Orange County Board of Education Regular Meeting - March 24, 2025

001Good evening everyone. I'd like to um call this session of the Orange County Schools Board to session tonight. Uh I need a motion for us to enter close session for the reasons so stated on the agenda. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. All in favor? I I. All right. Let's move to close session. So they might appear. based shape. like to call tonight's meeting uh to order. Orange County Board of Education for March the 24th. Uh we will start with our public charge and I thank you all for being here and I'm sorry you had to wait uh as we had a longer session but um we will start with our public charge. Orange County, excuse me, the Orange County Board of Education pledges to its citizens to conduct its business in a

002courteous and productive manner, showing respect for fellow board members, staff, and citizens. The board asked its citizens to conduct themselves with the same courtesy toward both school personnel and each other. A moment of silence will be observed before each meeting. In addition to the moment of silence, the board will recite the pledge of allegiance. The board asks that you check your cell phones and other electronic devices to be certain that they are either turned off or on vibrate to avoid interruption of the meeting. So we will start now with our pledge of allegiance. If you will stand, please. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. And now we will

003um take a moment and observe a moment of silence. Thank you very much. Okay, we have some recognitions tonight. Two recognitions. And we will start with um Miss Bremer or Mr. Kow. I'm not sure who's here. Oh, and uh Miss Wood uh as we uh introduce new national board certified teachers and renewals. Good evening everyone. Um I'm here with uh Rhonda Wood. I'm Jeff Koek uh from human resources. For around 30 years, national board certification has been a milestone achievement for teachers that positively impacts their students, the district, and themselves. National board certification is a challenging reflective process that emphasizes best strategies for professional practice and how to positively impact learning for all students. In order to achieve national board certification, a teacher must complete four components, assemble a portfolio of their teaching, and pass

004a test. What are the benefits? In our latest measure, the percentage of national board certified teachers who exceed growth was twice the rate of non national board certified teachers who exceed growth in Orange County. Additionally, the state of North Carolina provides an ongoing 12% raise to national board certified teachers as long as they remain board certified and in the classroom. I want to take this moment to give special thanks to Rhonda Wood and Connie Brimmer Cultz, our dynamic duo, who supports our national board uh candidates um pretty much as soon as they start entering uh OCS at whatever level. In Orange County schools, we currently have 76 National Board Certified Teachers, which includes the addition of four National Board Certified Teachers that came in to Orange County School this year, as well as nine others

005who have achieved this status and still uh with us today. We are so proud of all of our National Board Certified Teachers. Uh and we would like to recognize the following OCS national the following OCS teachers who have either renewed or achieved their certifications this year. If any of the teachers are here, please stand as your name is called and Rhonda will read off the list. Good evening. It's so exciting to be here. So, for the past three years, I have watched the growth of our national board certified teachers, and I am so excited tonight to um celebrate our new candidates and our um recent renewals. Andromeda Crow from Orange High School, Rachel Harper from Efflin Cheeks, Susan Brooks from River Park, Alexis Keagle from Central Elementary, and Heather Johnson from Al Standback. These folks

006all renewed their boards this year. And our new candidates, uh, Lauren Laura Eisenhower from Cedar Ridge, Christina Clark from Cedar Ridge, Melinda Barnhart from Cedar Ridge, Ashley Walker from River Park, Tracy Thomas from Hillsboro, Lauren Warren from River Park, Amber Potter from New Hope, Anthony Folden from Grady Brown and Nicole Fron from Grady Brown. Congratulations. [Applause] Thank you both for that. And a big congrat congratulations to those teachers. It's a lot of hard work. It's a lot of hours. And um we appreciate you, Miss Wood and uh Connie Cultz, Connie Bremer Cults for your hard work in doing and helping those teachers along because it is a it is a major accomplishment. So congratulations to all of those teachers and everybody in HR who has um participated in helping that. Uh now we have our

007winner sports. Uh our National High School Association state championship recognitions and I think uh Mr. Newman, our director of athletics is going to come forward with some folks that I know. Good evening and thanks for having us. Uh the um I am Lewis Human. you're honored to be uh your district athletic director as of January 1 and it's been fantastic. Uh uh one of my favorite parts of this job is to have this opportunity to be able to present the accomplishments of our athletes. So I hope to do a whole lot more of it because that's my favorite part of the job. And tonight I am first of all excited about just really congratulating the entire uh Orange High School swim team as they had a heck of a season. In addition to this in

008addition to that uh I'd also like to u congratulate and honor the 400 relay team as they won the state championship for North Carolina High School Athletic Association. In addition to that, Luke Roman uh won also the 200 free and the 500 free uh freestyle swim as well and was named a 3A most outstanding swimmer of the year. So, we certainly all appreciate Orange High School's incredible school and athletes for representing all of us in such a manner. And I believe Coach Guy might have a few things to say about his team. Thank you guys for having us and I appreciate uh the being able to be recognized for the team. I'd like to thank our school administrator, Principal Johnson, our athletic director, Jason Knap, uh who helped support us and being able to deliver

009a quality product for our kids um at the school. Um one thing I just wanted to mention in addition to uh that we're super proud of. Um so Luke, this is his second time being recognized before the board. Last year he won an individual state championship as well in the 500 free. And this year he was able to win two individual events, the 500 and the 200. And then he was part of the relay team. So a relay team is normally four swimmers. So we're missing two of them. One of them's in a pool right now swimming getting ready for a meet this weekend. And uh you know swimmers are dedicated uh consistent folks. And so that's one one of them doing. The other one's at an appointment. So we have uh Noah Jones and

010Luke Roman who are part of that relay team. And so it was a great season. We've went won the regions uh for girl for guys and our girls got third in the region uh this year. They won conference as a men's team uh for the tournament and for the uh for the regular season. Um super proud of them. These guys are also uh scholar athletes for the state and so these guys carry a high GPA. They're nationally recognized for a scholarship program as well as what recognized in North Carolina. So, you know, if you want to swim for Orange, you got to be smart, too. So, we're we're going to make sure we take care of the students there, too. Thank you guys for having us, and we appreciate your support with the athletic program.

011Well, before you sit down, I'd like to say one thing. I'd like to thank the guys who have done this for I'm not even going to say how many years. Uh, but they have put a lot of time and effort into working with these guys and gals, and it has paid off and, uh, we really appreciate your hard work as well. So, thank you. Thank you very much. we got into this. Our son was a junior and he needed a coach and so we stepped up and six years later we're still here but he's not. So they stepped up and here enjoy the kids. So thank you guys very much. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you for keeping the love and swimming. Yeah. Thank y'all. Okay, we need a motion to adopt our agenda

012for tonight. So moved. Second. All in favor? I I Okay, approved. And Mr. Richmond, do we have any public comments tonight? Yes, ma'am. We have three. Okay. We will now hear public comments. Speaker Speakers will be called in the order in which they signed up. Each speaker will have three minutes. Yielding time to other speakers is not permitted. If a speaker has written materials they like they would like to share, please hand them to our board clerk, Franklin Mchune, and he would distribute them to the board. The purpose of public comment is for the board to hear from members of the public, not to engage in back and forth discussions. Per our policy, board members will not respond to speakers during during the public comment session. The board greatly values public feedback and welcomes all

013comments regardless of viewpoint. However, please be reminded that children are often present at these meetings and that our public comment policy prohib prohibit prohibits profanity, vulgarity, and personal abuse of any person. We ask that all comments be civil, respectful, and free of personal attacks. Any person who violates our public comment period or otherwise exceeds the bounds of order and decorum will be given a warning. Continued violations may result in the speaker being ruled out of order at which point we will move on to the next speaker. Our first speaker tonight is Casey Collins. Hello. Sorry. Good evening, Orange County School Board members. My name is Casey Collins and I'm the parent of a first grader at Central Elementary School. I also have a three-year-old child enrolled in the preschool academy run by Orange County. I'm

014a member of the Central Elementary PTO as well as the community schools advisory board there. In an effort to provide a bit of context, when my daughter was entering kindergarten, I entered her into local school lotteryies in the spirit of giving ourselves options. She ended up getting a spot at HS which prompted me to further investigate how traditional calendar select schools and charter schools function within our public school system. Ultimately, I found it all to be profoundly inequitable. In the end, we chose Central. We were governed by the idea that being in community with a racially and socioeconomically diverse population could be a positive experience and enrich our family's collective education beyond academic learning. I'm pleased to report I was right. Central has become an important part of our life and I have become a

015passionate advocate for our school community. I'm here tonight to address some public comments I saw from your last meeting in which a group of HS parents requested that the bond money be spent on a middle school that would primarily serve their select school community. I noticed that these comments made reference to the benefit of a year-round schedule for disadvantaged communities and students with low test scores of which Central and several other schools in the district have disproportionate numbers of. If in fact the year- round model is so effective and there's evidence to support this, why then could we not put the whole district on the same schedule so that everyone could benefit from its many advantages? Having the district calendar be consistent for all schools eliminate so many of the inequities that plague our school

016system. It could streamline administration and transportation resources. It could help regulate food insecurity and child care and improve teacher retention and academic engagement. I understand the arguments against a district-wide year-round calendar relate largely to athletic programs, which another HS parent spoke to effectively. She described how her experience in Wake County allowed her to both attend year- round school and participate in sports all the way through high school. It can be done. This argument also begs the question, is the priority of the school district academic development or athletic competition? I understand that this bond money is not enough to repair everything that needs repairing in our district. Not even close. But in thinking about how best to allocate these funds, I would like to ask, what district-wide changes could we make to maximize this investment for

017the whole community, I'm asking this board to consider putting all the Orange County schools on the same year- round calendar? This move is both efficient and equitable and would make far better use of our collective resources. If for some reason this idea is met with opposition, I would like for this board to clearly explain that position and to identify the impediments that prohibit this step toward a better school district for every student. Thank you for your time. Thank you. The next speaker um please excuse me if I mispronounce your name is Latessle. Hi, good evening. My name is Luda Tessle and I am a parent of two kids at Central Elementary School. However, we did not land at that school by choice. Despite several years of attempts with the lottery, we were not able to

018select ourselves into a community blessed by a year-round calendar. Now, don't get me wrong, I have learned to love our school. The Central Elementary teachers and staff are amazing. But I sympathize with the parents of HS that spoke at the last board meeting about their experiences. I too want all the benefits of a year-round calendar. However, I believe that everyone in the district deserves to benefit, not just a select few. Therefore, I am here to urge the board to use the bond funds in a way that benefits the most kids in our county. If we believe that a year-round academic calendar is particularly effective at mitigating learning loss for lowincome students, then let's offer that to the kids that need it most. Four out of seven, four out of seven elementary schools in our county

019are these consistently underperforming targeted support and improvement schools. They include Central, New Hope, River Park, and Grady Brown elementaryaries. In their most recent school report cards, as published by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction are D, C, C, and C. Economically disadvantaged groups attend these schools in high proportions with 70% at Central and New Hope, 35% at River Park, and 60% at Grady Brown. This is compared with 18% at Hillsboro Elementary. The taxes from these economically disadvantaged and low performing communities will be funding the $125 million mil uh bond. It is irresponsible to even consider using this bond to fund a new K through8 school that maintains attendance based on a select lottery which would inevitably continue the unjust segregation of people and of resources. I urge the board to use the bond money

