001hey practice I did what did we learn nothing did we have it right I did yeah y'all gave me the okay perfect um directions and how was Granda is fabulous Dina is a miracle seven years old last of her generation in our family per se she's not the last of her seven siblings which is amazing because she's got a sister who lives around the corner who's 95 92 she's 92 her husband is oh come on we will now call this uh October the 9th meeting of the Orange County Board of Education to order and I need a motion for us to enter close session motion to go into close session pursuant to NC General statute well I was going oh oh yeah okay uh and a second go second okay all in favor I okay
002the board will inter close session pursuant to NC General statute 143-30570 attorney and preserve the attorney client privilege to consider the confidential personal matters and to prevent the disclosure of confidential Personnel information under North Carolina General statute 115 C- 319 okay we will now move into closed session the Orange County Board of Education pledges to its citizens to conduct its business in a courteous and productive manner showing respect for fellow board members staff and citizens the board ask 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 ask that you check your cell phones and other electronic devices to be certain that
003they are either turned off or on vibrate to avoid Interruption of this meeting let us now stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you we will now observe a moment of silence okay thank you at this time we have recognitions Mr Smith thank you madam chair Dr Marl members of the board we'd like to ask Miss Deborah Williams to please come forward as you all know we underwent a very long long and arduous process of self-examination for the district and that process brought us um a lot of good information but it also brought us some recognition for a number of practices that were taking
004place on a regular and systematic basis here uh in Orange County Schools so please come forward and we'd love for you to tell the board more about what you experienced with us thank you thank you so much good evening board members good evening good evening good evening it is my pleasure to be here with you tonight to present cogn values driven Award of Excellence to Orange County Schools kagia former Zach and advanced Ed is a Global Network of enthusiastic enthusiastic Educators laser for focused on supporting and improving educational outcomes for Learners the values driven Award of Excellence recogniz as institutions that dream bag that stand for the learner that are bold and daring they drive potential they tenaciously and relentlessly pursue their mission and they build connections by expanding and nurturing internal and external relationships
005while engaged with the District staff during the recent accreditation Engagement review cognia evaluators found the district's commitment to the these values evident in your in the professional learning designed to support staff in understanding Learners needs and interest it was evident in the district's proactive approach to building a healthy culture and most powerful to cognia was the district's engagement of professional staff in developing communicating implementing monitoring and adjusting the continuous Improvement movement process in our work with the district's a we also found evident that the board and staff districtwide believe school and school systems do not become High performing by chance nor do they become High performing overnight and for your continued dedication and support of children on behalf of the cognia Improvement Network I present Orange County schools coga's values driven Award of Excellence and
006congratulations right thank [Applause] [Music] you absolutely turn it around Bor if if you wouldn't mind standing up and then obviously we'll have you shake Miss Williams hand as well okay if we can turn the award around because it's currently there we go all right thank you all on the count of three one two and three thank you if you'd like to greet the board that'd be great would would you care to greet the board I would please thank you very thank you it's pleasure to meet thank you so much for all your work with us AB abolutely it was our pleasure we truly enjoy it thank you thank you thank you so much thank you so much and who should I leave this with oh Franklin will take it Franklin got his arms [Laughter] out
007thank you again thank you so much we appreciate all of your hard work it was a true pleasure we really eny enjoyed working with the district um and it was very insightful and the accrediation process is designed and has been redesigned actually to engage districts institutions in not only analyzing their data which is something we do in North Carolina we have lots of data for our schools but not only do we analyze it we guide you in synthesizing that data and so you saw all of that in the report so again it was our pleasure and thank you so much thank you thank you just add I think that's a recognition on behalf of the work of so many people that that work in this school system parents families students who who who are the
008product producers uh and our community support so it really is a reflection of that work and I'd also like to um thank Dr Merill the central office staff who worked with them because I know that took a tremendous amount of time so thank you all okay our next recognition is our beginning teacher of the year how exciting all right good evening chair personel Vice chair Richmond and board members and Dr Merill it is my honor and privilege to introduce our beginning teacher of the year Sarah Woody she is a fourth grade teacher at Grady a brown elementary school I had the privilege last Friday afternoon of going over and the Halls were filled with all of her student staff um and just congratulating her um and she was super duper surprised so we're going to
