001call this meeting to order 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 asks its citizens to conduct themselves in the same courtesy towards both School personnel and each other a moment of silence will be observed before each meeting the school board asked that you check your cell phones and other electronic devices to be certain they are turned off or on vibrate to avoid interruptions of the meeting so we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all right we'll go ahead and just take a moment of silence foreign Dr Felder why
002good evening chair Atherton Vice chair Purcell to the entire board to our staff our students and families tonight we have another evening of a number of notable recognitions to get us started I would like to invite Miss Shannon Braxton director of CTE Career Technical education and the Arts to help us recognize our CTE interns we heard from members of our staff who hosted these grow your own interns from our student body to work in our operations Department over the summer at that time the board asked to learn more from the students themselves Miss Braxton we want to thank you and our students for coming out tonight as well as others who have joined you we hope that you and our students will tell us a little bit more about their summer experience and help us
003get to know them better students we congratulate each of you um and we are at the end would like for you to come around so that we can shake hands and correct congratulate you further so at this time Miss Braxton it's all yours thank you thank you I am very appreciative to be able to stand before you tonight um Orange County Schools offers internship programs in our high schools throughout the school year fall spring and now summer in the previous Summers we have had a few students to intern but this past summer was a really exciting summer in that we had our grow our own internship program and it was launched this past summer these two staff members right here Nick Montgomery at Orange High School and Stephanie Smith at Cedar Ridge these are the
004staff members that ensure this coursework happens year-round for students our cdc's Career Development coordinators they make work-based learning opportunities possible for students by working all summer long they arranged interviews they made sure that the work hours were set they made sure that students had the transportation to and from the job sites both Nick and Stephanie they know the importance of career development in order to have student development thanks to the collaboration and the focused determination Orange County Schools offered within our own School District internships this summer for students and our Very Own Child Nutrition maintenance bus garage technology and our summer Scholars whoops summer Scholars departments and programs internships are a great way to offer on the job real world training and the experience to show that Orange County Schools employs many jobs not just
005classroom educators every effort was made to match these students and the others that didn't join us tonight there is a football game going on they made sure to match these students with their Career Development plans and career choices the Orange County Schools summer internship students were paid jobs at a living wage of 15 per hour and if they come back to work in Orange County schools in the future both the students and the district will benefit from our grow your own Workforce students who worked 120 hours which is the minimum required for the course and who completed the internship portfolio also received High School Credit thank you Ms Braxton thank you to the board I'd like to recognize a few of our interns that were unable to make it this evening Abby and Avery hinksterman
006from Orange High School served in the Child Nutrition department as did Grayson coffin with partnership Academy also in Child Nutrition uh in the bus garage from Orange High School we had Joshua Crabtree and we had me Freddie Garcia it was a pleasing experience and having Hands-On it like it changed it like it changes everything because you get real experience compared to just like learning from paper and online from maintenance department we had two students from Orange High School Jackson Lee and Andrew Cox and also unfortunately I'm unable to make it this evening and an I.T technology we had a titanium Norman from Orange High School and evening I'm Sean Adams and I worked with the I.T Department this summer it was a great experience I'd say I learned a lot from its uh customer service
007helping out with uh all sorts of things in the back end really liked it we'll do it again four students who were Tas at AO stanbag and their names is Angela madrigo's Vasquez Angeles Gonzalez Giovanni Pomo Patron and Anthony arieza Castro and I would love to do this again thank you good evening my name is Shania Thompson I'm an orange senior at Orange High School this is my second year during the internship and I've learned a lot I'm happy to say that when I go out to the real world and graduate uh that I will have a lot of teaching experience under my belt so I thank y'all for that um good evening my name is Katie Chavez Lopez I'm a senior at Orange High School um I'm a second year intern I worked as
008a TA the past two years during the summer Scholars Program and I'm very grateful with the opportunity that I got to work I um sorry um I worked with kids of all different ages from kindergarten to middle schoolers um and I learned a lot of new techniques and skills that I can use in the classroom now and one of the main things that I appreciate was learning how to get gain the students confidence in the classrooms and help them participate and grow new relationships with all of them um so yeah and I also with us we had another High School intern that worked with us the last summer her name is Kaya gamble she's a junior at Orange High School I think she's ready to take on the teaching position right [Laughter] so I just
009want to say a huge thank you to the Orange County Schools department leaders and staff that hosted these students Sarah pits and Child Nutrition Nick mincy in maintenance Larry Albert and the transportation and bus garage Ryan Miller with technology and the on-site DLC Corey Mel and then also Connie crimmins with Summer Scholars specifically Nicole Lester at L stanback and Anthony Finland at Gravelly Hill and we also want to acknowledge that the summer Scholars staff at both Al stanback and Gravelly Hill work with all of our Tas this summer and they also had a front office staff and the I.T students just to note that some of our Tas from this summer also are working in this fall semester over at Grady a brown as they continue their internship credit um I also want to thank