020in the most equitable, creative, and responsible way to promote the academic excellence of the entire district. Don't just use these funds to provide a new building for a select few, but rather please use them to construct spaces that would provide transformational and positive academic experiences for as many kids and families living in this county as possible. Thank you for your time. Thank you. And the final speaker for tonight is Rachel Royce. Good evening. Um, I have a statement that I wanted to read. It's very short. that I saw in the news that the USDA has cut $1 billion in food aid and that in North Carolina the local food for schools cooperative agreement program has been cut $19 million. And so I wanted I have a question for you. I wanted to know how will

021that affect the school lunch program in our in our county? and what are you going to do about it? Thank you. That concludes our public comment session. Okay. Thank you all for being here and speaking. We need to um now approve our consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve? So move. Second. All in favor? I I Okay, that is approved as well. And we move into our work session. Um the superintendent's recommended local operating budget. This wrath. Good evening, Chair Purcell, Vice Chair Richmond, board members, superintendent, staff, and the public. Thank you for the opportunity tonight to present to you the fiscal year 2026 superintendent recommended budget. Going to start with some key budget dates. Tonight we are presenting the superintendent's recommended budget. On April the 7th there will be a public hearing

022where there will be an opportunity for public input to be shared with the board regarding uh this. April the 7th will also be when the board um hopefully uh approves and accepts the local operating budget. We will then submit that to the county commissioners by April the 14th. During the month of May, our county commissioners will be holding b um budget public hearings where they will also be hearing from the public and also uh discussing the funding that they will be providing not only to the two school systems but all of the county departments that are supported by them. And then in June, they will have a resolution with an attempt to adopt and we will know what our funding will be from the county for the upcoming academic year. I want to start by

023highlighting wonderful things that are happening in our school district. First of all, per the 2324 end of grade testing, 10 of our 13 schools earned a school performance grade of C or higher, and 12 of the 13 schools met or exceeded growth, both of which are well above the state averages. Additionally, we have had some highlights um at our individual schools. By no means does this represent all of them, but I wanted to take an opportunity to elevate a few of these uh to you and to our public. Jason Johnson, the principal at Orange High School, was named the uh 25 North Central principal of the year. Dr. from Meredith Mayer. Our principal at New Hope Elementary, was recognized for closing the achievement gap between subgroups of students and is currently ranked in the top

02410 in the state for closing the achievement gap. We had two art teachers, Sarah Brown Schumacher um at Efflin Cheeks as well as Amanda Aguayou at Grally Hill Middle School who received the uh in North Carolina Art Education Association Educators of the Year award. And we had a student at Efflyn Cheeks who actually had a piece of art displayed in the North Carolina General Assembly Youth Art Exhibit. A few other things to elevate tonight. Our district continues to keep summer programs a priority in light of the state of our federal and state funding cuts by continuing to offer exceptional opportunities for our students. Some example of these include our summer careers academy, a partnership with Chapel Hill Carell City Schools and the homebuilders association to offer on the job training opportunities for our students. CTE

025student interns provides unpaid intern opportunities within Orange County schools as well as other businesses. We have multilingual high school bridge programs which is a summer camp opportunity specifically for our multilingual learners allowing our students to build confidence and maintain language skills during the summer break. middle and high school transition programs that provide opportunities for rising sixth and ninth grade to become familiar with the new schools in smaller settings that they will be attending in the fall. Our tutoring programs at Gateway and within our title one schools continue to support student success and mastery of fundamental skills promoting confidence. And thanks to the support of this board and the diligent work of our administration, we continue to have a balanced budget and maintain a fund balance. We were able to rightsize budgets this year to continue

026supporting initiatives proven to impact student achievement by reallocating over $700,000. And we have seen just how challenging this has become for some of our counterparts near and far. Our budget priorities continue to be to recruit and retain highquality staff, student proficiency and growth, and to allocate resources to best meet the needs of our student and staff. Let's talk about how we build the Orange County Schools budget and those things that we must consider. First, students determine our funding. North Carolina school districts are funded based upon the number of students attending a school. For fiscal year 2526, it is anticipated that our funding will be based on 6,98 students. State law requires that public schools also provide their local per pupil funding, which for this year is $5,666 for every student that is doiciled in Orange

027County Schools District but attends a charter school. As you can see, that number currently is at 1,125. Reflected here is a five-year trend of student demographics within Orange County schools. Overall, we've seen growth in our black and brown populations by a little over 11% and a decline in our white population by almost 15% since 2020. going to now shift over to my human resources counterpart who's going to also take the opportunity to talk with you a little bit more about how we a lot in building our budget. Thank you Rhonda. Good evening again everyone. So as the slide shows um our funding is based primarily on our ADM our average daily membership. So it's projected out a year ahead. So for example in September in August and September of 2024 this year the first 20

028days or the second 20 days which is roughly midepptember to mid-occtober the higher or best number of that count sets our ADM for the next school year for the 2526 school year. Um that's statewide. Um and Orange County schools will initially allot schools and staff based on this formula. Although we do track changes as as we notice them over over the period of time until the next school year begins. When we are looking of how to staff schools, there are certain mandatory ratios that we have to keep in mind. As you can see from the slide, in kindergarten, first, second, and third grade. There is some leeway in that. A a particular class can potentially go over these numbers by up to three students, but the district average throughout the entire grade must be at

029these levels for us to meet statutory requirements. This slide shows the OCS and state ratios of students per class for all grade levels. The first three in blue is repeated from the slide before. And as you can see as we go from grades four through grade 12, the state ratio which says a one which allotss us one teacher for 24 students, the Orange County school district ratio is actually higher. As you can see at the from the numbers at the bottom, it looks like we are in the positive about 29 teachers because we have higher class sizes than the state allotss for in grades 4 through 12. Hold that thought. As we move to the as we move to the next slide, you will see this um this chart here and the first row is

030simply repeating the information from the slide before. The state ratio gives us 327 core teachers to fill, but because of the way Orange County Schools allotss, we actually only use 298 for those positions. What I wanted to bring to your attention, for example, in the next row, the middle row where it's talking about program enhancements or electives or specialist teachers, you'll notice there's a formula one to one one teacher to 191 students in K through five based on average daily membership. So the state in essence all lots county schools 15.9 positions. Underneath that you will note what clearly looks like an unfunded state mandate. In grades six through 12 there are no state aotments. So when you look at the FAR column the district ratio you will see for example in elementary OCS this year

031right now is currently allotting 28 positions in elementary school far more than the 15.9 that the state gives us for every grade level. And you can see the numbers in that um in that second row third column which says that we have 77 and a half total program enhancement positions. So the sort of savings in aotments that we may have had because we have higher class sizes in grades 4 through 12. Well, we're in a sense you might say we are overalled. Now please keep in mind every district that I know of is overalled from the state aotments, right? we need to do this because we have student needs and priorities that you all set for us as the board that we need to carry through in our mission. Um sometimes the state allotss us

032by money amounts rather than positions. The AIG teachers uh for example are one um example of that. Long the bottom line for that is that according to the AI we have a certain amount of money um the 425,000 um I think that's written there um we are actually paying like double that amount okay to support AIG needs over what the state will allow us. As we move on to the next slide, um this is one of the easiest columns to and rows actually I should say one of the easiest rows to follow. We have a principal in each school of our 13 schools. Assistant principles they state also gives us a formula. If we add those up based on our ADM that would give us 71 months of employment or roughly 6 and a half

033assistant principal positions for the district at 11 months of employment. As you can see from the second row, third column under the district ratio, obviously we have more assistant principles than what the state allows us for us to manage uh the students. The next slide talks about instructional support positions. Um you can see the uh distinction in row one about the uh math, science, computer position per district. That's state allotss one. We have nine for the district for the instructional support positions. Okay. Um which you can see the description in you know the math coaches, the literacy coaches, the coordinators. Um again the state only all lots us in that second row 16.8 positions based on our ADM but we currently have working in there 39 um people in those positions to fill those needs.

034Um this next uh and I believe this is the last in this set but we have school health personnel um defined as social workers, school counselors, school psychologists. I do want to point out that there is a a mistake that should say 17 positions and not 11 positions in that first row in the second column under the state ratio. Um but as you can see from the third column under the district ratio in that first row we have a total of 43 total school health positions which even over the 17 positions that should be there is over double um what is uh the state all lots us and the school nurse positions you can see there as well. So and we have agreement with the county health department about nurses. So that's a little bit

035of a different category. We're not paying for all those out of our local funds. So if you look at a summary, this next slide provides sort of a summary of all our a lotments. The OCS aotment is in that middle column. The state aotments are in the far column that we are funding over a hundred more positions than the state is allotting us for. Um, and that's where most of our local dollars are going. Um this was just another way to sort of view the data if this was sort of a full um as you can see each of the different types of teachers and categories here and we added principles and assistant principles. This is what OCS is currently funding for. If we were only to fund what the state gave us, you could

036see the discrepancies in each of those boxes about what it would be. Please keep in mind it's for the school health personnel. It should say 17, not 11. That box would be a little bit bigger. Um, but the point is still made. Um, what would that mean then if we only allotted by the state? You can see from this slide what some of those effects could be at the school. Um, every school district has to balance the priorities in the loting and the fund, you know, loting and funding as Rhonda will talk about more in her presentation. Um, but let me turn it briefly back over to Miss Wrath. All right. Thank you. So, another piece that we have to consider when we're looking at developing our budget is we have to mitigate any funding

037caps. And our biggest obstacle surrounding that is our multilingual learner and our exceptional children populations because those fundings are capped. State resources provided to school districts in both of these areas is capped. 13% of our ADM is where we're capped for our exceptional children and 10.6% of our ADM is where we're capped for our multilingual learner. As a result, our studenttoteer ratios continue to increase and the need for teachers to be split amongst several schools is becoming the norm. Our staff continue to offer the best possible services to our students while we work to keep a balanced budget with fewer and fewer dollars. Now, Mr. Kow is going to talk a little bit more about that. Um, one thing I'm not going to talk too much about is the complicated formula for how they figure

038out um, the ratios and for h how we get allotted ELLL teachers. I think it's it's safe to say looking at the different numbers the state allotss us in dollar amounts 866,000 based on our needs in the schools and the you know the decisions that we've made in how to support our students we are paying um we are spending almost double that amount to support our our ELLL teachers and that of course is above and beyond what the state is giving us. Additionally, just another to see what our allotments look like for EC general teachers. You'll see in the second column, it talks about the state maximum case loads. So, in elementary school, one teacher could have a maximum case load of 35 students. In the secondary schools, it would be 1 to 50. The