009ask that she come forth I do think she has some family members with here we also have um principal um Chris Marx's here and I'm going to kind of turn it over to those two so she can have they both can have some words but again congratulations good evening everyone I'm here to celebrate Miss Sarah Woody beginning teacher of the year for Orange County Schools um just a few uh couple years ago Miss Woody walked in our door uh interviewing for a teacher assistant position and she told us in an interview I really not sure if education is what I want to do but at at least want to try and see what it's like and she ended up coming to the number one school in America and she learned a lot so much so
010that she was so excited to pursue her Residency program uh become a beginning teacher um she was looking for a teaching job she loved grd Brown so much but we did not have a spot for her um luckily about three weeks after school ended a spot opened up and she said absolutely I want to come back so we're excited that Sarah Woody decided to choose us we're excited she chose Orange County schools and congratulations Sarah Woody beginning teacher of the year for Orange County Schools thank you this is such a huge honor um I I get up and I talk to 20 students a day all day long but it feels a lot different when it's grown up so excuse me for my nervousness but um I am so privileged and honored um to be
011representing Orange County Schools as the beginning teacher of the year I attended Orange County Schools K through 12th so it's really a beautiful for moment for me to be able to represent the county in this way um huge thanks to everyone who supported me along the way my family my amazing Administration who I think truly make Grady Brown the wonderful place it is the number one school in America and also big shout out to um our cohort of beginning teachers and our Mentor Miss Whitney Williams uh for creating a safe space where we can have those conversations about what do we do when we're you know reaching this issue how can we solve this problem how can we jump over that next hurdle and we have all these people to bounce ideas off of and
012to give us advice um and I think that also speaks to the um importance Orange County Schools puts onto the beginning teachers and the community create they create and all of that great stuff so I'm really appreciative thank you thank [Applause] you wonderful congratulations that's great congratulations thank you I was waai wonderful job good job all right what a great way to start the evening okay next up we have agenda adoption do we have any changes to the agenda that anyone would like to make motion to adopt the agenda okay second all in favor I I motion is carried okay up next public comments Mr Richmond will you read the yes ma'am sure will words on that thank you we will now hear public comments speakers will be called in the order in which they
013signed up each speaker will have three minutes yielding time to other speakers is not permitted if a speaker has written materials they would like to share please hand them them our board clerk Frank Franklin mckune and he will distribute them to the board the purpose of public comment is for the board to hear from members of the of the public not to engage in back and forth discussions per our policy board members will not respond to speakers during the public comment session the board greatly values public feedback and welcomes all comments regardless of viewpoint however please be reminded that children are often present at these meetings and that our public comment policy prohibits profanity vulgarity and personal abuse of any person we ask that all comments be civil respectful and free of personal attack tax
014any speaker 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 today during public comment will be wend Wendy Padilla when I notice I will not be translating I just have two things to say to of you board members is one are you aware of the mold situation at Orange High and two uh are you aware that this is not being anywhere online that is translated for the community thank you so much for your time thank you our next speaker will be Gretchen SMI good evening um anyone who's been to the school board meetings uh so far this year
015including this evening has um seen a group of activists wearing public strong School strong t-shirts including Orange County School school board member um members of this organization have been trained affiliated with the North Carolina um National Education Association linked with the um national uh teachers union the largest one and organized 2020 sent out emails this past spring about setting up a new Coalition called honest education action and Leadership or heal that claimed this is a national effort and it was being supported by the National Education Association people's action dignity and schools and many others committed to education Justice Justice one of the first few things heel iny did was to hold listening sessions on how to shut down parent complaints at Schoolboard meetings the email for these sessions sent out by organized 2020 started out
016by calling parental concerns about their child's education manufactur manufactured outrage um much of this is cited in an article that was um sent out at the end of at the end of September and has been sent uh to the board September 30th and um touching on the some of the leadership uh the top leadership um was cited in a Charlotte Observer article um wrote about the leader of PSS a woman named Janice Robin Robinson as if she were just some random mom or citizen after even just some cursory digging that's not the case um Robinson for her own website's bio is a political activist and is the program director in North Carolina for red wine and blue sometimes referred to as the Chardon antifa she also does campaign Consulting and Community organizing through her company