010Rhonda Rath uh don Kirkpatrick and her staff for processing students and the payroll system they got that experience human capital Joyce Hatcher and Meg Merritt specifically with their help with the application process onboarding orientation all that new higher paperwork and Dr Felder for supporting the internal internship opportunity especially thank the board of education for supporting the funding this was a concentrated effort for Orange County schools to provide CTE internships inside our district allowing students to work on their Career Development pathway we're looking forward to continuing and growing this summer internship program and we hope the funds can be found to contribute to make the summer internship program a permanent opportunity for Orange County School students in the future CTE grow our own summer intern program provided Learning Without Limits as it engaged challenged and inspired
011our Orange County Schools students so thank you all for the opportunity [Applause] congratulations all right so uh the next recognition is with regards to Red Ribbon Week which begins this week so Red Ribbon Week is the nation's largest and longest running drug use prevention campaign and this year's theme as uh you can see here is create life live drug free chosen as it is every year from submissions from students all over the country we are proud to see activities in all of our schools during this important awareness campaign and the 2022 National theme is a reminder that every day Americans across the country make significant contributions to their communities every day by being the best they can be living drug free in this Spirit we are pleased to remind our middle and high school families
012to check your email because there is an important uh event this Thursday evening and we hope you will bookmark it and attend the orange partnership for drug and alcohol-free Youth and um will join Orange County Schools this Thursday evening October 27th starting at 6 pm to host the remote Zoom webinar for families about how to spot and prevent a drug and alcohol use among teenagers we know through experience that just say no it sounds good isn't enough and together we hope to empower families to make changes that will benefit their children for life also during a Red Ribbon Week Mothers Against Drunk Driving also known as MADD mad will be presenting in all three of our high schools over the next couple of days we are intensely grateful for the work of Our Community Partners
013like the orange partnership and especially our school resource officers Sheriff Blackwood and his staff as well as Chief Hampton and his staff who make this week not only a time of fun and fellowship for students but for learning how to make good decisions at all times and to live our lives drug free we can show our personal commitment to drug-free lifestyle through the symbol of red the red ribbon again October 23rd through the 31st and we encourage all of our students staff and families to join in this commitment by visiting this week's event and our OCS website where more information is posted as a service all right so the next recognition is for Mr Stan Farrington uh oh okay so we want to uh continue the Celebration by sending a heartfelt congratulations to Mr Stan
014Farrington who is in the all right go ahead do you think Mr Farrington a principal of partnership Academy on being named Orange County Schools principal of the year four principals were nominated for this year's award and we are proud that Mr Farrington will be representing Orange County schools in the Wells Fargo principal of the Year award process starting at the regional level this fall October is indeed principles month uh which we have been celebrating with tokens of our appreciation all month long but we also gladly took just a moment during this month's professional learning to organize a celebration that involved not just Mr farrington's peers and fellow School leaders but also the entire learning community at partnership Academy well we served that idea up and staff and students at partnership Academy ran with it not
015surprisingly they brought balloons and cake and ice cream and showered Mr Farrington with accolades and we are happy to join them congratulations again Mr Farrington and we wish you good luck as you represent your school your colleagues and the district this year thank you especially to our human capital Department uh represented by Miss Hatcher for making this celebration truly a highlight of our year as it always should be one highlight of celebrating our leading Educators is when students even former students come back and express their appreciation and so when we shared on Facebook uh the video from Mr farrington's Victorious return to partnership Academy here is just one comment from a student that we receive the student said I went to partnership and Mr Farrington was one of the best changes at the school if
016anyone he deserves it he believes in everyone and never backs down I never saw myself saying this but I miss school and he is one of the main reasons congratulations Mr Farrington so Mr Farrington we congratulate you yet again and we invite you well you're I was going to invite you to come forward but you're already here so please share a few words and then come around and allow the board and I uh to congratulate you personally so again congratulations thank you Dr Felder thank you board um you guys need a box of tissue up here that's what you need you shouldn't have read that quote that messed me up I was I was all prepared but team team I'm telling you and it truly is a team effort um and and here at partnership
017you guys will know we we kind of banking on four Big R's and the first one is relationships this and and that is the foundation relationships and I can't harp on that enough I I but I will but I'll go on to the second R which is rigor I mean we're there to learn so we've got relationships we've got rigor and then if the rigor isn't relevant then it's not gonna stick so we've got to have relationships we got to have rigor we got to have relevance and then ultimately what we're there to get is results and so if we put it all together I think that's a winning combination and that's how we build our climate that's how we build our culture um and and we have found that l-o-v-e is undefeated and so
018we love those babies and once you build that relationship don't trust you enough to take that discipline and and and and it's an Orange County Schools thing the relationships that we've been able to develop with the school board and with the cabinet and the superintendent God bless you all thank you for this honor uh my colleagues those awesome principals y'all wait wait I see one or two of you out there your family yes indeed and that's just it's a blessing we did it and we're gonna keep doing it God bless you and thank all of you all right um thank you [Laughter] thank you right okay well thank you Mr Farrington all right so next up we are so super duper proud to announce that Mr Kumar sathy who's currently a fifth grade teacher at