039state would allot us based on those numbers 16 positions for the district. As you can see from the fourth column, the OCS average case loads for our current this year our EC general teachers. Those case loads are 1 to 17 at the elementary school level, 1 to 20, and 1 to 25 at the secondary level. So again, we have 34 positions, which is over double what the state is allotting um to uh work with our EC students. Okay, again a similar sort of graphic. This is what we're currently staffing. If we just went by the state model, you could see what would um happen to our services. All right. At this point, my last tag in. Thank you, Miss M. Thank you. I appreciate the collaboration that finance does have with the human resources department

040in total and um Mr. co-week because as you can see they are a very important component when we are developing a budget to present to you. Another thing that we have to think about when we're developing our budget is making sure that we are maximizing our funding sources. Right now our funding is almost split 5050 between state and local resources. Approximately 6% of our budget uh does come from federal resources and we also have a small portion that comes from restricted uh resources which is basically funds that we receive that are restricted for a specific purpose and they cannot be utilized in any other manner. Um an example of this would be NC preK. Um those funding that fund is considered restricted. This does not include capital. Um, we're not even talking about that in

041discussion. I'll let my counterpart take care of that later on. But, um, when you look at, um, our operating budget, this is how, um, our resources are currently coming to Orange County Schools. Also want to take an opportunity to talk about how we spend them. um roughly 79% of our budget supports salaries and benefits and 6% of it is actually what we have to pass through to charter schools. Um state law requires um as I stated earlier that any student that is doiciled in the Orange County School District that if they attend a charter school, we have to give that per pupil funding to that charter school. That's about 6% of our total budget. Um five roughly 15% um goes to our other purchase services and supplies and materials. Purchase services are basically going to

042be uh utilities are the primary component of that. And then supplies and materials are just what they say they are. Those are those consumable items that are um we are using our funds for. wanted to take um this a little bit further and uh share with you of that 79% that supports our salaries and wages, 80% of that is specifically at the school level. 14% of that is basically what we call districtwide or our um auxiliary or operations. That's going to be your transportation. That is going to be your maintenance. Those are those departments that are basically spread across the entire district and touch the entire district. And 6% is um for central office. And that does include some of our district level coaches and facilitators, but um those are people that are not tied

043specifically to a school. Next, when we're looking at building our budget, we often have to think about those state mandates. And uh Mr. Kow referred to one just a minute ago. And we want our teachers to get the best increases from the general assembly in salary and compensation. Um we want that for all of our staff. Right now, we really don't know what the general assembly is going to come back with in regards to um salary increases for our staff for next fiscal year. We have uh an idea of our benefits um based upon trends and we know that they are going to be increasing significantly but we are taking kind of the middle of the road for planning and we are planning based upon a 3% increase in salaries for all of our staff.

044This also includes roughly a uh $500 to $1,000 increase in our health insurance premiums and about a 7% increase in our retirement premiums um for the upcoming fiscal year. So, in order for us to continue operations exactly as we're structured right now, factoring in the things that we've talked about and a 3% salary increase, we would need an additional $1.8 million from our county commissioners. Next, I want to take an opportunity to talk about our expansion initiatives. We want to continue to advocate for our staff and we know that you do as well. That's why we bring before you these expansion requests for consideration to take to the commissioners to request funding for the fiscal year 26 academic year. We would like to request an increase to increase our teachers local supplement. We also would

045like to request an increase for our classified supplements. We want to increase that supplement for our lowest paid classified staff currently only receiving 7%. We also would like to advocate and request for a bus driver hourly pay increase. I'm going to talk about each of these in greater detail, but we would like to propose and ask for funding to increase our bus driver scale to align with Chapel Hill Carbor City Schools. First, let's talk about our local certified supplements. As you can see from the graph that is depicted here, Orange County Schools is lagging behind in our local supplement in all of the tiers. We would like to correct that and hopefully utilize this as a way to recruit and retain staff that we already have here. Right now, our classified certified our certified supplements

046are paid in the following bands. Um, as you can see here on the screen, it's from 12% up to 18%. And you can also see here the number of staff as well as that percentage of the staff that they are. When we were looking at this information, we looked at several ideas and um the one that we would like to recommend is an additional 5% supplement to each of the tiers for our certified staff. This would allow us to be more in line with our surrounding districts that we are competing with and outpace a few particularly in those middle years by increasing the 12 by 5% the 14 etc all the way up to the 18 increasing those by 5%. In order to do that we would need an additional 1.6 6 million in funding

047from the commissioners to substantiate that. As you can see here, 3% um would get us closer to Chapel Hill um which is our biggest competitor right now, where 5% would allow us to actually be there and outpace some of them in each of those tiers. Next, I would like to talk about our classified supplements. These are our um unlicensed staff in the district who are crucial to the um success of our students as well. Currently the classified population um most of them receive a 7% in uh local supplement. Uh that's approximately 284 of our staff. We have coordinators who receive 9% and directors who receive 13%. We want to focus on those classified employees who currently fall in that 7% ban. This would include um teacher assistants, school bookkeepers, school receptionists, office support, custodians, technicians,

048and child nutrition. It does not incorporate bus drivers because we're going to talk about them separately. So, we would like to request a recommendation for an additional 2% for our classified staff that are currently receiving seven to increase them to a 9% local supplement. That would equate to roughly an additional $375,000 that we would need from our commissioners. That would allow us to be able to impact over 280 employees and actually provide them an annual average increase of 718. Realizing that it is a percentage based upon your salary. For some it's going to be higher, for some it's going to be lower, but on average we're looking at 718. Next, let's talk about bus driver pay. We also took the opportunity to look at districts around us um to take a look at how we

049were measuring up in regards to what we were paying our bus drivers. As you can see in Orange County schools, to be able to get to $20 an hour, you have to have five years of experience or greater. Whereas in Chapel Hill or even Wake County, you only need no experience to one year and in Durham, you need four years of experience. We would like to recommend that we increase our bus driver pay scale to align with Chapel Hill Carbell City Schools which you can see here is the fourth column in the small graph in the um right hand top. So that would be um everybody would start on a step one at $21 an hour and then increase from there. In order to do that, we would need an additional $35,000 from our commissioners

050to be able to implement that pay scale. So, in summary, our continuation budget that we need to continue operations exactly as we are right now is $1.8 million. I do want to point out that on this slide, the projected enrollment is incorrect at the top. 6862 is a number that we were looking at very early in the process. I apologize that it did not get updated, but that should be 6,99. Um, that is an important number when we start talking about per pupil. So when you look at the number of students that we're projected to have plus our charter schools and then factoring out those students who attend Orange County schools that are not districted here and do not pay tuition, um this is a benefit that we offer staff who uh work in our

051schools who may live in surrounding counties that they can actually have their students attend in the county that they're teaching in. That would um give us a number uh for our per pupil that is roughly $230 that we would need on our current per pupil increase to be able to fund that. Our expansion initiatives listed um here that we talked about in total is $2.2 million. That would give us a total budget shortfall of a little over $4 million in order to implement everything that we have presented here as a recommendation. That is a $230 per pupil increase. Uh just for our continuation, an expansion is roughly $279 per pupil that we would need. So, you're talking about roughly a $500 increase per student in Orange County schools that we would need or $4 million.

052Wanted to take this opportunity to also share um a look at what our per pupil funding history has been from the county commissioners since the 1920 um academic year. As you can see here, um, we've had some years, uh, that were as low as $15. We had some that were zero, and we've had some that were as high as $538. To close out our discussion tonight, I want to take this opportunity to take a quick look at our local operating fund balance. As you can see, in 2020, we had roughly uh $6.1 million. During the COVID years, we were able to build that uh to 6.6 million. And then um had to spend some of those funds and actually uh got us down to $4.3 million is where we ended our fiscal year last year.

053Right now, we are projecting that our fund balance for this year is going to be around $4.4 million. The orange line that you see there is industry standard. That's roughly 10 to 11% of our local operating budget that we would like to see us have in our fund balance. Keeping in mind that this is cash flow and a lot of times it can be extremely beneficial when we are in those years where our federal funds don't drop until December or January. And also I want to point out that our um local payroll roughly is $2 million a month. I would feel much more comfortable uh with a number around 5.5 million and I hope that's my goal is for us to continue to work towards that. I thank you for the opportunity to present this

054recommendation to you this evening and now I will take any questions that you may have. Okay. Thank you very much Miss Wrath. This is very comprehensive and um very telling of what we need. Um does anyone have questions? Um well, first before I get to anything, I want to say um that you know um I've been on the board for a little while now and so I've been in a number of these presentations and they just keep getting better and better. So thank you. I feel like the narrative and the explanation here was really um uh thoughtful. Um the presentation overall was really great. Um I have a couple of minor like presentation suggestions for when we bring it forward to the county commissioners. Um one is um when we're talking about the aotments and

055I'm really glad we do that. Um and the very first slide where it start talks about the state ratio and the OCS ratio. I feel like we should say like a lot the word aotment in there. Like it's not it's not the state average. You know what I mean? Like I think I think if somebody just saw the slide without the voiceover, it could read as like and the state average is 1 to 24 students or whatever and it's not like everyone is doing what we're doing which is saying like oh you're not going to give us any art or music or language teachers. We'll take some of those then. So that's a tiny thing. Um, and I'm not sure that the trend by race over like the the dem demographics makes as much like

056makes a narrative point as much as would like free and reduced price lunch increases or multilingual learners or EC some of these other um trends that we're experiencing. I think they would um it would like explain a little bit more about the needs of our students and how they're growing and changing. Um so a couple of considerations there. Um I wanted a clarification. So is um in the continuation budget it says non-personnel increase is that like supplies material is that to account for inflation is that okay it's like a 3% inflationary to account for the cost of everything that we buy that is correct and also you know utilities um on average tend to increase roughly between 2 and 3% um as well as as you know all the things that we have seen significant

057increases in yes that accounts for that. Okay, awesome. Um, and then I just I mean I I really appreciate the I know it is, you know, a real ask and I I just really agree with these priorities of what we're asking for and just wanted to say that. And just for additional um context, I saw that um Alamance County Schools, which is one of the neighboring districts that is not currently ahead of us right now, is in their budget proposes um increasing teacher supplements using $1.75 million to increase their teacher supplements and increasing their classified supplements by $1.1 million. So, um you know, they're even with us or below us by like 1% on the teacher supplements and are right next door. So, um I think that is also an important factor in this. I

058don't know whether they'll get it, but they're certainly asking for it. Um and then the county policy on the fund balance. Yes, ma'am. That was much lower. I I can't remember what the latest on that is, but they they had sort of I think it was like 5% or something like that that they wanted to see our fund balance around a number like five or five and a half%. Was that it? Five and a half percent. Five and a half. Um a little over two million. Yep. Um and and like if you go way past before COVID when we were up near six, it was close. It was like three, you know, things like that in the past, right? And I understand why we would be much more comfortable with a bigger number. Does the

059county understand why we would feel much more comfortable if we were around 10, 11, 12% fund balance? We are working very hard to articulate that and help them understand why, you know, we want a fund balance that is more in alignment with that as well as more in alignment with them. Great. I think it it is standard to have a little bit more and given the current volatility and uncertainty in the funding environment in general, um I think it's good that we are trying to keep a robust uh balance. That's it. Thank you. M do um just a couple comments and thank you Miss Wrath. I I also found this a really effective presentation um in lots of ways um from the presentation of the data and how a lotments work. Um one point I