017JDR Consulting as well as being an active member of the North Carolina Democratic party and meclin Bird's Democratic Precinct in 2016 with the election of U Donald Trump jannis began a personal crusade to do everything she could to ensure he would not be reelected for a second term Janice became chair of her Precinct and historically Republican stronghold wrote out a strategy with the help of five other members and turned her Precinct into a solid blue Democratic hold and go just goes on about her um her political activism uh what I found interesting is is a a group that claims to want to heal schools has not reached out to any of the organizations like including Monster Liberty who's been working on that for the last couple of years and um actually supports you know some
018of the same ideas um this is in no way an organic Grassroots organization led by parents as what we've been hearing for the last couple years from many parents and not just our organization thank you thank you that concludes public comment okay next up we have board comments um Miss Molly do you have anything thank you just a couple of things um first um I just want to acknowledge that it's um indigenous people's day today um and a couple of years ago the board um passed a resolution that was very detailed that U Miss Doyle spearheaded the creation or the work on that I know along with um members of the um okichi band of the saon nation and and others um and um I would just really love an update on the things that
019the board committed to there um so one of those things um I noticed said that um indigenous people's day would be permanently recognized in Orange County School's calendar um which is like a small thing but I noticed has not happened um a larger one is a commitment to teacher education um there's a course offered by DPI in particular we talked about that so I would just love sort of an update on the different items that are in the resolution um and then the other thing is this weekend I went to the color of Education conference in Raleigh which was excellent um it was great to see a number of Orange County School staff members there um and I just wanted to pull out some interesting statistics one of the sessions that I went to was
020actually LED and facilitated by a group of high school students from Holly Springs High School from their school's uh disability advocacy student Alliance um and uh the session was about um race and disability and the intersection of those um and they shared a number of Statistics in their PowerPoint that I thought were um interesting one is that um so students in general education classrooms have better academic and employment outcomes than students placed in separate spaces which is one of the reasons that there's been a big push over the past few decades to inclusion but only 33% of black disabled students Nationwide spend more than 80% of their day in a general Ed classroom only 33% um and then um students um students with disabilities have higher discipline rates than other students and in particular um
021black disabled students so um one of the other statistics they shared with us with was that African-American students with disabilities lose three times as much instructional time for discipline as their white peers um and the black disabled students are subjected to Mechanical restraints in special education at much higher much disproportionate rates um and so um all of that um made me want to know more about the intersection of race and disability and some of the like experiences of our students um and whether there are any differences there that we should be looking at um and then I know this is a little bit of a long public comment the the other thing that I'll say that the session really brought up for me was um one of the students talked about hesitation moving into a
022higher level into an AP class um and transferring into that class um a student with a 504 had a lot of hesitation about moving into that class as one of the few black students to then also ask the teacher for accommodations um and uh and just a lot of hesitancy about even wanting to go into that class and that made me think about the equal opportunities schoolwork that's sort of trying to get at the different barriers to students to wanting to go into advanced coursework and and just wondering if we're doing anything to sort of proactively address for students if you have a 504 if you have an IEP like that can be accommodated also in a higher level class um uh yeah so that was a great session led by high school students um
023and and the conference in general was wonderful that's it sorry that was really long I apologize all right go for it you sounds like an interesting conference it was okay Miss do um thank you chair pcel um I also wanted to recognize indigenous people's day and I don't know if we have a um longer acknowledgement that's going to We Do We Will in November in November okay okay the month okay um I do have our um resolution from indigenous peoples Day 2021 which we read again last year it is a little bit lengthy so let me know an if you would like me to take the time to do that but I would like to recognize um the members of our community who helped pull this history together and share it with us educate those
024of us on the board who um worked on Crafting this resolution a couple years ago um members of our school Community um indigenous members of our school community and teaching staff who um spent a lot of time instructing our board members um and also the same folks who created the um the DPI course the Stacey course um and I was uh at an event in Durham where there was a land acknowledgement today um that had a portion that we don't include ours recognizes um that um Orange County Schools was founded on land previously settled by ancestors of the okichi band of the saponi nation and goes on from there and of course around the state there are different histories to the land so the one in Durham included the tuto um and saon people um