019New Hope Elementary School and he's also the district's Equity facilitator uh for uh for the district where he'll be working with all schools has been accepted into a very limited opportunity with a 2022-2023 North Carolina Equity Fellowship offered by the center for racial equity and education or Creed Creed is headquartered in Durham and led by Mr James Ford a member of our state board of education and the organization looks for equity-minded individuals to join their year-long Fellowship to strengthen leadership and pilot projects aimed at transforming outcomes for students of color fellows are selected for their potential and commitment to disrupting pressing educational inequities in North Carolina teachers principals superintendents I didn't know that I could apply next year school board members see you guys can apply as well and journalists across the state are all
020eligible to apply so while remaining in their educational field or profession Fellowship participants receive mentorship they receive project development opportunities and a stipend so now we know that Mr sathy will very soon transition from his fifth grade classroom to a role supporting equity in classrooms across Orange County Schools but we also know that he had some very special visitors in his fifth grade classroom today at New Hope Elementary School and he's going to tell us about that so we are always honored by visits from our friend neighbor and colleague Eugena Floyd who is the 2021-2022 North Carolina boroughs welcome fun teacher of the year and together with Mr Xavier Adams who I see out in the audience who is a teacher at Orange High School and the state's beginning teacher of the year uh Miss
021Floyd joined Mr sathy to co-teach a lesson for fifth graders on the importance of setting and meeting high expectations which we know is a key component to achieve the academic and personal Excellence we envision for every student so how does this all fit together well according to Creed this professional learning opportunity supports fellows as they design and Implement projects that work to urgently disrupt pressing educational inequities in North Carolina the fellowship comes with much more than a title and a stipend as fellows receive ongoing mentorship and support to design and carry out their projects that will transform education and make it possible for each and every student to enjoy the benefits we want for all children so congratulations to Mr sathy who is standing before us we invite you to share a few words and
022then come on through and let us personally congratulate you so congratulations thank you everyone um Happy Diwali uh I just found out like five minutes ago that I would be talking so I have absolutely nothing eloquent prepared um at all um I do want to I wish I could go back to my first year teach yourself and and just let me know that at one point I would be standing in front of the board and my superintendent would not only know who I am but say my name um so that was nice um uh good evening board um community members uh folks listening in in on the meeting and everyone out there who's um supporting our public schools and pushing us to do better and challenging us to do better uh this Fellowship means a
023lot to me um I I my expertise is with instructional Equity um and it is with finding a way to make sure that every student knows that they have something to contribute in my classroom and to the world if you are in my classroom you will see every hand up for every single question and you will not see it bent elbow everyone participates everyone has something to contribute um and even if they don't quite know the answer they know that they are helping their peers by asking for a hint or by sharing what the answer is not um no one gets to hide in my classroom um there's There's Something About This Fellowship that is going to give me even more of the tools to continue this work and to disrupt any educational oppression that
024is occurring throughout schools not only within this our district but throughout the state so I look forward to working with other colleagues on that in particular um Eugenia Floyd was in my classroom today which was absolutely amazing and so it was Xavier Adams um and it was awesome to have them interact with my students and to talk about not only high expectations um but also encouraging teachers to talk about topics that are tough and encouraging teachers to be brave and talking about the things that the kids actually crave um conversations about and want to learn more about so I really appreciate the opportunity to stand up here and say something completely not eloquent um and I I just will say that um this Fellowship is extremely important because I do have a lot to share
025already about teaching about Equity I have a lot to share but I have even more to learn so I look forward to that learning and to sharing what I have found with teachers and students throughout the district thank you foreign all right so indeed it is Monday night and I have to ask this question are you ready for some football well funny I know but really this is no joke Bank of America and the Carolina Panthers football team partner together to offer a teacher of the year award each season and shine a light to celebrate uh teachers who go above and beyond serving students in both North Carolina and South Carolina the Panthers website States teachers are heroes in our community as they shape young minds and provide the foundation for our children to succeed
026as they strive to build a prosperous future and in that Spirit Bank of America and the Panthers offered their teacher of the year award again during the 2022 season and our very own Avery Pipkin who's standing before you right now was nominated to receive this award so I'm gonna pause right now you may recall seeing Mr Pipkin pipkins first rodeo with the board uh this summer because he was busy with the Carolina Chamber of Commerce summer careers Academy we not only brought it to you for um recognition when their first cohort of pre-apprentices graduated but many of us were there for that celebration well Mr Pipkin was nominated by by his students at Cedar Ridge for this honor and out of all of the nominees he was named as one of only six across two
027states uh one of six finalists from North Carolina and South Carolina that's two so these six teachers received a Panthers prize pack order an autographed item a personalized Jersey and two tickets to the Panthers game against Tampa Bay this past Sunday at the game the teacher of the year winner was announced and given 5 000 in prizes for their classroom so we are so honored to have Mr Pipkin here tonight we congratulate you and uh you are joined by Miss Braxton again director of CTE and the Arts and so we would love for you to share a few words with us but first we're going to stand and give you a round of applause foreign [Laughter] there was over 4 000 nominees I didn't know that until uh I was at the game and somebody