060want to make just because when we talked about this in student achievement, it it caught my attention as as a parent who's raised three kids in Orange County schools. um the district ratio for the upper grades, you know, the one and 1 to 27 or 1 to 32, that doesn't mean that's like a typical class size. Um that really hasn't been my kids's experience. And and you explained to me, Madam Chair, that there's certain classes where that happens that kind of skews the numbers, classes where it makes sense. So parents out there, it's not that your kids are in a 10th grade math class with 32 students um at all. Um, so that was one thing I just wanted to point out for general understanding since it had caught my attention. Um, I I really

061like the focus on the three the three areas um for expansion. Um, I think they're the right um items um the teacher local supplement increase um the classified supplement increase and the bus driver. And um I think your team has been really effective at um presenting how tight everyone's trying to be and then the savings that have been garnered by a lot of work department by department. Um and um also just wanting to know, you know, we don't have the benefit of, you know, the special district chat tax in Chapel Hill. We also don't have the benefit of the um like a foundation. I know Durham public schools is using their foundation to increase bus driver pay and we don't have either of those funding mechanisms. And so um you know I think it's a

062really important argument that our bus driver pay should align with our sister district whose transportation um infrastructure we actually support and maintain. So, um, again, I think these are the right um the right requests for expansion and I'm excited to see the projected fund balance as well. And again, how how stable we overall are. Yes, we've gone up and down some, but our overall trend with our fund balance has a lot of stability and I'm I'm kind of proud of that. So, thank you. Any other questions? Miss Padilla, I just want to say thank you and your team um for putting this together. It looks beautiful and I I was able to understand it. So that's great. The only thing I thought about when I was here um going over it again is can we

063maybe next year also advocate for teachers to have a budget for their classroom? I don't think is right for teachers to pay out of their pocket for any class material. So, it would be great to abdicate for that, but I love the fact that we're advocating for everyone here. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Atheertton, I I first want to echo what many board members have said. I really appreciate the focus and the data behind it to especially show the county commissioners especially as we see the teacher pool not being as available as we have in the past. So I think it's very important to show our support for our teachers and investment in it. Um on the fund balance I know we've had discussions with the county commissioners and I believe they are opening to

064to that. that is not that's their minimum. It's never been their max and I know in one conversation was that um I think Chapel Hill requested 15% or 20. So I know they are very open to changing that to whatever we feel comfortable with and knowing that once we change it it should be attainable, right? because if we tell them, hey, it's we want it 10, but we're years away from getting that, that's just going to penalize us. But I I think it's a great goal to do as well. Um, one thing that I I do want to share publicly here, because a lot of people aren't in our committee meetings where this has been developed, these aren't the only things all of us would like to see, but these are the most important that

065we want to go to the commissioners with. There are many things that I know many of us would like to see invest in STEM and others, but we realize that, you know, these are the important things right now that we should be bubbling to the top. But thank you all so much. And I also just wanted to thank y'all for using actual Orange County pictures and not stock pictures. I think that's wonderful to see and share with our community, all of our all of our staff and students in activities that they're doing throughout the school. Thank you all, Miss Hen. Yeah, I'll just add my thanks. I love the matching outfits and um and um the presentation was truly fantastic and thank you. Really great work. Um, I wondered if you had an answer to

066Miss uh Royy's question about the USDA funding and and I don't want to put you on the spot, but if there's anything we know about the risk because I'm getting that question all the time and I don't know if that's something you want to talk about. I I don't have an answer, but we will get one. Great question. Yeah. Um, okay. Um, I love the way you showed um that the state recognizes that that teaching EC kids and teaching English multi- language learners costs more, but then they cut us short and they don't give us enough funding for it. And if I read your numbers right, you said that the EC thing was costing us almost $800,000 over and above what the state is giving us. And by estimate, I think it's probably double that

067for the EC. So, it's over $2 million that we're not getting. And I wondered if we should um It's an important point. It's important because it shows the pressures on our local budget. I'm really impressed that we're funding it, but it's a lot of money that's that's not funded that and and those populations are growing for us as you showed beautifully. Um I agree with Will's point on Oh, I'm sorry. One thing on the on the school health personnel, and I don't know what to do with this, but every category, every staff person in the school health personnel except social workers gets paid for master's degrees. And the state says that that social workers are um they put them on the teacher schedule, but everybody else is on a different schedule. And it just um

068troubles me. And I and I know Wake County is now paying social workers for master degrees. I don't know if anyone else is. I just don't know. It's a small number of staff. I don't know if it's possible to add that. Um, we'll see what the public has to say. Um, and I do agree with with Will that this is not everything and there's a lot of really important things that are not in this budget and I wondered if you should mention some of them. you know, just mention some of them just so the commissioner I mean these are we're not little things but there's you know big things that that um that might need some money and then I have a wonky question because one of the things that the public is asking is

069about the bond money and whether it affects our access to per pupil funds and we know that the budget the capital budget is separate than the operating budget. Um, but Orange County tends to fund us at something called 48%. And the 48 presume percent includes our operating budget plus the debt service on the bonds. And the question is, is Orange County going to give us since the voters approved the bonds, will they give us more money to cover those the bond payments, or are they going to take it out of our 48%. It's a question I think we need to be asking. because that would help. Thank you. Great, great, great work, Mr. Richmond. Okay, any more comments? Thank you so much, Miss Wrath and Mr. Kow, for very good presentation. I look forward to

070getting it to the county commissioners. Thank you. I appreciate all of your feedback. Thank you. I I do want to give before we leave one uh bit of credit where needs to where it needs to go. You commented on the pictures in the slides. Well, I think Mr. Smith here and his team is responsible for making our presentations look good. So, I just wanted to steer that credit where where it deservedly goes. Thank you very much. We appreciate that. All right, we have our bond update. Mr. Davis, you've been waiting patiently. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Frederick Davis, chief operation officer for Orange County Schools. And this evening, we're going to bring you another uh bond update. Um before we begin with introductions and our methodology, I want to just take a quick moment to

071uh present something that was shared with the board during uh planning um the bond program outcomes. It's not on our slide, but just want to read them just to set the tone of why we're here and what our objective is. And so the bond outcomes are to enhance teaching and learning environments and advance educational outcomes and opportunities for all students to improve school utilization and provide students the flexibility of spaces necessary for multiple learning styles. Update classroom spaces and learning tools to meet today's educational standards. And rightsize our portfolio to create operational efficiencies. and investing in the community that attracts and retains residents by providing competitive schools. Just want to make sure that the community understands what this board is tasked to do. Uh and hopefully through this bond program, these outcomes will be uh

072maintained. Just to again reiterate, um the voters of Orange County approved unanimously um a bond of 300 million of which 125 million over the next 10 years uh was focused here in Orange County schools. uh those projects uh was a replacement elementary school um improvements to Orange Middle and then the remaining funding would support uh additions and comprehensive renovations uh to support 21st century learning uh as well as our life cycle cost of our buildings and facilities. Um so really we're unique uh and that the staff here in Orange County uh are equipped. Um Patrick Florence who is our director of construction capital planning has a background in real estate uh as well as uh military project management. Uh myself is a licensed architect with a real estate background and I have recently from a

073nearby school district uh built and designed uh three schools in four years uh and successfully me uh implemented a $423 million bond. But we wanted to make sure uh that we had the subject matter experts. And so uh in talking with Dr. Jones, we solicited um the subject matter of architects, engineers uh and project managers. And so we have with us today uh Mr. Marcus Thomas with KI over 42 years of experience offices in Charlotte and Richmond. Uh and as you see here, here are the various school districts that they've worked with uh with similar uh bond projects. We also have with us uh Donna Francis with Clark Nixon overund 105 years of experience. They have nine offices including Raleigh and as you see here, here are some of the school districts they that they

074have also worked with. a keynote uh unbeknownsted to us, Miss Francis is a product of Orange County schools. And so uh we really think is a unique experience with this architecture engineering team that has helped us come up with the options that you will see shortly. And then we have a project management consultants, Mr. Steve Hess, as you've seen him in some other uh iterations of our plan. over 37 years of experience, 1.5 billion with a B uh in delivered projects, 22 master plans, and as you see here, here are the school systems and systems uh that Mr. Hes has also worked with. And so as soon as the bond was passed, u we started to set out the breadcrumbs to get us to where we want to be to uh conversate and collaborate with

075the county on what will be our first project out of the ground uh for design and programming in 2026. And so as you see this timeline brings us to today where we will provide you additional findings of the work we've done course of the winter uh as well as updates coming forward uh in April after spring break. We plan to uh use the options that you uh see here to this evening uh and portray them in a gallery style so we can get more community engagement uh and hear feedback from um our stakeholders. Uh and then on May the 5th, after collaborating uh and hearing comments this evening, we will bring forth a final decision for the board to render so that we can be in line with the the funding that the county has

076set forth for next fiscal year. And so we're going to talk about our methodology. Um we've been talking around how we want to create transformational spaces uh in aligning with our priorities to be excellent and efficient as well as empowering culture. Um we had a threeprong approach um the assessment and prioritization. You'll find that in our roof report stakeholder engagement uh as well as budgeting and planning so that we can align our cash flows with the county financing. So quickly uh you have this information so I will not belabor long. However, this is our whoop report. We've studied it uh and what we want to show is to our highlighted columns. Um, this shows our enrollment as well as our capacity over our entire Orange County portfolio for facilities. The highlighted areas are those schools

077who have a below efficiency capacity. And what um we'd like to see is around a 85% utilization capacity for all of our schools. And as you see with these highlighted, uh, we're below that number. That will make more sense as we go go along with our presentation. in the Ripple report uh the phase approach of how we would serve over uh 300 million plus in need. Um the whipple report broke it out uh in phases. Phase one being the most critical uh and subsequently phase two and phase three over the next 10 to 15 years. We're going to establish uh that the phase one in our current bond structure and showcase how our options align with the phase one that the report uh assessed. And so we're going to recap some of the community engagement

078that many of you may been a part of as well as heard in our last bond update. Here are some of the questions that we asked our stakeholders in our online survey. We had an online survey uh that ranged from February 4th, 5th, I may be wrong, uh up until March uh around a two and a half week process where we asked community stakeholders, staff members, anyone who had the QR code u things such as the relationship to OCS, household size, importance of programming, um how you support transition to sixth grade, all of this methodology uh will um be uh utilized and the options that you see uh before you shortly. So we had over 391 responders. See you see here from the data that all schools represented as well as parents, guardians, OCS staff,

079students and community members. We also uh took survey results on the importance of facilities and how we as a district were meeting the needs and how these also uh facility assessments could impact learning. And as you see uh many of the stakeholders who engaged in the survey found it important for us to have program options also found it important um that facilities impact student learning. And when the question came before us on renovating versus new, you should see here uh in the bar chart uh that many of the students and staff and those who took the survey uh was very high on renovation. However, when it came to new and elementary was slightly ahead uh of new facility. Here's some imagery of uh the twoday um two opportunities for the community engagement. We had over

08025 people show up in total for the community engagement in person and again the 300 plus for the online survey. Uh during that community engagement uh we had a couple of scenarios and engaging conversations. Uh one was around programming and the importance and most impactful. Um as you see here STEM and STEAM um made it to the top of the list as well as our arts and CTE. Um that is just something that we just wanted to get an idea of what the community really wanted the needs to be. That will be further flushed out when we start to talk about specific programs once uh the option in the project has been selected. We then also utilize a a monetary game where we ask the stakeholders to play with 125 million and put into buckets

081as you see here of where they would spend their monies. Again, this is not a representation of how the money will be spent or how the bond projects will be allocated, but wanted to acclimate uh those who were wondering what does 125 million do uh with this particular exercise. And with that, I will turn it over to Mr. Thomas who will bring uh some more information around phys facil feasibility studies and our options. Uh and then we'll pass it on to Mr. Hes to do some more budget and programming. and then I'll return to have any questions that you may have. Thank you. [Music] Thank you, Mr. Davis, and good afternoon, good evening. Uh, it is a pleasure. First of all, let me thank you all for allowing us the opportunity to work with you.