025but there was an ending in there that I'd like to um just read um it says today the triangle is surrounded by contemporary native nations the descendants of tuto saponi and other indigenous peoples who survived early colonization these nations include the halwa saponi and okichi B of saon North Carolina's Research Triangle is also home to a thriving Urban Native American Community who represent native nations from across the United States together these indigenous Nations and communities contribute to North North Carolina's ranking as the state with the largest Native American population east of Oklahoma and so um just to Echo a little bit of what Sarah said we made several resolutions in 2021 that we would recognize the contributions of our indigenous Community um there's we wrote more about that um we continue to implement teacher training
026from North Carolina State advisory Council on Indian education with which is sty um they professional development materials a specific course written by one of our um staff members we would uh continue to pursue the establishment of an honors level course in Native American studies at the high school level which I know um it's been hard to find someone to fill that role there's um you know we have other vacancy issues and there needs to be this the student demand but I am pleased that in addition to our African-American studies course we also have a um um a latinx studies course now at Orange High School which is which is a growth so I hope we can keep growing in this direction um and it was it was um accentuated to us emphasize how important it
027is to compile more accurate data reflecting who are native families and students are removing the as risk of invisibility um and that as Sarah mentioned we would recognize and designate on our Calender and other appropriate materials this day as indigenous people's day um and there also is the open question about um how we've recognized the tribal Heritage of the land where River Park Elementary School was established so those are some specifics that we resolved um and finally I just want to say I also really enjoyed the color of Education Summit one of the themes um one of the themes that was shared um Jerry craft is that his name um a an author and um an illustrator graphic artist um shared how important it was to him growing up he had he suffered a um
028uh avoidance of reading because there weren't positive stories um about people like him because there was a propensity to write only um sad stories that include African-American characters so he had to create his own story um through joy and comic and um healthy families and fantasy and just every aspect um and so I was just thinking how important it is to hear people's stories and let people tell their own stories and represent themselves thank you I was a little long as well thank you Gary and um I think I'm hearing that we are going to celebrate this um month in November when it is their month okay so we will bring that back up there okay Miss Hower sure thank you um um a little contrast on indigenous people's day I'm inspired to remember the
029families of John black feather and Lynette Jeff who have enriched our Orange County Schools Community for generations and their memories are certainly a blessing to us um I'd like to also on the other side talk a little bit about our newcomers and actually it's a request I'd like to make to our staff I was wondering if we could get a report about our English language Learners and newcomers I don't know if you've been following the news this week Gilford county announced the opening of their second newcomer school and um and I a little did a little more research and it turns out that Chapel Hill schools concentrates their newcomers into a single elementary middle and high school school where they remain until they're ready to transition into a traditional setting our teachers have repeatedly asked
030me to increase our support to newcomers teachers our teachers believe that students are transitioned before they are ready for traditional classes I'm looking for a report that shows the number and growth in English language students what schools do they attend I'm sorry English language learner students what schools do they attend and how long do we keep them as newcomers I'm also interested in their um and grade scores and other assessments my question is would English language learner students benefit if we expanded our newcomer program and concentrated newcomers in a few schools I'd like an estimate of how much that might cost and what impacts pros and cons um would be would there be for our English language Learners and other students and it would help to understand how much it would cost it would be
031great to see something in the next month or so as we look at redistricting because certainly if we were going to start to concentrate our English language learner our our newcomers um it might affect the balance on our redistricting thank you okay thank you Miss um Mr Richmond have okay um I am just going to make comment that we as a board met um last one night last week I can't remember which one um Wednesday night I'm being told Tuesday Wednesday we met virtually with um our um North Carolina School boards Association and they are going to be guiding us in our search for a new superintendent um um so we met with them we talked about a plan we talked about the dates for everything to be done and um does will oh okay
032I'll come back to will I forgot will is on on Zoom so will will come back to you since I'm started on this no problem um the application process is open um now we have the application has gone out and in journals websites and all places that superintendents or um superintendents who are searching for a new position would be looking and so that will be open until November the 6 we also have out uh on websites um for the community and the staff to do online surveys and these need to be completed by October the 23rd so if you've not seen any of these things if you can't find them if you uh will call the central office and I'm thinking uh Mr Smith can help with that because he he knows uh where these