028asked her how many nominees there were but I'd like to thank my students for nominating me for Panthers teacher of the year and I'd like to thank Orange County schools for allowing me to teach in a wonderful District um I would have been grateful for the 5000 for my classroom but teaching in a wonderful District I think they needed it more than me um and thank you Shannon and Melinda for allowing me to get all the supplies for my classroom and have a give my students an Excellence experience in my wood shop I have one student over there right now ready thank y'all thank you congratulations all right wonderful so finally we want to extend our congratulations to Mr C uh and that would be Mr Josh shavanovic the director of bands at Cedar Ridge
029High School on his acceptance as a member of the American School band director's Association so he's not here tonight but we are celebrating him nonetheless we are actually adding our congratulations to a letter we received from their National membership chair which stated that members of asbda must be nominated and sponsored by a peer who is a current member of asbda they said potential members must demonstrate a high level of experience excellent moral character and um quality of musicianship quote the standards are Ai and your district is to be recognized for the excellent work that your band director has exemplified so congratulations to you for your obvious support for excellence in your school district's Band program Mr savanovic let us know that he would not be able to attend due to a standing Monday responsibility and
030he is already booked again for your next meeting on November 7th so he'll be here then but fortunately or unfortunately he will already be in Winston-Salem for the North Carolina music educators and service conference however we caught up with Mr C and he said and I quote I am so lucky to work with the incredible students and families of our Band program here at Cedar Ridge and am appreciative of the support from my colleagues and the OCS community so we have seen Mr shivanovich leading students and fellow music teachers throughout the year winter spring summer and fall as director of the marching red wolves as well as the symphonic band win Ensemble and Jazz ensembles for Cedar Ridge High School since 2014. so he's been around for a while so we thank Mr C for
031his leadership and dedication to our students and uh to his fellow band directors and we wish him continued success for many many years to come so while he is unable to join us tonight we are going to stand and applaud Mr C again on this thank you so Mr Everton that wraps up our recognitions for this evening thank you Dr Felder and thanks everyone and congratulations again all right next we have the agenda adoption uh there is one requested change to move the update Equity plan Equity training uh to after the school capacity and reassignment process planning um any other changes or comments do we have a motion to approve agenda as amended I'm sorry Mr Atherton it's before would he plan yeah I just I just swapped the order okay thank you all right
032do we have again okay we had a motion from uh Andre and a second from Sarah uh any comments okay all in favor aye okay and Dr Moore yes thank you right motion carries right next we have a public comment and we have a few speakers tonight the Board of Education welcomes public comments which are governed board board policy 2310 and North Carolina General statute 143-118.17 a person wishing to address the board must sign up prior to the board's regular meeting comments will be limited to three minutes when the three minutes end the speaker must stop speaking immediately yielding time to other speakers will not be permitted all public comments should be civil and non-disruption disruptive uh per policy board members will listen carefully but will not respond to speakers at first after is uh
033Polly dornet hello good evening board I am Polly dornetti I am a new Gravelly Hill Middle School Parent I am also a representative on the schools the parent representative on the school's School Improvement leadership team um the school Improvement leadership team is Comm committed to improving um the schools of gravely I think you guys are all aware that um Gravely received an F on the most recent um state report card uh we are working hard on the school Improvement plan but we need help we are 25 through the way of the school year and yet the school still has no seventh grade math teachers foreign to me this is unacceptable they've had multiple um multiple apps or um vacant positions throughout the year um some of those I believe you guys were voting on hopefully
034filling uh in the recent board meetings this is unacceptable our students deserve so much better these vacancies present challenges for our already overburdened staff um I I came here straight from the school Improvement team meeting was earlier just after school today where I learned that today Dr rulak was forced to cover six classes simultaneously due to missing staff members Pro you know these these vacancies um and just simply not having enough to Subs in the district to cover all of the vacancies uh and all of the absences that's not fair to an administrator that's not fair to the staff that depends on that administrator and that is not fair to the students who depend on that teacher the board and District staff need to be serious about filling these positions there's a lot of people
035in jobs that can come and and sit in the school for a day so that our administrators can still do their jobs um the school needs School District needs to be committed to finding Subs to fill a bench for when teachers are out due to needed emergencies family emergencies illnesses Etc and we need serious uh we need to get serious about having um having these available constantly putting these responsibilities on the current ghms teachers and administrators is only perpetuating the teener teacher burnout that's leading to these vacancies our teachers our staff our administrators and our students deserve better thank you thank you Susan how kiotis good evening board and central office staff my name is Susan halcyotas I'm the grandparent of students in the Orange County school system and I'm a former Orange County School