082Our team has truly enjoyed getting to know the school district and the community. um and think that the options that we are uh going to put forth um to you tonight are really truly going to be transformative uh for the school district. Before I get started, I just want to acknowledge uh other folk in the room uh particularly Miss Donna Francis with Clark Nexon, our partner, uh Mr. Steve Hess with uh PMC and also those not in the room uh Miss Lindseay Weieber with K Architects and Rebecca Brady uh with also with Clark Nexon. Those who are not in the room, oddly enough, did all the work on this great pre presentation that you're going to see uh see before you tonight. So uh special shout out to them. So, it's important to note that

083all the recommendations that we are going to put forth to you today are really rooted in the current location of all of your schools. And so, this graphic, and I'm going to switch to the next slide to blow it up just a tad bit more. Uh, this graphic really illustrates first where your uh current schools are located and the districting line districting lines um that define them. and to the right of your screen um shows how the the growth in the community is really trending. Um so as we can see we still have a lot of um heavy concentration of growth in the core areas but also uh heavy concentration of growth to the west um which I think is going to play in one of the options we share with you tonight. And again

084just a quick reminder of how we got here. Um, we've had three rounds of exploration and feedback. Uh, we came to you March on February 10th with three options. Uh, that included a new K5 at Hillsboro Elementary School. Um after further investigation, we've uh came to you last week, well two weeks ago on March 10th with another grouping of um of recommendations based on new findings uh which included a new K5 at the Central Elementary School site, a new K8 at the Orange Middle School site, and a new K5 at the Gravity Hill Middle School site. And tonight we are going to present to you three refined options that include a new K5 at the Central Ele elementary school site, a new K8 at the Orange Middle School site at a new K5 not on

085the current um Grley Hill Middle School site, but on a county owned parcel directly adjacent to Grley Hill, which we will dive into uh here in a second. So again, the three options on the screen, an on-site replacement at Central, a green field new build uh at adjacent to Grley Hill, and a new K8 on um at the Orange Middle School site. Um and then just for your uh just as a reminder, uh the phase one projects as we get into each option, you will see how each of these is really starting to address uh the recommendations in the Walport study. So, let's dive into option number one, uh, the on-site replacement at Central Elementary School. Some of the key considerations for this option is the availability of swing space needed during construction and also

086the age of the facility and educational adequacy. Um, if we were to do a a renovation to this school, you know, can we really get it to where it needs to be in order to provide uh 21st century learning environments? And so that question alone in addition to the um availability of swing space really led to um this flowchart. And so on your just to orient you uh the rest of the options will be formatted the same way but since this is the first one I'll take a little bit of time to explain what we're looking at. Uh the flowchart to the left of your screen begins to illustrate how we will how we could make this work to and I can't stress enough the goal here is to minimize student disruption. So how can

087we make these projects go with the least impact to our students? Um and so in blue in the blue bubbles uh to the top of the flowchart really illustrate the uh consolidation of programs um followed by the uh order in which the projects could take place uh in order to make this happen. Um so we would begin with the construction of the new K5 on the on the central elementary school site which means we would have to demolish central elementary school first. The central elementary school site, while yes, it is on a ve fairly large parcel that could theoretically accept a new school, has inherent sight challenges. There are wetland issues identified on the site which prohibit the realized buildable area. Um and so we're frankly forced to uh build the build a new school

088around the same footprint um of the current um of the current school. So we would uh demolish central elementary school, build a new K5 in its place. Um after which we are proposing to renovate Pathways Elementary School and relocate our HCS students to the new Pathways which will become our new year round and then do a comprehensive renovation to Orange Middle School. Um to the right of your screen you're now seeing the highlighted schools uh the highlighted projects based on the Woolbert study that this project and this option begins to check off. Um so we will be providing a uh replacement school for Central Elementary School. Um we will be consolidating Hillsboro Elementary School. Um theoretically and then while the Hill while the Walpert study recommends a replacement of Orange Middle School, it's this is

089an important distinction to keep in mind as we go through these options. We will not be able to uh in this option fully replace Orange Middle School because of other programmatic challenges, the lack of swing space, so on and so forth. Um but we would be uh providing a renovation um to Orange Middle School and then obviously a renovation to Pathways Elementary School to get that property um up to snuff um for our our relocated HCS students. And so this is just a uh conceptual illustration of what a new school on the orange on the central elementary school site could look like. Um to the left of your screen, you you see the uh the wetlands and the stream that runs through the site. You can clearly see how that really reduces our buildable area.

090Um, and then to the right of your screen, what a new uh footprint could look like as well as modified site circulation so that we can um get adequate bus uh bus and parent drop off onto the site to get it off the street in order to improve uh transportation uh issues. And then pros of this site, we're consolidating uh two lowcapacity elementary schools. We are addressing accessibility issues on site. We are providing a muchneeded renovation to Orange Middle School. Some of the cons is that we only eliminate uh one school from the OCS portfolio and my colleague Steve will dive into that a little bit more later in the presentation. Uh the we have there is a lack of swing space that could make an on-site replacement very very challenging. Um swing space challenges

091for Orange Middle School renovation. Um and then obviously the wetland issues on the site. So now let's talk about option two uh which is a uh new K5 on a Greenfield site adjacent to uh the existing Gral Hill Middle School. Uh considerations for this option is obviously land availability and educational suitability. Um there are you know it's not called Hillsboro for no reason. we are uh there's a lot of topography uh in the county and so uh on this site particular on the Greenville site there is topography that needs to be addressed. Um it can be addressed um that's just a important thing to note that it's there and it does cost money to address um site site issues. uh as such uh the new transportation pattern and the possibility for redistricting in the 2829

092school year are all things that we thought about as we were putting together this option. So in this option we would um because this is a um a green field new bill we can construct a school with no hindrance to operations elsewhere. Um so the new school would open. Uh because of some of the transportation issues, we are now proposing that um instead of um Hillsboro students going to pathways because of the transportation uh that that it would take to get students from up in that part of the county down to Grley Hill. We are proposing that we renovate and bring up Central Elementary School um to accommodate new Hillsboro Elementary School students and then at the same time providing the same renovation to Orange um Orange Middle School. So in this option you can

093see the projects that we are checking off um from the Wart study. So it's four projects. We checked off four projects in the other option as well. And then in terms of site constraints, this is what we're looking at. Um so the existing uh Grley Hill Middle School site goes unchanged. Um while we are uh adequately placing a new K5 on the uh adjacent county own parcel um that's right next to the soccer complex. Pros and cons of this option. Um again pros it consolidates two low lowcapacity elementary schools. Um, it also addresses accessibility issues um on the uh central elementary school site which is is going to be through a renovation and it also renovates uh Orange Middle School. Um cons again it only eliminates one school from the OCS portfolio. Um and just

094to remind everyone the Worth study recommended a consolidation of our schools. And so that's what we're really looking at here when we talk about it only eliminates one school from from OCS. Uh we're still faced with the same screen space challenges. Um and then again this site as central site um also has some wetland issues although the buildable area for this project um is slightly larger. So, we feel like we can fit a new um a new K K5 on site without uh impeding any of the uh existing wetlands. And then last but not least, um I want to go through the on-site replacement at Orange Middle School, which would provide a new K8. Uh considerations for this option would be uh we are providing a new elementary school um and appropriately sizing for a

095middle school. Uh improved retention from elementary school to middle school is one of the inherent benefits of a K8 and we'll talk more about the benefits of a K8 here in the one of the next slides. uh we're able to consolidate these with one project and Steve will come up and again talk about uh the financial benefits um of of these options here in a second. Uh reduction of facility cost over time, phasing of construction and then obviously um you all are familiar with this area traffic is a huge concern. Um so in these options I want to point out a couple key things. Uh first would be the phasing. Um what makes this option um uh attractive is that we're able we have enough space on site to build a new K8 without disrupting

096the current uh schools. So Orange Middle School would be able to stay in operation. Orange High School will be able to stay in operation while we build a new K8 adjacent to the middle school. And once that K8 is constructed, we will we're proposing to demolish the existing Orange Middle School and use that regained land to rebuild our athletic fields. Um, and so there are a number of different benefits. We've done this uh many times before for other school districts and it seems um to work very well. I mean there is some there are some growing pains with share and some coordination that needs to come for the years of construction to reallocate and and share athletic facilities. But once that's over uh we're providing uh brand new athletic fields typically in a more efficient

097pattern uh than we had before. The other thing to note, if you can you just uh zoom in on the existing plan, um we were able to put arrows. Uh the yellow arrow represents bus access, but currently all of your arrows are off of Orange High School Road. Um, in the new plan, we are proposing to redistribute site entry points to disperse them on to four sides of the site. That's separating bus traffic from our student traffic from our um from our parent and teacher traffic to make this site a little more accessible and ease the traffic pains that that this this site currently um currently experiences. And so if we're going to our flowchart, um as mentioned earlier, we are able to construct the new K8 uh without disrupting uh any uh current site

098operations. Uh we are proposing then to feed that K8 from the existing Orange Middle School students as well as um a combination of our pathway students and our essential elementary school students. Um, thus allowing us to again as an option one, renovate pathways, uh, relocate our Hillsboro Elementary School sites to Path and relocate our Hillsboro Elementary School students to Pathways. And in this project, we are uh, for the most part touching five projects. Um, we're we're completing we're check checking all four boxes in phase one. uh in one school project in phase two and also um uh a transportation project as well. It's anticipated that because of the location as you all know the uh school bus facility is located on that site as well. So as a part of this project inherently we would

099anticipate some improvement uh to that facility to make for that traffic inflow to the site a little more accessible. And then I just want to touch really quickly on the general uh benefits of of K8s. Uh this is research done by the Department of Education um over many years and many K8s. Um we're starting to see a number of them um pop up in school systems that we've been working with uh for a number of years. Um they they're they're shown to reduce motivational decline in our students. They are shown to reduce academic decline uh when students transition uh to middle school. Um they are shown to uh facilitate better preparation for high school. Uh they foster greater sense of community and stronger relationships among students and teachers. Um and KAS tend to have higher

