutors. We're really excited to share that we this is new this year in
063our plan that we are also going to be hiring part-time behavior specialist assistants at the intermediate school so that we can be proactive with some of our behavior supports for our students because we know once we support them their social emotional and their behavior needs they're ready to learn and and and be able to focus on those academics. Um, finally also you will be able to see that we have included our district set aides which include our classroom visits which we call our classroom crawls that we did last year. We had 46 teachers that participated in those classroom crawls just in a two-month period last year. Um, we determined that to um to do that initiative based on feedback from our teachers from teacher working condition surveys. We had a great turnout like I said
064last year and so we're going to continue to do that this year as well as we um do district set aides for professional development and then the required as well to support our um homeless students or McKenna Vento students as well as family engagement initiatives. So I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Wade to talk about title two and title three. Can we ask questions about this while you're on it? Sure if you'd like to. You said that the behavior specialist would just be at the intermediate level. Just at the inter intermediate level. We already have our technicians at the K2 um that work with our student services team. And so this will be a part-time position at the intermediate. And did Rocky River qualify last year? So they are they are eligible based
065on the 40%. Um we are currently prioritizing any student or any schools 45% or higher. Um, our district leadership did speak with Rocky River and that's something that we're continuing to look at for ne next year, but currently it we're serving just elementary 45% or or higher. So, they're just under that threshold, but they would qualify based on the 40. Good. Thank you. All right. So, title two and title three are next up. And uh these grants are designed both to strengthen instruction and support our educators and make sure that all of our students particularly our multilingual learners and other uh vulnerable populations have the key resources that they need to succeed. So, we'll start with title two, which provides approximately $153,000 to us that helps us address the learning needs of all students by
066ensuring they have access to effective teaching as well as supporting our efforts to attract, develop uh and retain the great educators that we have here. So, a large amount of PD comes out of this budget as well. So, for next year, we have uh three kind of main buckets that we are focusing on for our title two. The first one as I mentioned and the largest one is our professional development which includes training on various curriculum pieces that we are implementing as well as our leadership development programs like principal team, assistant principles, uh teacher leader academy etc. Uh we also use that to pay for our uh school improvement planning um activities so that we were able to bring in all of our teams this summer. You heard Dr. Royal mentioned that we are in
067a great place with our school improvement plans and that's in large part because we were able to bring those those teams in this summer and get them started. Um, a second key uh bucket here is our beginning teacher support which helps our new educators who are at the beginning of their career start off strong by providing additional support through them uh or for our BTS. And then finally, a large bucket is our tuition and practice test reimbursement, which allows our educators to further their lensure or further their career, moving from TA into teacher positions, for example, uh, and covering those costs to help improve again our teacher pipeline so that we're bringing in highly qualified staff. Moving on to title three, this is, uh, one of our smallest buckets. This is about $35,000. It supports
068our multilingual learners and the goal of this uh section of the grant is to help build English language proficiency among those students. Uh it is also like title one tied to family engagement because family partnerships for this particular population uh are essential in helping our students uh be successful in our schools. So again we have a few main uh activities here that we're going to touch on. The first is our elevation strategies platform that is PD that provides all of our teachers with uh scaffolds and supports to teach their ML students as well as uh keep our ML staff uh up to date with those researchbased instructions. And then we also use that to pay some stipens for teachers who have completed uh significant amounts. This year uh the past two years we have used
069that to target anyone who wanted to do them. This year we are going to focus on uh teachers who have a cluster of ML students and trying to really get them to go through the whole process instead of just kind of some hit or miss now that they're familiar with the platform. Um and then finally uh we use this to purchase our newcomer curriculum for our students who are less than two years in the US and uh are building that basic English skills and our family engagement events. So I'm going to turn it back over to Miss Connley to finish up with title four. All right. So, our last title that we're going to discuss tonight is title four, and it provides roughly $48,000 to help us give students a well-rounded education to support safe