036Board member I want to read to you something that I found in U.S news and World reports about Gravelly Hill quote Gravelly Hill Middle is ranked 469 in North Carolina middle schools schools are ranked on their performance on state required tests graduation and how well they prepare their students for high school at Gravelly Hill Middle 31 percent of students scored at or above the proficient level for math and 45 scored at or above that level for reading compared with the district the school did worse in math and better in Reading according to the metric in Orange County Schools 44 percent of students tested at or above proficiency level for reading and 39 percent for math Gravelly Hill Middle did worsen math and better in Reading in this metric compared with students across the state in
037North Carolina 42 percent of students tested at or above proficiency level for reading and 38 for math end of quote ranked 469th that's below middle schools in some of the poorest districts in our state including Allegheny Hoke Halifax Scotland Vance and many others and I'd like to point out that some of those districts that I just mentioned were involved in the original filing on the Leandro case this is unconscionable and yet Orange County Schools continues to focus attention and resources elsewhere with all the attention that this district is placing on equity I am stunned that we are nearly a quarter of the way into the current school year without enough permanent core teachers to teach our students at Gravelly Hill and elsewhere and frankly I need to tell you that I was also stunned to
038hear of plants to apply for grants for tutoring there where is the equity in allowing students to fall further and further behind this district has spent and is still spending money hand over fist on positions and needs at central office as an example at your last meeting the superintendent requested and the board approved another hundred and forty thousand dollar position I understand that Orange County now has more than 75 central office employees many making over 100K per year but we need to apply for Grants to pay for tutors it's time to put the focus and money where the need really is on students without full-time teachers on students who need tutors on students who need extra programming to catch them up to grade level in basic subjects like math and science and reading you need
039to start with Gravely Hill how cute is your time's up but please don't stop there thank you for letting me go over foreign good evening my name is Ashley nailsworth I'm also the parent of a sixth grader at Gravely middle school and recently joined the school Improvement team there I was motivated to come here tonight when I learned about the Staffing situation specifically acutely today with Dr rolack covering six classes in the auditorium um so I wanted to talk about Staffing we can spend hours and hours developing a school Improvement plan but it means nothing if we don't have the staff to implement it we have to have licensed qualified teachers in the classroom as you've already heard the school is without two seventh grade math teachers other core teachers have been filled variously throughout
040the year or hopefully getting approved tonight we have a our AIG teacher who I was so excited to hear we had one this year is also covering 8th grade ELA because of math um how can anyone expect our school to improve if we don't have teachers it's not fair to our students it's not fair to the administration it's not fair since teachers who are in the classroom and just furthers their burnout we also have behavioral issues at Gravely students who are not challenged to their potential or who are struggling academically they are more likely to have behavioral issues we need teachers to fill those positions to help with behavior as well to meet their academic needs lastly just I saw on the agenda a recommendation for fifth graders from Evelyn cheeks to be repurposed to
041uh Gravely I was shocked to see that I can't imagine that is a great idea a school that is already struggling we should not be putting more students fifth graders at that in that so I would strongly encourage the board to vote against it our children deserve better thank you thank you Gretchen Smith foreign and congratulations to Mr Farrington and all the other teachers for these Great accomplishments uh for tonight um last month the human Relations Committee hosted a community conversation where they posed the question to the community what should children in our County be taught about race in in our schools and there were questions asking community members to evaluate what is currently being taught and this exercise revealed that the community is not clear about what is being taught this lack of understanding
042has not come by the lack of asking by a community for the last couple of years to understand what is actually being taught like a formal plain English response from the district about what the district is leading out on what is being taught last year the district there was a document circulated among staff informing staff and teachers how to answer parent questions about critical race Theory which seemed to only attempt to confuse and mislead specific Onyx questions about what is being taught in the school in regards to that Doctrine we know last year that Panorama who is known to be and associated with with these trainings of teachers around critical race theory was employed by the school district and did perform teacher trainings um tonight on the agenda Pacific education group they've done work in
04319 different states in many different districts they have the courageous conversations self-described as a process to understand and discuss race explicitly um I know that you guys were sent their slide decks this evening one of the many slides of their training Deck shows Progressive Circles of like a path and critical race theory is I sits right there in plain English I'm right between courageous conversations examining presence and role whiteness and school transformation action plan um you can sign up for e-team seminar or using critical race Theory to transform leadership and District plans so what is being taught if not critical race Theory then why employee teacher training programs and the hundreds of thousands of dollars like Pacific education group Panorama and millennium if not karaoke Ray's Theory why are teachers at Orange middle being told
044by those who decide the future future accomplishments or the future opportunities of their career as teachers to examine their whiteness and um if they're not feeling guilty already figure out why they're not feeling guilty about being white um this is racism so I'm not too sure about all the the language around anti-racism because it seems like these two ideas are very in conflict with each other and I think we have the answers among the people in our own Community we don't have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for people to teach racism in our schools thank you that's all right thank you all right uh next we have the consent agenda my understanding is there are three items to be pulled tonight uh one is the courageous conversations contract uh to be moved down