100attendance, fewer disciplinary issues, and higher overall academic achievement. And then pros and cons. Um, in this option, we're able to remove two elementary schools from OCS inventory, which would be uh Central Elementary School in Hillsboro, which are top priority for replacements. Um, as again outlined in the Whooper study. Um, HS students still move into a newer um, and renovated pathways. Um and we address in this option most of the recommendations from the Whooper study uh which we think is a fantastic um use of use of funds. Uh the more we can check off in one project or in one go uh the better. The the con is the traffic concerns. Um you know there there are still some lingering uh traffic concerns but the team feels like we can work through those as as the

101project progresses. So with that, I will turn it over to Steve to uh talk money. All right. Thank you. Hey, uh good evening everyone. Thank you for having me again. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm really uh have enjoyed working with KI and Clark Nexon and Frederick and Patrick and his team and and also just folks around Orange County. Uh Christina and Dela helped with operational expenses. Uh the folk Jr. and Stephanie helped with bus ridership. Folks at uh GIS gave me maps within a day, storm water review both with Hillsboro and Orange County have been it's been a pleasure to work with you all. So, thank you for having me here. So we um what I've done is uh I've basically have done a not a checks and balances but a factors of

102analysis just analyzing the different options and we looked at um nine different factors overall. So uh to level set the the third scenario that we are uh looking at and describing today that the teams already described basically all three options have par. affect and improve facilities for approximately 1,700 students. They're improving 250,000 square feet, which is about 21% of the portfolio. So, it's not just a K5 at Central, but it's also the Pathways renovation and Orange Middle School renovation. It's not just K8 at uh Orange, it's also the Pathways renovation. And similarly the K5 at Grley Hills is also central elementary school renovation and Orange Middle School renovation. And each option basically affects again 1,700 students and approximately 250 uh 2500 square f feet. So out of the nine factors we uh did a ranking

103basically one is uh optimal three is not optimal and so the lower the score the better and it's it's a kind of just um it's more of a conceptual study based on specific data and facts that we have gathered. So the first uh factor was alignment with Walpert study and Orange K8 uh ranked number one because it hit four of the five uh recommendations uh from Walbert. The other two scored two because they do hit uh four out of the five recommendations but they fall short a little bit. Central was recommended to be a complete um uh um well actually central was is a renovation so that does hit but the middle school orange middle school is a renovation and then um uh the grally hill um also has two renovations. So um portfolio optimization

104uh one of the the things that we were heard were newer and fewer schools fewer and newer schools and orange uh K8 solution reduces the portfolio by 18%. It uh at the end of the day after we go through these scenarios the overall portfolio would be reduced by 257,000 square ft. central replacement reduces it by uh 5% and grally hill only reduces a portfolio by 2%. Um that also then ties into the next slide which is our operational expenses. So what we did is uh working again with Christina and Dela we came up with uh a $1.92 per square foot. This is based on the operational expenses over the past 5 years. And this is only uh utilities and maintenance. It doesn't have to do with staff, custodial or taxes or anything like that. That's

105a little bit more of an indepth uh analysis, but I think the factors would be the same. Basically, it's a it's a the benefit is the the more you reduce your portfolio, the more you save. And over 10 years, the Orange K8 solution would save $6.6 million, which could be funneled back into, you know, programming and the benefit of the students. We looked at schedule and um after putting this slide together and uh I I realized I should have just narrowed it down to years. So um basically the orange K8 is uh a four-year solution, central replacement is a five-year solution and uh Grally Hill is a five-year solution. This is based on um the flowchart that uh Marcus had showed us earlier and it's also based on being able to renovate uh Central Middle

106School in three phases. I I try kind of chose the middle of the road choosing three phases. Once we were to if we were to select a construction manager, they would we would work with the architect and the construction manager to do a deeper dive. Three phases is affecting a lot of students in a large portion of Orange Middle School. We really may end up having to do it in four phases which would add another year of impact to the students. Even if Orange Middle School is renovated over three years, there are going to be students there who never go to middle school without a renovation process, you know. All right. Um, and then we looked at total project budget, and this was based on um the the schools that we talked about, the areas

107of of the schools that were affected, the square footages, and we used um I worked with four different contractors uh to come up with average square foot costs and brought them up to $2,27 through escalation. escalation in construction is about 5 to 6%. It's twice typically what um uh normal typical inflation is. And it's another important thing to think about. Um the quicker we can the more we can build quicker the more money we will have to spend because 10 you know $125 $125 million stretched out over 10 years erodess at 5% a year. Um anyway, came up with these numbers. Uh and then I divided the overall construction cost by students to come up with a metric of cost per student. And Orange K8 was a better investment because it was $80,000 per student

108as opposed to 91 for Grley Hill or 82 for um Central. And I was thinking when I saw this number, $80,000 per student is a lot of money, right? I mean, that's a lot of money. But if you think about it over the course of the life of a school, 50 years, it nets out to be about $1,600 per student. Then we looked at risk, uh, basically cost and schedule. And, um, I've I've spent most of my career doing renovations. uh because a lot of times that's what clients and owners and myself at my house needed to do because of budget constraints. The challenges with renovations are um there's challenges with unforeseen conditions which increase your cost. You can't um accurately plan uh for a school. You have to have a higher contingency when you

109do a renovation. Uh so basically we're pushing the design team to decrease scope to have a contingency that may or may not get spent. And then the other factor is cost um or I'm sorry schedule. You know you don't if you hit unforeseen conditions you don't know how long that could impact schedule. Uh generally we don't miss our dates with schools because you know school starting dates very important. So what happens is if there's a schedule risk, we end up paying overtime to accommodate that. So that's why I um the rankings are the way they are with the orange K8 solution. Uh it's new construction for the K8. The renovation to pathways in this scenario is an empty building. We don't have any swing students or anything. So there's less risk. Then with central we

110have to we have the demolition renovation to pathways and then renovation to Orange Middle School which is an occupied school with three or four phases. So school traffic impact I know this is a third rail and I tried to approach it lightly. what I looked at. Um, we are working with Stella and and JR to try to get bus ridership and then translate back to, you know, actually how many car how many folks carpool um short of doing a traffic impact analysis. Eventually, whatever scenario is chosen, we'll have a traffic impact analysis, but uh that's a higher investment that's quite not really worth it at this point. But um the factors that we looked at were um the the size of the site for onsite queuing. Again, these schools were built 40 or 50 years

111ago back when uh car pooling wasn't really a phenomenon, you know. Um but uh central uh we I rank central the least favorable because there's only 15 acres uh and part of that is wetland. So it's really hard to have on-site queuing at Central. Plus, it's Haze Street is a smaller residential street with one point of access. Uh, Graly Hill I ranked uh second. Uh there is uh West 10 Road and you do have 40 to 50 acres to work with, but some a lot of that is wetlands. Um and then I ranked uh orange K8 site as the priority because it's proximity to 70 the four points of access that Marcus had referenced. So construction impact on students we we talk about um one of the one of the things I wanted to talk

112about is with real estate and construction you talk about the highest and best use of a building. um how you know certain land and certain areas have are better suited for different buildings, but we looked at highest and best use, but we're also thinking about the greatest good for the students. And this this factor looks at the construction impact on students. So, the orange K8 uh solution is the winner because aside from the athletic fields and a construction fence around the new K8 building, no students are have to walk through a construction site or or get dropped off near a construction site. Um, Grally Hill ranked second because uh Gral Hill is new construction, but Central would be renovated. So students would have to move uh to pathways or to another school. And then Orange

113Middle School renovation is um would be a phase renovation. So 600 students would be directly impacted by construction. And then the central replacement um as you can see 1725 all the students that benefit from the construction would experience some kind of move or shift over one or two years of um their school life. So um the the sum total of these nine factors um is presented here and if you look at the kind of if you squint and see the red you can see grally hills challenges are you know the portfolio optimization I think it only reduces a portfolio by 2 and a.5% so that misses the wool idea of fewer newer and fewer for operational savings uh are reduced and then the total project budget it's the most expensive solution per student um and

114it only it only benefits 1500 students as opposed to some of the other factors and then central the challenges with central are the risk to cost and schedule due to the demolition of central orange middle school renovation and the pathways renovation construction impact. 1725 of the students are going to feel, you know, the pain of construction and then the traffic uh school traffic impact. Um so that's how we came up with the rankings. All right, Mr. Davis. Thank you'all. Thank you, Mr. Hes and to design team. And so here we are with the summary of options. Um as you see outlined to the bottom of the three site plans uh options or the pros and cons uh how they align with the RI report all the way down to the things that Mr. Hes has

115mentioned today. We will literally take these three options and put them in 36 by 24 uh um sheets to provide from the April 7th through the 9th uh feedback uh for community stakeholders. Uh April 7th is a teacher work day. So, we're looking at um between the hours of 11 and and two to cover that lunchtime where teachers uh may want to uh come to the welcome center to fully engage and help, you know, us flush out these options with their uh comments. Uh and then on the 8th and the 9th, we'll have it at um King Street uh in the conference room for those who come by between the hours of 5 and 7. We look at the hours that are more feasible for those who are getting off work uh to again uh

116share their comments um with us stated here um for the April 7th uh and our goal is by May 5th uh to engage in a approval and decision on the first priority project for the 2024 bond. With that we'll take any questions you may have. I'm going to start if y'all don't mind. Um Mr. Davis, um, as you know, I'm very familiar with Orange Middle School and Orange High School. You've got on there, um, entry point Harold Lada Drive. That would mean coming all the way across Orange High School's property to get to Orange Middle School because Harold Letta Drive is on is in the housing development over there if I'm thinking correctly. So you're talking about coming all the way across the high school property to get to elementary middle school. Yes. So that

117slide that you're referring to u we we in conception this would be for um student drivers. Um so that would be entry to as Mrs. Hess said divert some of the traffic that you currently have flowing in one direction. So that arrow from that neighborhood would be the access for our student drivers that wouldn't intermingle from parent drop off as well as staff coming in. So they're including the the arrows for both the high school and the middle school in the drawing. Correct. Yes. I apologize. But at the same time, we're tearing up practice fields or egg barns or something that is coming across there. uh where that road would be from what I'm seeing and very close to the softball field and the baseball field existing at Orange High School. Those may or may

118not be consequences of a master plan renewal. Yes, you are correct. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Athetherton. Well, first I really appreciate the details and the thought and really trying to get us around kind of that second level detail and information. Um, one of the things that jumped out to me when when you're looking at the analysis of the project budget and for the orange K8, I I'm a little surprised, to be blunt, that it is going to be cheaper to build that, tear down the old school, rebuild all the fields, do all of that cement and reconstruction. than any of the others. It just seems seems off to me. Then, you know, because when I looked at it without even thinking, I was like, "Oh, well, clearly the Graly Hills the cheapest because you've got