070and healthy learning environments and strengthen the use of technology and digital literacy skills. So, with that money, um we have been using that to partially fund our director of safety position and which coordinates our district-wide safety measures. It supports um efforts to enhance student safety including prevention strategies and um emer emergency readiness. So that is the majority like I said of the title 4 funding. Um together we like I said we discussed our title one two three and four and together these federal grants work alongside our local and state resources to address our academic behavior and safety needs across the district for our for our students and staff. Each one has a specific purpose and requirements in which we shared with you this evening. Um you've had a chance to review the summary document with
071some of our key activities. Our consolidated grant does have to be approved by our board before we submit that grant to the state which has to be submitted by the end of this month. And so at this time we would like to request the approval of our application if there are no questions. Any questions? These are taken together. Yeah. Um we have a recommendation uh to uh approve the consolidated federal programs plan as presented. Uh that would be uh the 2025 2026 consolidated federal programs plan uh will help us address needs of all students through supplemental federal funds. We receive federal funds in the following areas. Title one support for students from lowincome households. Title two, support for learning needs of all students through effective instruction. Title three, support for multilingual learners of English. And
072title four, support for all students to be safe and healthy and well-rounded. That aotment is $670,17 with a carryover from last year a total of $767,37148 to be allotted among the four different titles. Uh again, we have a recommendation. I'll entertain a motion to approve. So moved. I have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. I have a motion and a second to approve the consolidated federal programs plan for the 2025 2026 school year. All those in favor? I. All those opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, ladies. Thank you very much. All right. Next up, just when he thought he was off the hook, Dr. Smith is got one more um item and he will be talking about South Elementary modular unit renovation. Thank you Dr. Garder, Mr. Whitfield, members of the board. This is
073my last uh report I promise or request. Um so uh what I bring to you tonight is a renovation efforts for the mobile unit at South in an effort to provide the best we can for our prek that uh students that are at South Elementary. We are moving them out of the outdated mobile which has been there longer than I have um and into the larger mobile um that was vacated during our gradespan renovation a few years ago. While the this structure is newer moving prek into that building, we have some regulations we have to meet. Uh prek regulations and fire code compliance. So we've got to add some bathrooms. We've got to add some doors, other things like that for the the prek uh program. the four classrooms of prek that are going to
074be there. So, we did solicit formal requests for proposals for this. Um, we had uh we received multiple uh submissions and following comprehensive evaluation and our standardized scoring rubric, we are recommending Catalyst Construction Incorporated um as the most responsive and responsible bidder. The total price of this uh project will not exceed $342,000 30 $342,330 and the expenditure will come out of current capital uh outlay funds. So I do ask your approval for this uh renovation at South. Does this increase enrollment or how it it does not our we had four we have four classrooms now and then we will continue to have four. It just gives them a much better space. That old other mobile has seen better days. Gotcha. Thank you. Are there plans to remove that one or That's something that Mr. Neil
075and I have been discussing. It's going to be That's going to be fun. It's going to be art. Yes. It's going to be an opportunity to get it out of there. I remember when we moved them in. That was Yeah. And the trees around it have grown up since then. So we have a recommendation uh for South Elementary modular unit renovation. Uh the purpose being uh that while these uh this is a newer structure uh certain renovations are need to take place to ensure compliance with NC prek regulations. The company that has been um I guess determined to be the construction company is Catalyst Construction Company Inc. uh they were the most responsive and responsible bidder. Total cost of the project will not exceed $342,330 and this expenditure will be funded utilizing the capital outlay
076funds. Uh I will entertain a motion at this time. So moved. I have a motion. Do I hear a second? Second. I have a motion and a second to approve the ele South Elementary School modular unit renovation. All those in favor? I. All those opposed. Motion carries. Thank you, Dr. Smith. Thank you, Dr. Smith. What What time frame are we looking at? So, end of November. Yeah, we hopefully have it done by the end of November. Okay. Thank you. We we have a temporary uh order to stay in the unit we're in until we can get to the new one. Thank you. Well, all right. It now comes that time in the meeting where we need to adjourn to close session for purposes of discussing uh personnel and consult our board attorney. I will entertain
077a motion to enter close session. So moved over either one you pick. Okay. K. Okay. All those in favor I. All those opposed. Motion carries. All right. Uh, do I have a uh uh a motion to approve the personnel list as recommended by the superintendent? So moved. Second. All those in favor? I Sorry. All right. Thank All right. Now the mot I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn. Although uh who's going to so move all right second. All those in favor.