033things are if you can't find them um and I encourage all staff and all Orange County School's parents to participate in this survey uh we need to know what you want what your thinking is uh we we want to hear from you so my um plea to you tonight is to please help with this please answer those surveys uh to the best of your ability and let us know what your thoughts are as we look for a new superintendent and leader for this great school system so I apologize will for jumping in in front of you and I will let you speak no problem thank you so much I I just wanted to start by saying um I'm very glad to hear we're going to have indigenous uh people's celebration next month and so I
034want say anything further on that but I did want to say a safe environment includes ensuring a healthy environment and if a teacher staff or anyone in our schools is seeing mold or has a concern with mold they need to report it so it can be addressed immediately um I know we've had one person comment on it tonight and we've seen some emails around it but I I think people need to realize if it isn't reported and isn't given to the the staff to address uh there's no way to address it and I I know myself and others feel strongly about ensuring a safe and healthy environment and I just encourage people to report it if they they see it that's that's all I had thank you okay thank you Mr Aon all right and
035as we move in next we have superintendent comment thank you members of the board I'll double down on on what Mr Aon has said in fact we sent a notice and a reminder to principles today that asked all principles to be certain if any staff members have concerns about mold or air quality in their classrooms that they report it we have a firm that's begun work this week as you know we've communicated that they're moving through all our buildings for the next several days uh so we are we are there and we're certainly ready to get in and look at any particular concerns that staff would have I really wanted to take a minute or two and share some some academic results um but I I I want to attribute the following comments and observations
036to board member Smiley who um could not wait to get the EOC EOG results uh and and build it into this year's tab at the bottom of the spreadsheets that that carry forward historically but she shared some conclusions from the day end I'm not sure we've done them Justice we moved kind of quickly through it at at one of our recent meetings so I lift her comments to you which are observations from some of the data and the analysis that we got on eoc's and eogs I'll go f first with what she referred to as low lights because we do come back with some highlights just a couple of things clearly we're not where we want to be as a school system uh there are a lot of students that are not at the level
037of proficiency they've not made the kind of growth we want there are hundreds of variables that affect every child and the child's growth and learning um but broadly speaking many students are still not proficient and are not graduating at at at a career in college readiness level uh there continue to be significant deficiencies and differences in proficiency rates by race economic status language learner status ability status many variables uh growth over time is slower at the middle school level than in elementary schools uh growth has been uneven in the high schools across subjects and groups of students fewer students met the ACT score Benchmark compared to last year and we now just slightly below the state average um and at the high school level more students are graduating colle college and career ready um than
038the state average but more graduating CCR in uh in Orange this year than last and our rate of increase was higher than the increase of the state as a whole um We Do Dwell down level by level by grade student by student and there's tons of data there that we're working on some of the lift ups that that um Miss Smiley shared and and and this is all a result of her work not mine so I want to be clear on that um over the past two years in grades 3 through eight math Orange County Schools have grown faster than the state our percent proficient has gone up by 24 percentage points over two years from 30 to 54% while North Carolina grew only 13 percentage points grades 3 through eight reading scores have also
039grown at Double the rate of the Statewide growth over the past two years 8% versus 4% not as large a growth but still double the rate of the state and we're now within 1% of the state average so we're we're closing on that state average which is still not a goal to be at the state average but it's a step in both math and reading in every Elementary in Middle School grade grades three through eight uh we grew in the percentage proficiency faster than the state and we talk sometimes about our growth being very strong but let's not ignore some of our proficiency gains as well five elementary schools have higher proficiency rates in 3 through eight math than before the pandemic because we often talk about the bounce back from the effect of pandemic
040we have five that have exceeded where we were before three elementary schools have higher proficiency rates in grades 38 reading than before the pandemic six schools have an overall all student composite score higher than before the pandemic and at the high school level more students are graduating college in career ready either passing the ACT Benchmark or the work keys Benchmark than the state average more are graduating CCR in uh excuse me I read that before and I was reading it as a negative it's a it's a positive so at the elementary math at the elementary Reading levels uh good movement uh nothing to be satisfied with but but I don't want to let recognition be missed for the work that our teachers our students and families and community support groups have done so wanted to