119your cement, you've got a new building, but then here we've got to deconstruct a building. We've got to re I mean, not even talking about having to go and grade all of that so you can build those." So, I mean, I just want to make sure we're giving the right data out on on it and being fair on it. I mean, that's just the one that stuck out to me as seems like there's a little more money in that one than the other options, but I really appreciate the detail in all of the areas that were broken down and trying to think of this holistically. That's a great question and I can see how that could be confusing, but let me try to break it down this way. Um, we have 125 million. Um, we

120stay said that we want to achieve all of these things within that 125 million. And so, yes, you are correct. Building new will be uh more expensive than renovating. Um, however, as Mr. Hess and some of the design teams have said you won't have any money left um based on the time frame and the construction dollars in 2026 versus in the pattern of just doing the K5 uh in 2028 to do anything to much needed improvements to Orange Middle. And so while yes the upfront costs are more expensive with the K8 in long term uh you want to make sure that you're able to establish uh efficiency in the monies that are available because we don't want to come back four or five years from now um and there's only 10 million left and orange

121mineral renovations are $40 million then we not taking advantage of the money that we had in 2026 is what Mr. Hess was saying. So, uh it's different ways to look at costs over time. Um the initial cost, yes, would be more expensive for a K8 than a K5. But if you look over the uh lifespan of this investment and the K8, as Mr. Hes uh identified, was a better uh efficiency use of the funding. Yeah. Maybe maybe the way maybe to present this slightly different from what I heard you say is looking past the factor of just building. You're looking at, hey, I have to do a renovation of the middle school, but I'm accomplishing that by doing this and that will offset some of the other costs that would be in here. Because the

122way the way it looks if you just read it and even hearing it, it sounds like, oh, you know, you're building this, you're building this and these are the flat cost versus you're saying, oh, this is actually this one is actually a different investment than the others because you're addressing it and where like grally you would have to build the school plus you still need to renovate Orange Middle. And so that that makes a lot of sense and I think you know for people that aren't here whenever y'all are sharing this information it just helps to give some more context. So thank you for that explanation. We'll do thank you. I also appreciate um the layers of detail and the approach um going through the different options. I um I I didn't land where y'all

123landed and I also um don't like some of the domino effect. Um like I think some of you know because when I look at the overall ranking I just I don't I don't agree that orange K8 is all these ones like the traffic impact but it's because of the other movements of school populations that were connected to the orange K8 because you know I was a parent who drove to Orange Middle and high school for 10 years and it is really bad like I I can't imagine adding another school population there. Um, so I just I I can't believe that the school traffic impact is a one or the construction impact is a one. That's just But again, it's a one because of the school movements that were connected with that option in my opinion.

124So to me, the obvious choice would be building the Greenfield site, the K5 near Graly. You know, no, no one has to be moved or relocated. um rebuild central and then let central kids, you know, get their school back. Um, and then by that point have, you know, move Efflin kids to Gralley Hill, have that have those adjacent communities and maybe foster some of those benefits of a K8 by having the K5 and the middle school they directly feed into like on adjacent um and by that point you'd have um um you know, Efflin Cheeks available for you know a year-round school that actually has trailers and room for growth. you could expand into a sixth grade, try out the beginnings of a middle school. Um, so anyway, I I I just did not stick

125with the conclusions um just based on my own, you know, feelings and experiences in this district. And and I'm also just concerned about how how different elementary populations got relocated. Um I I wasn't feeling good about um you know like pathways is just this nor you know kids are coming in from far out in the county. um my kids went there and so like relocating all those kids um in different ways, you know, I just there there concerns I have about how different groups of student bodies were were potentially relocated, but I I just to me I I just can't land with the orange K8. I just see it as a problem. I'm just not convinced. So that's where I am, Miss Molly. Um yeah, I want to thank um you and the whole team

126for just the deliberate detail and evaluation of the different criteria. It was helpful to hear you all um voice that over because I did I saw all the ones and I was like not on traffic, you know, certainly not on I think that's it's not a one on traffic. Um um but uh it was a very thoughtful um presentation. Um the concerns about the central site are ones I think we've talked about for years. So, I'm like that does not seem like a viable option to me, but I think the other two seem um more viable and I understand why the criteria led you to the K8. Um a couple of things I wanted to raise around this. So, in that model, OCS would have 11 schools rather than 13 schools. Is that right? We'd

127close two schools. That is correct. Okay. Um and sort of the populations of three, four schools would have a brand new building essentially like like the students from Pathways and Central who currently go to MS. The students who are currently at MS and the the River Park students who go to MS would also continue to go. Not getting into details, but if that was the option um we would look at transportation, child nutrition and and see based on where those actual students reside um which students again we want to keep our 85% capacity rating for efficiency. So, um, short answer is we're not really clear on the number of, uh, households that would move, but yes, uh, potentially in a redistricting, those in that radius could potentially move to this K8 school. Yes. Okay. But

128the idea would be like students from current central and pathways would go to school in this building. That's correct. Through middle school. and the current MS students which also includes students from River Park mo most of the students from not all um correct would would join them for the middle school at middle school yes if that is their homebased school currently they would still go to that middle school okay I'm curious like how often in the world that happens where you have a cohort of kids and then you bring in these other kids um um I just a couple of other things I wanted to flag like Walpert's report as far as I know only recommended downsizing OCS by one school. Like I know this fewer newer schools thing is a thing, but I it

129only recommended downsizing by one. Downsizing by two elementary schools um which is functionally what this does. Like it makes me pretty concerned about the capacity because elementary school is where we're much closer than middle school. So I didn't I didn't know I know the capacity would be like 1275. I wasn't sure how much elementary capacity would be there of that number. and like what that would do to our old closing HS and Central's buildings um would lower elementary capacity by 971 pupilsish I think and I don't know how I I imagine there aren't that many seats planned in the new school so yes so in the new facility again um that's starting to get to programming but u we plan to design and construct a building that uh provides the same number of students that

130will be displaced from central and pathways with a a 10 to 15% capacity growth for both the elementary side and the middle side. And so I think what we recommended uh is a total of about 1,200 students in in in totality um that will be on that side. I think it's it's more the um because we're closing those two facilities like the pathways facility wouldn't be closed, right? it will have the capacity that it has or maybe bigger if they renovate it. But if we're closing the Hillsboro cap facility and central facility, those have a total capacity physically I think of 971. I was like adding up the columns. So that might not be quite right. I'm just worried are we going to get too close to the 100% for elementary school in this model.

131So I'm seeing no but I it's it's a it's a question I have and it's it's something I'd love to have more information about. I I am a little concerned because because uh a couple of years ago maybe uh the board received a presentation where you know we had projections long-term projections about how many students we'd have in the district and at one point the projections we were getting said like I don't know five years out or so given growth in the county that we were about to go over 100% elementary school capacity. So if this leads to less elementary school capacity, I have a I just need to understand more about whether those projections were wrong or how this all kind of works out in terms of of our total projected. I have other

132questions, but I'm going to pause and let other people ask questions. Okay, that's yeah, thank you for this. Thank you for the analysis. Very interesting, creative, thoughtful stuff in here. Um I it's funny, I land in a different place. I land with you know the the so just to talk about the K8 that is a very big school um there you know and I and it is just a very big school it's bigger than our we our high schools aren't even that big at this point just curious um I've not even seen that but you know one of the things that people love about our schools is the intimacy so we had been talking I think Walpert was talking about maybe a 600 student elementary school we're at,300 students. That's pretty big. And so there's

133a um the the mathematics it's it's a little silver bullety to me. It's like, oh, here's a let's just put one school in and it solves all the problems. So a little worried about that. Um, and the basic question Sarah raises it is enrollment, you know, and you saw it, you know, every time I see like our census data and the growth in the community and schools, you know, Rhonda just showed us that in the last 10 years or le, you know, we've lost over a thousand students, and that doesn't count the students that are in private school or or homeschooling. So, in fact, our enrollment numbers are are headed down. And I don't know if you looked at our middle school enrollment. Our middle schools are really seriously underenrolled. And um and as Sarah

134said, you know, we're kind of at, you know, first we had to build a new middle school, a new elementary school, and now maybe we don't. And that we haven't talked about what prek looks like or any of those things. Um the models are flawed. We're trying to get to better models, but we don't really know. We don't have a baseline that we can work with. So, so there's a question about what is the enrollment and what are we projecting? What does that look like? Um, we've heard for the last two meetings, but actually for the last since I've been on the board and before uh this question about K8 year round and I love that the central parents came out and said K8 year round in a bigger way, not one school that serves

135a select population, but is K where does K8 fit in our programming? And then how does that affect these decisions? I am have been I've been pretty vocal about Grley. I'm I'm not crazy about the location because it's in the middle of an industrial center that's becoming more and more industrial. Um and I think our if we're looking at a couple of student a couple of schools replacing a couple of schools in Hillsboro, I'm not sure how I feel about sending those kids to Effend. it it's not that far, but it feels like another it's like a whole another world. And I wonder if we should be trying to keep the Hillsboro kids in Hillsboro and even for the reason of of you know there's a question about strategically and this is fantasy maybe but

136to what extent does this project help us attract more people to our schools? Um I am Not sure, you know, this kind of, oh, we've got to get as much done for the $125 million. This is just one bond. There will be more bonds in the future. We have, this is a process and we're just trying to do as much as we can. So, we're taking a step strategically towards a future vision. So, I I don't feel quite as compelled that we have to fit everything in or as my mother would say, you can't get blood from a stone, right? is there just so much money that we there's so much we can do but I don't want to get into unnatural solutions because we feel like there's a financial risk. Um and then on

137just on the community sessions um it would to me it would make a difference if these community sessions were hosted in the communities that are impacted. that's not here. That's not King Street. Um but at Central, at HES, at Orange Middle, at um at Pathways, so that the people that we're talking about who we're going to affect them, they should really while parents coming in for a teacher meeting or dropping off their kid, let them come in and see what we're thinking about. But I would really like to hear a lot more from the public on this. I have more. I'll I'll stop there. Mr. Anthony. Well, one other one other thing that I had a wondering on is on the um Grally Hill option. Um you know, we talk about roadway and access and

138concerns about that. And we do have that soccer.com in the middle. You know, my wondering is, have y'all considered putting a roadway behind Soccer.com that actually would connect the two schools to make it accessible without having to go on the main street and allow those students or families to propagate back that way without having to go out, turn on it, go back around soccer.com. And I think that would potentially alleviate some of the traffic concerns on there as well. Um, I do have to say I'm also concerned with the traffic on for the K8, especially given, you know, been there way more than 10 years and every year we get multiple emails about what can we do? We engage the DOT and the DOT says love to hear your ideas and yet we have the

139same traffic every year and now we're talking about increasing that. Um and we also have to think about that the elementary is going to also have plays and music and there's going to be sports running there at the same time. And so it's not going to be just in the morning, you're going to have afternoon activities as well. So, I think we should be realistic on what that looks like as we talk to the communities and um I do agree, you know, we should engage and the pathways and others so they're aware of this and nobody's surprised. However, we do that to notify them. That way, we get good feedback on these options because this is a big decision for our community and I definitely want to hear from everyone about it. Thank you. Yeah,