045to the equity uh plans and training for the board uh the title one information and grants and then the school Improvement plan for uh Gravelly Hill Middle and I would recommend having those right after consent are there any other items to be pulled from anyone you know all right with that can we get a a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved the motion in a second any further discussion all in favor aye Dr Moore are you on mute Dr Moore hmm okay we'll move on uh not opposed we shall move forward okay so the first item will be the title one information and grants detail so I'm not sure who I I read the proposal I have a few questions about it so I'm not sure who direct these two um first did
046I read in the grant that we do have a hold harmless waiver is that true and does that mean that we are we don't have to we don't need free and reduced lunch forms or so that's true that we've been held harmless through the pandemic so we're still using the free reduced lunch numbers from that February predating the pandemic that may change this coming year but through this year the state has held school districts harmless yes it has nothing to do with free and reduced lunch forms it doesn't currently but that that's also means that it's going to be pivotal for those forms to be turned in because it'll be a new like rate or percentage once they stop holding us harmless okay yeah so I have just a couple questions about the numbers first
047of all I guess the total ground was about 1.3 million and of that there was about 720 about half of it a little bit over half of it is going to our Title One schools some is going to pre-k and other programs and about 426 [Music] 000 is going to District initiatives and I was curious what those were and if we have is that something we've if I went back a few years in our funding is that something we've always done that's one question second was there's a carryover of 865 thousand dollars and I was wondering what we're doing with that money and why didn't we spend it and then third I was curious why Central's um per pupil allocation is 30 percent more than our other Title One schools okay so start can you
048get back to the first first question I'll start with the mayor um what's the 426 000 for district initiatives all right so what and I can can take you quickly through this and I do think like if we want to dive into this deeper in a budget committee or a meeting like that we certainly can so each year ncdpi is a lots US based off of like our per pupil like how many students we have our ADM and then our free and reduced launch numbers that's our allocation so that's that 1.3 million that you're seeing that fluctuates year to year depending on those numbers um so with that total budget the first thing that we have to do as a district is we have certain set-asides and these were shared in a presentation uh prior
049to this certain set-asides that we're responsible for allocating funds toward and so we have a percentage of that budget that goes toward indirect costs so four percent right off the top goes toward indirect costs all right uh the second piece is admin cost that administrative cost cannot exceed 12 of the budget so that could be percentages of of District employee salaries that are working directly with Title 1 services to support those schools or to oversee the grant okay so you can see that amount in there the slides that were shared previously the Essa the every student succeeds act focuses intently on parent and family engagement So within those set-asides we're required to set aside a minimum of one percent of the funds for parent and family engagement in the district pot but then schools also
050have parent and family engagement within their own School budgets that they can use funds for okay and so the the next piece sorry can I just I just want to stop you a second because the 426 the family and I'm working on family engagement was in addition to the 420 right so I'm taking you through where we go from the total amount all the way down to the 426 that you're talking about just so you know Chris my Dr Gavin my question is simple and that's what we what what are we spending okay great so the 420 36 it's listed in a bucket that says district-wide instructional initiatives but from a district standpoint we're actually using those funds directly with the schools all right so this past year for example we had a line of
051district-wide instructional initiatives those initiatives through carryover were used at the school level to purchase additional decodables so we worked with our literacy Department we worked with the administrators at the four Title One schools they gave us a wish list essentially based off of their comprehensive needs assessment of these are specific materials that we need in addition to things that that all schools have already received so the first thing we did was we went after decodable materials and we purchased those for all four of the title one schools out of that district-wide instructional initiative the second piece was they wanted more materials and resources that could serve as a parent and family engagement component so we worked at the K2 level to purchase bag of books for students that means like five copy of text that
052would go home with students they're in the process right now of Lisa Knapp is working with the literacy coaches at each school to be able to bag those books and get those two students all right so that's something that it's not just giving them books but it's giving them books with a purpose because we're trying to focus on fluency and those foundational literacy skills and then we also had some schools who in really all four of them that wanted additional tutoring Services last year so there was a portion of that money that went toward tutoring Services as well so this year all right we still have that line item where we can continue to use funds at the school level in that way but we also have to be mindful that from a carryover process
053we are paying for school-based like interventionists at those schools it could be if they have need an additional ESL position anything that is being requested at the school level we're having to use that money to assist them to ensure that they get those additional positions and it's important to note that because um the uh retirement rate has went up as and when I say rate I'm gonna tell my retirement rate but the actual financial piece of that has went up as well as salary increase from this past year there's a four percent salary increase and a two percent retirement increase those pieces combined together mean that for our four Title One schools any positions that they had in place last year just to hold them whole with just those positions it costs more money this