041be sure to hit some of those highlights which we were were not able to share at the Joint meeting recently U because we were following the agenda so wink wink nod nod so that that's all Madam chair thank you okay thank you Dr mer I I make a just a yes ma'am you know so Chapel Hill at the Joint meeting with the Commissioners did share a bunch of their like highlights and you know we didn't because it wasn't on the agenda you agree you all agreed that that wasn't going to be on the agenda so we weren't ready with that we did but you know I do think there's some value in following up and sharing that information with them as sort of a I don't know what the right opportunity is for that if
042that's in a chairs meeting or if that's in an email or something but just to sort of share some equivalent results to what Chapel Hill um I think we can get the word out don't you Dr yeah I think we can meeting here on the 7th of November I think so I think we can as they were talking at that meeting I was like we have information too all right well thank you for doing that um and thank you Dr Merill for sharing okay um items on consent have we passed we hadn't passed this we have not motion to approve the consent agenda second second all in favor I I okay and consent agenda is approved and we have one change on our discussion and action agenda tonight um section A has been pulled because
043the uh vendor was not prepared for discussion I have been told and this will be moved to our October the 23rd meeting uh we just need a motion to pull this item a and move it to the 23rd so do I have a motion to do that move second okay second all in favor I I all right that item will be on our 23rd meeting agenda okay um we are moving into Senate Bill 49 policy updates the second read we have a second read on policy 3210 3540 6120 and 7300 do we have any um thing that anyone wants to add to any of these or talk about any further on these or do we want to vote for second Miss do I do I have um two sentences I'd like to um request or
044suggest adding um for policy 3540 the Comprehensive Health education program um and I sent this to fellow board members this um weekend would you like me to read aloud it's just two sentences sure yes okay please do so um the red line in compliance with um the new legis legislation so the red line that came out of um policy committee and with advisement from our attorney was instruction on gender identity sexual activity or sexuality will not be included in the health education program in kindergarten through fourth grade see also policy 1310 sl42 parental involvement and then these two next sentences are what I would request that we add um however in accordance with multiple Federal and District policies including policy 1710 the Professional Standards of multiple educator roles including standard two of the North Carolina
045professional Teaching Standards this policy does not preclude limit or prevent the representation or inclusions of individuals and families of diverse gender and sexual identities including lgbtq plus individuals and families in any curricular resources or classroom materials teachers may also respond to student initiated questions regarding gender identity sexual activity or sexuality okay um it is my understanding that since the these were okay on the and past on the first read we can e either table these for legal review and then bring it back or we can uh take it back to the policy committee have legal review there and then bring it back am I correct on that um m pcel i i I believe that's correct at least for the additional sentences but I don't think you have to have all of them be brought
046back I believe M you're just looking at one of the policies which we would just have a legal review of it and bring it back I wouldn't recommend doing all of or tabling all of them just that one no I was going to suggest that if the others are okay then we would approve policy 4720 4335 6120 and 7300 on second read and table that one policy until we have um have that either changed or clarification is that the way you understand it uh Mr Aon as chair of the policy committee yes okay all right so um what is the pleasure to take this back to the policy committee or just to take it to have legal review or what would you suggest Dr Merill we um I think the attorney review is more critical
047than putting it in committee but I'm jumping on on Mr atherton's toes we have a committee this Friday don't know that we could get attorney review prior to this Friday unless will spoken to Neil but I know Neil's offline some um so my inclination would be to get attorney review and try and bring it to the next board meeting but we'll override that if it makes better sense it it doesn't the only the only thing I was thinking is would this wording be appropriate in other locations as well uh and bring it back as uh you know being across multiple if that wording makes sense but it it's the pleasure of the board however they would like to proceed they can go back to policy and have both legal review and see if there's other
048places that this would make sense or we just um legal review come back and have a discussion on it whichever the board board's pleasure is okay yes ma'am um I'm I'm first of all I'm in favor of the language I think that's a great addition to the policy um and uh and I think that the just the legal review coming back to the board is fine with me but I think Will's point about are there other policies where we might want to add similar language is also a good one I don't think we need to wait for that necessarily to pass this one um so maybe that could be an additional consideration for the policy committee um to go back to other policies but if the fastest path to getting this done is to is