140I would just like to add on the community engagement piece. We've already um we've presented options to principles and talk through with them um just to uh I think they took a brief survey just to give us their initial thoughts. So, we'll look into getting into that. Our plan is not just to have we want to have um community engagement at some neutral sites as well. Um but as we start preparing um information for us, we're going to send those out to principles to share with their individual communities and so that they can participate in the surveys and understand where things are happening. Um there may be some opportunities as well to put um some of the boards if we get additional boards that can go up in some of the impacted schools and those

141can stay there a little bit longer past the few days that we planned. Um I think there's a QR code. We plan on putting things out on the website so that um there are multiple options for people to participate. Um part of the reason uh we saw really good survey responses um the first round um our in-person we received there were 25 people in total for the two evenings and so um it seems as if our community prefers to at least be to to hear their voice. We don't want to limit to just certain locations. So I think we're going to do a little bit of all of it. Um, and if folks have questions, like I said, we we will equip principles. They can reach out to us as well. But we can look

142at putting some additional poster boards in those um, schools that will be impacted the most, but this is also a community um, it's not just about the schools that are being impacted. I mean, it was $125 million bond that um, folks, you know, participated in and agreed to to have. So it is important to have some um input from all all schools. So we plan on doing that. So I the only other thing Dr. Jones on that is you know since co a lot of people are not physically going in the school to drop off their kids. So I don't know the poster boards inside would be that effective but I mean I don't know if outside would be better but I'm just thinking about that. That was what big transitions that we've seen is,

143you know, drop your kids and go and unless they're in the school for a purpose, I I'm just worried about the effectiveness is just kind of the back of my mind. Well, at this time of year, anything you could put outside because you've got baseball, softball, uh, lacrosse, and soccer probably going on at schools and, uh, parents will be coming for those. that would hit a large population of parents. Yeah. And I think, you know, for the central locations or the the neutral locations, we wanted to have staff present to be able to answer questions. So, I felt like that's important if you know because sometimes you can look at a poster and not quite understand everything. And we wanted to make sure we had interpreters on site there for those time periods. So, we

144plan to do that. Um, this good point about folks not coming in to drop off. So, um I really think we're going to reach families um when we send information out through the schools uh with a way for them to provide feedback. Um I think that's going to be our most um where we'll see the most respondents there. You just have the poster boards at a school. How do you communicate that we're going to move your kids to pathways or we're going to move your kids to a different How do you communicate to people what is going to happen to their child by looking at a poster board? I just don't see how that happens. Yeah. So, I mean that's just something that was thrown out based on uh Mr. Athetherton's question. Um the other

145piece that we plan to do is the segment of the presentation for the bond. We plan on sending that out to our families as well. So, we know that um this uh the team presented this evening so that they have that segment so that they can go in and watch it, hear your questions, hear the team's proposals, and then we will be responding to questions as well. We will be available on site for families um and community members on the days that are set. M. Um okay. Um, so just a few other things. Um, one is, um, the renovation for pathways. Um, I found it's surprising that that would be a school that would be prioritized for renovation because it's only 25 years old and it has one of the lower uh, facility condition indexes

146in the Walpert report. So like uh, New Hope, River Park, like they both have much higher facilities condition indexes. Um and so um I you know Pathways is sort of I'm sure it has renovation needs but it's a lovely school to be in and it has like a lot of light and you know so um uh I don't know if there's more to say about that renovation and why the why the school would be prioritized for renovation but it's not in our worst condition and that renovation has not been stated on what would happen. Um, okay. And so if you think about the time, um, it'll be 2028 and even though I wish I had a fortune teller, we don't know the status of Pathways. And so to state they have needs, um, but it

147has not been quantified of how much money will be needed to have FA pathways ready to receive Hillsboro Elementary students. So that's why it's in there because we may have to do some upfit uh, to get it ready. Um, but it may be minimal. Okay. Okay. Um, and then just some other things. So, the elementary capacity I mentioned is a concern. Um, a couple of other smaller things about the K8 project. Overall, like I'm I appreciate like the um number of students who would get to experience a brand new building and um a lot of the considerations that are in here. Um, just from this D drawing, it looks like there would be far less parking than there is available right now to just a middle school and this would be more than double as

148many kids, I think. And so um I think the parking needs to look different um than in this proposal. Um I'm concerned about um and I all of this is answerable. Um the athletics in the meantime, right? If you're building on the athletic fields, what are the teams doing? where are they practicing and playing? Um, and then also if you build this new school and put the students in it and then you start to demolish Orange Middle School, which is a very old building and probably has some hazardous materials that are safe and encapsulated now, but get exposed in that process and you have students like how how do you sort of handle that? I don't need an answer for that. I'm sure y'all are experts in school construction, so I'm sure there is an

149answer for it. I just wanted to name it as a thing that as a parent I would want to know. Um, and then the last is I saw that the budget was like $147 million or something like that. And so the bond is for 125. So I'm not sure how that works if it's one building. We will work with the county on our cash flow. Um, that's why it's important for us to be efficient in the decisions that we make because it's not a finite amount of money. Um, and so the cost is the cost in construction dollars today. Mhm. Um the Whipple report as well as the preparation for the bond happened in 2023. And so those numbers are not going to ever align because we're just dealing with present numbers. Um if uh

150as we stated before uh we continue this process uh 141 million next month, maybe 150. Um and so what we do know is u the current dollars are the current dollars. Anytime, as Mr. has has stated uh we bel labor that it will go up. Um economists are not seeing a 2008 where we could get 10 projects done for 125. They're seeing it continue to escalate. Uh as Mr. Hes said, 5% um is a lot of money. And so we just want to make sure that you have all the information um so that you understand um that this while I would hope that the county will continue bond referendums on a consistent basis. uh your last bond was in 2016 and it's now 2024. And so if that is the litmus for you to understand

151the urgency in this, I hope you keep that in mind. Yeah, I I'll just add to that that our schools aren't getting younger, right? We still have a lot of old schools that need replacement. I wonder if you looked at the option of of that K8 being smaller, especially given so, you know, like making it a eight or 900 student campus instead of a if you would possibly adding another school if depending on what happens with our enrollment in five or six years if I would like to bring Miss Francis up. Um Clark Nixis has done some work on K8s and maybe she could answer some questions. I was asking more about it's really more of a capacity question rather than build such a big school to build one and then stagger build another one

152later. Go ahead. I'd love to. Um, we've built K8s in several different ways. Um, one way to build a K8 is to take for each class that you have in that school, you know, each grade level, if that's a hundred students, then you would continue that um in um the junior high or middle school levels. Okay. Sorry, I came to junior high here. that um that word is on my mind. But um so that's one way to do it and that keeps it smaller. But since we're looking at replacing Orange um middle school, we need to think beyond that kind of capacity model. So that that is why we're proposing that it would would be able to have the elementary numbers of whatever we decide is the right size for that. and then we would

153increase that and draw from other districts. And we've heard that there are advantages and disadvantages to that, but but it could be a positive thing in in helping kids with that transition from middle school to high school. And does that answer? Well, kind of. I'm really asking more. You know what? So, we're I I don't know what is about 60% enrollment capacity at in our middle schools. It's it's the percentage is really low. So, I just don't know if we could replace Orange Middle with a much smaller school and instead of building, you know, just a big school has me. It's a little it's a lot. It's a it's a very very big campus and there's risks about do putting all everything in one place and would you know so I'm just asking if you

154considered making that a smaller school and then staggering it and and maybe it overlaps into the next bond but building a second K8 you know in five I'm just making I'm making it up just I'm a little worried about the size of the school. I mean these are good options. I mean, we kind of looked at the options, you know, as you know, they were presented to kind of deal with the issues in the Woolport report. Well, I don't think we can talk about the next bond because that's not us. Um, that is the board of county commissioners. So, I think we have to stick with the 125 million we have right now. um in and what we have to decide and think about uh I don't think we can go higher but uh I

155think Mr. Richmond has some things he wanted to talk about. Yeah. Um thank you for all your hard work for this um and putting this uh presentation together and I really do appreciate um the idea of a new K8 at Orange Middle. But I will say being a traffic person, having worked traffic at Orange Middle, um, and and you've heard this before, I do see major traffic concerns, especially it being a K8, you know, there's going to be a lot of parents want to see their children off to school, driving them to school. So, even now, we see a lot of traffic coming in off of Homeman Drive. And, um, that's a major concern because I hear that from my mom who lives right there on Holman Drive at the corner almost every day. So,

156um I do see a concern there. Um and folks thinking that would be an easier route to come in and park at that little parking lot there near the um soccer field. So, um you know, that's just something to consider. Um and Homeman Drive in 86, you know, um as Mr. Hes said earlier, the school wasn't built for this traffic that we're seeing now. So, um there's no light there at that intersection of Holman and 86. And there's been a number of traffic accidents there. You got buses trying to get there. So, traffic could back up all the way to the school in the afternoons during that time. And as Sarah mentioned earlier, too, um the sharing of the athletic fields, I'm sure, would be a huge concern. And um a lot of parents being

157upset about having to share those fields with, you know, with other other schools or with Orange Middle um during the time that their children are supposed to play. So, Thank you, Mr. Richmond. Any anybody else? Madilla, I just want to say thank you. I know it's a lot of work, a lot of hours, and I am also learning with you. So, I want to say that I appreciate and um and I look forward to hearing what the community has to say. And we just have to be flexible. Um, Rome was not built in a day, so we just have to be a little flexible and be open-minded with every all the balls in the air. Thank you, Mr. Anthony. Yeah, just we didn't have a lot of people comment on the uh the central rebuild.

158Um the I see how the design is to get the traffic on site and loop it to capture as many cars as you can. But I do know the community there. I think even if they don't have kids, they would have some input on those very narrow roads having the volume. even though they may not be parked on that street, it's just that volume going through that area because it is it's really tight in that area. So, just as we think about getting feedback, you know, from families, we may want to get feedback from those communities that will be impacted with the larger volumes to get their thoughts as well and just make sure we're being thoughtful. Thank you. Did did we look at the option of building a new especially if we're going to

159abandon um repurpose I think is the word repurpose two schools. Did we look at the option of building a school on a green field site in town or right outside of town? Is that something that we looked at? Yes. Uh we started the conversation of what was in our existing portfolio availability of land. Uh and then we also looked at uh a green field site and I think one of the meetings is either Mr. Hes or myself because time is established in terms of the money uh we felt that the bond money to secure uh a site in real estate would not be a good efficient of use. And so that's why uh buying real estate was taken off of uh the viable options um from our understanding from direction from the board. Okay. I

160don't remember I don't remember. All right. We are at 10:00. Um do I does anybody have anything else that they need to add tonight? No. Okay. Do I have a motion to adjurnn? Motion to adjurnn. Second. All in favor? I we are adjourned. Thank y'all very much and thank you Mr. Davis with your team.