054year and we're dipping into that bucket of money that you're referencing to be able to to accommodate that plus add additional positions or additional needs that they may request at the school level so yes it's in a space that says district-wide instructional initiatives but that money is being used directly at the school level okay it's a little just to recap what I think you said first of all some number of I'd love to see the numbers but some numbers actually being used for supplies but right when you're talking about decodable texts and some of its supplies if you're doing Tutors or you know that I don't know why the schools would just not be given the money so that they could hire the tutors and then I'm not sure I understand the retirement stuff so
055I my concern is this I understood always understood 12 that the the federal government allows us to use 12 for administrative costs but the spirit of title one is to give the money to the schools and I just wanted to make sure that the money is going to the title one schools and that that is correct and I think it's important to keep reiterating that as and I know that you asked me to pause on going through each one of those pieces but when we worked through that the rest of that allotment that then goes to schools they are getting that allotment then we're going back to this district-wide instructional initiative line with those caregiver funds to give the schools more things that they need which could be tutors it could be those materials so
056that they are still getting the same thing that they would be getting whether we gave it directly to them or not because they're working with us to make the decisions on what is purchased for them based off of their comprehensive needs assessment it's not being arbitrarily done and we're not using it at a district level for other things it's directly supporting those four schools so we're not using it for salaries to cover District salaries at all no so no so like what you see in that administrative cost that's what covers portions of salaries that's in that bucket and you can't exceed 12 of that thank you that was that's the essence of my question um the age 65 the carryover what is that so the so pre-pandemic okay and this is going through the pandemic
057and this this goes back to our last board meeting with the need for potentially a federal programs director in a space that can work through the managing of a large budget like that through the pandemic there have been carryover amounts of funds for a couple of years that were larger because we had an infusion of Esser funds that were being used for supports and services at schools that we didn't have prior to the pandemic happening we now have spent down last year almost 400 000 of that carryover fund amount this year we have specific plans of ways that we can continue to spend it now which again is back directly at the school level it could be through Pre-K programming and I'm just using that as an example if we want to re-look at they
058have a five-star rating that they need to maintain it could be upfitting certain things there but we have certain ways that we can use those funds what we have to be mindful of is that we don't want to exhaust all of our carryover funds because salaries do increase we we can't always plan for when that's going to happen you need to be prepared to keep yourself whole and we also have to have an understanding that as data comes in and needs change and shift when these new numbers come in with free and reduced lunch rates now we don't know what what those four Schools numbers are going to look like we don't know what other schools in the district's numbers are going to look like so we have to make sure that we we're keeping
059ourselves in a space that there is money to keep us moving forward into that next year and one thing that we've been very clear with our Title One school is about is just because we're using those funds this year for certain positions that they've requested or for certain materials but specifically positions we can only guarantee that on a year by year basis because we don't know what that's going to look like moving forward yeah that's helpful and then finally the question under disparities why does central get you know they're getting almost 900 per pupil the other schools are around six yes curious sorry and I can that's something that I can look at a little bit more closely I know that it when we talk about per pupil allocation it's really getting back into that
060percentage of free and reduced lunch students it's not just the amount the number of students has already been adjusted these are the number of free and reduced lunch students in the school so that was in the grant so I took the number of free and reduced lunch students and divided by the total Grant and Central came out as nine almost 900 and Evelyn New Hope and Grady Brown were all about sick just right and when you look at the state sets the minimum amount of per pupil expenditure the minimum amount is 200 and some dollars per pupil that's what the state would say we as a district have latitude to be able to raise that number so that more money is going directly to the schools which we've done I'm just asking why central got
061so much 50 percent more than the other two schools so the three schools that's all and I can I can we can follow up and put it in a board weekly update but it's in there there is that there's a mathematical piece there that formula is there as to why they have that yeah in the past the district has had tiers of you know depending on your percentage of free and reduced price lunch so that if a greater share of the population in a school then you get a greater there's a bigger ratio of money they can get so that might be it but it would be helpful to look at that yeah I'd be surprised given the numbers but I'm I'm just let's see the numbers yeah so um any other questions um and
062so are you wanting to see I'm done before we approve no yeah I'm just I'm ready to move it unless anyone else has questions any other questions no I I moved the recommendation second I have a motion in a second uh any discussion all right all in favor say aye aye Dr Moore hi hi thank you thank you Dr Gammon thank you so much all right thank you all right the next item is the school Improvement for Gravelly Hill please I believe we have Dr Rolla joining us uh virtually and of course uh Miss Laurie Carr who is the chief of schools and achievement good evening this is Gwen good evening good evening so does xeris anybody that wants to start the conversation or well we learned tonight that part of your school Improvement plan