049to just do the legal review I'm in favor of that okay anyone else on this house yeah I I want to just echo my support because um I think the language is important and it it it's should alleviate a lot of the fears that I'm hearing in the community about who's welcome in our schools so I thank you Carrie for Miss Doyle for putting that language together um I wonder if we could insert it in our gender support guidelines or and broader gender support policy it's really overarching about who who what who these who's welcom in our schools I think it's really a statement to our families and I'm just wondering if we could put it in an overarching policy rather than individuals so something we could look at as policy committee but might be
050an easy way to to do that too cuz it's really really a big it's an important broad broad statement so I appreciate it okay so do I I'm hearing that we take just get legal review and bring it back um does anyone want to make that motion that we do that okay I do I move that we um have legal review over these two additional sentences and then come back to the board okay do I have a second second all right all in favor I okay motion passes all right now we need a motion to approve um policy 3210 4335 6120 and 7300 on second read do I have that motion so moved second all in favor I all right motion passes okay thank you very much for that and thank you to miss do
051for your work on that okay we move into financial report and Miss Ronda wrath good evening good evening this evening we um are here to walk through a quarterly report that is presented to the board each quarter the one that we have elected to take a look at is the um first quarter financial report for you thank you new process here so thanks for bearing with me okay um so this was included on um it's in the agenda and it is there in the abstract for everyone in the public to take a look at we did expand this report um considerably for the board uh this time it's usually a little bit more condensed but we did take the opportunity to um expand it out to kind of um use this as an opportunity to
052show you a little bit more of the intricacies that are involved with the report as well as the meanings behind um a lot of those categories one thing to keep in mind uh when looking at this report is what it represents and what it does not represent so this does represent um the state public school fund our local fund our federal funds as well as our other restricted funds what it does not include is it does not include either of our Enterprise funds which are after school and school nutrition nor does it include Capital that's going to be uh key when you are looking at comparing these from year to year as well as when you are looking at the categories in general and I will try to um point out as we're looking at
053a portion of the report and the categories why it's important to keep this in mind so I'm going to kind of take the opportunity to uh share how I look at this information and what I'm looking looking for when I pull it together and compile it so at a very high level the first thing I'm going to look at is what's coming in versus what's gone out and look at make sure that we have not paid more out than we have brought in and as you can see for the first quarter uh we have not we have um had 25% of our budgeted revenues have actually come into the district and 21% have gone out in those categories that um I just spoke to you about before I also look at how the revenues are
054coming in in each of the funds just to make sure that things are tracking and looking like they should be the special Revenue fund or other receipts fund is um our grants Revenue fund so that one is always going to trail behind and a lot of times those uh funds are may be received in a bulk and be sitting um in our fund balance and they just roll over from year to year as we continue to initiate these programs so um that one is not concerning to be low that is actually uh very normal for those funds to be uh low but I am looking at how we're tracking on the other funds to make sure that we got coming in what we're expected to be coming in next I'm going to give you two
055areas in the full report I'm going to give you um one where kind of looks good good and one where it kind of like oh um this is a little high do I need to be watching this and kind of talk through that so uh the first example that I pulled out was our reg regular instructional services and this includes basically all the cost with providing instruction to our students it includes uh your teachers uh in the classroom our teacher assistants all of their salaries all of their benefits um it includes substitutes it's going to include uh textbooks instructional supplies and um several categories but it's all expenditures salary and nons salary that are associated with the instruction of our students as you can see here this time last year we were at 19% across
056all of our funds compared to 21% this year there's a couple of things that going to play into um play into this how many vacancies do we have in the district number one is going to play into how our expenditures are tracking we know that last year we started out the first quarter of the school year with a lot more vacancies than we have this year um those are the main categories that are going to come into play also what's going to come into play is this time last year we had a state budget that had been passed and had been into play for several months before where we are right now so as a result the budget that we were benchmarking against last year had already had all of the salary increases all of
057the benefit increases as well as uh the release of several of our categorical funds already released to the district where this year we don't have that so we are um not operating and those are important things to keep in mind that we have to keep in mind when we're looking at this especially when we're comparing it to previous years but either way we're doing good you would think at the first quarter theoretically we should be at 25% we're at 21% so um in perspective of what has gone out we are uh tracking where we should be so where does this look different so um a category that I took to give you a opposite look is uh financial and human services pick on myself here so in this category um you have all of the
058expenditures that are associated with the financial department as well as the human resources or human capital Department we also have our bookkeeper um professional development we have Bank fees all of our district insurances as well as our workers compensation um the employee assistance program all of those expenditures are captured in this category as a result it is very very typical for this category to be higher than the 25% in the first quarter because all of those insurance premiums are paid in the first quarter so you will see this start tracking more in line and Below as we go through the year and it will be higher in the first quarter so that kind of gives an example of looking at two different categories two different extremes of where we're running under the 25% and where
059we're running over the 25% I'm going to end here uh with my brief kind of opportunity for a little um moment on this report and see if you have any questions uh Miss Molly um it's not a question it's just a comment which is um just that I appreciate the um new level of detail here and the little the tagline sort of describing what each of the categories is really used for as well as just your explanation just now about why those numbers might not perfectly line up and some some of that like story underneath it so that we can better understand that you have mentioned the insurance one before but I haven't written it down in the right place to remember it year to year um but that that was just really a helpful
060presentation so thank you um Miss H yes um I want to thank you also for this report and the full detail cuz the first time I've seen that level of detail um since I've been on the board as you know I've shared some technical comments with you and actually even some of the things you've been talking about it be wonderful to see in footnotes to the report for people because people are going to read it by itself and your comments are really valuable um I I just wanted to offer some comments and you know I think it's a impressive response to what I could see it's a statutory requirement we have to provide this information every quarter um and I just add that given the challenges that the district has been dealing with um I'm
061going to be looking for some additional information and one is um periodic reporting of items that the board and management approves all year but are not budgeted and these are the typically things that hit lap salaries or the fund balance and we approve them they come to us but we there's no place where we see a cumulative running total of the of what we've done until the end so um I think we so it would be nice to for us to kind of track what we're doing as we go um secondly I think too many people are asking about how our resources are allocated and whether resources are going to students that need them so we'll be needing greater clarity about how resources are allocated between the district and the schools and then also um
062how they're allocated across schools especially with an equity lens which is something that board's been interested in and I think that's going to be really in important as we move to redistricting and and I raise this just to clarify that the statutory reports don't answer those questions and and I'm sure we're going to be discussing it more in the budget community in the budget committee including how to bring that information forward to the board in the meantime I'd say this is great progress so thank you so much thank you for your feedback Miss do um thank you Miss R just a quick question could you repeat again what the other receipts was yes um those fund they represent SP funds that are specific and have to be used in specific categories a lot of terms
063we use the terminology grant funding um for example NC prek um our Medicaid reimbursements fall in this category um any uh tuition that we received for um out of District students those types of revenues and expenditures are captured in that category any of the um we have uh Burrows welcome grants all of those types of things are captured in that other um receipts other special Revenue fund okay thank you and one one more quick question if I may just um am I correct in recalling that we aren't always seeing the state and federal in the timely way predicted that we don't always have a quarter of it received at the end of the first quarter that can be accurate yes you know um typically when you measure against the budget that we have in this
064time frame um because per statute if you don't have a state budget that is passed you go uh back to the the previous year's initial budget which is what we had to do in this case um so therefore as a result the initial budget was even um before our first quarter reporting uh last year so it is when you look at it it's going to be lower because we haven't had those uh allotment releases from DPI and also you know you bring up a very good point with our federal funds A lot of times uh they are delayed and in being released to the district thank you I just like to also say that this is very nice very easy to read very easy to understand and I appreciate your work on getting this done
065thank you so much any other comments questions thank you Miss ran okay um if no one has anything else um we're to the point that we can adjourn this meeting and it's 8 o' motion to adjourn at 8 o' second all in favor I I motion carried everyone have a great evening and thank you all who came that