063that that we were looking at that had holes in it has actually been fixed but we just can't see all of that part yet am I correct in that Dr Roy I'm not sure which parts um you were looking for I do know that we have made updates to our plan but those were fairly minor updates um I would be happy to try to make sure that you can can view the full plan is there a specific area Miss percent or Pernell that you saw gaps um well there were several areas that we we got several different copies of things okay and there were several areas that were had people on there that no longer worked in the district and there were other things that we have found out since then have been I wonder
064in the current I'm sorry yeah I'll interject that that is uh the confidential safety uh program that we discussed in closed session so it yeah it can't be covered here but but there were just certain things throughout the plan that had gaps in it that was wondering but I think that we got that fairly well explained um enclosed session that these had been put in but we have not been privy to that information as of yet am I correct Dr Felder in saying that um would that I'm not quite sure I'm following the question but we did have a closed session discussion about the confidential portions of the school Improvement plan that does need to remain in closed session we can't disclose the contents of the those plans um in public the the confidential portions
065we do have a second closed session if you want to revisit those we can certainly take it up then I think the purpose of this discussion is about the the public facing portion of the plan that would be submitted to the State Board of Education as part of the requirements to address the low performing School designation um so I guess I'm just curious um I know we had reviewed it previously on a previous and then we pulled it so that um the team could talk about it a little bit more and I'm just curious um if there are any changes to the plan that you wanted to highlight it's a very large document so I couldn't compare one to the other and see what was different no worries Dr rollick did you want to address
066that first yes so um there are not significant changes to what I presented um two weeks ago the reason um we wanted to wait until this week was so that our full School Improvement leadership team inclusive of staff at Gravely as well as our parent Representatives could have an opportunity to review all of the key indicators and come to consensus around the priority indicators that we would focus on as we discussed today we were able to do that um process today the four um prioritized indicators that I shared at the last meeting are the indicators that we will focus on um for um this year the only item that really I think maybe it's a little bit significant was removed is the bounce back program that will not be available for staff but no other
067significant changes were made to the plan from what I presented last time thank you honey so um you all just saw that I um Chris did a great job since Dr Graham did a great job standing up to my questions about title one and I think part of it for me Dr rolack is for you to put pressure on the board and the district to provide the resources that you need to um to deliver to take your school you know to where you know it it um it belongs and one of the you know there's questions about the Staffing gaps about getting Subs in the building about getting um relief for the extra Duty on teachers putting in extra and I don't know if that's Tas or you know just staff to cover lunch duties
068and other duties to just give the teachers a break so that they there's leeway to um to do the things that you all have decided are critical in the plan and so we didn't see anything I didn't see anything that said we need this we need more resource to deliver this so I'm just curious why that is why yes so I have I'm shared um what I believe are some of the needed resources which includes a lot of times it does include Staffing so you know first and foremost we definitely do want to hire teachers certified teachers in those um places where we we have vacancies I've also shared information um regarding tutors um and you know put something out just um recently um and already at least one person has signed up to um
069be able to tutor math and so we want to get additional um folks and who might be able to help with that while we do have the um vacancy gaps I've also mentioned a role such as someone who might be someone in like a role like a dean of students or someone who might assist with mtss work in terms of really um looking at data very intentionally and so there have been some requests put out for I'm seeking additional support for our for our school I do know that you know it's an ongoing conversation it's not all those pieces are not listed specifically in the school Improvement plan but then some components of of those um asks are included in our plan I guess I I would like to see them in there so that
070we can approve and commit the funding for it okay so as if I could just interject so as we continue to have discussions and really determine what the supports are we can always go back and be and that's the plan to revive it is a plan so it's meant to be revised and updated and um and so that is part of the plan so I'm I'm going to interject a little louder than some of the other board members I'm concerned that this plan when we look at the basis of mtss and we say that core is the most important and we don't have teachers and we hear about six classes being in the auditorium I can't support this plan knowing that's happening I think we need to do something more drastic I think we need
071to consider what other districts have considered which is are we going to say our District staff is going to cover these until we have Dependable teachers that are in front of our students in one of our lowest performing schools I cannot support this without some other plan I actually do have District staff supporting and I'm going to ask Dr Green certainly Ms Clark can speak to it and Dr Gammon to come forward and speak to how and actually Dr rohlich is on so Dr rolek if you can speak to that indeed more can certainly be done but we do have District staff who are supporting school so the the specific question I would have is with all the open positions and all the coverage if that's true why is this still happening so if we
072have no vacant positions and that we're working to support and one of the requests today is uh for a stipend incentive uh well a hiring incentive and around Ela we do already have that for Math and Science and other hard to fill positions but we're adding Ela to that list as typically that's not the hardest to fill position but this time of year it's additionally hard so that's not assigning uh bonus and retention bonus that we would apply to other schools but it's one that we want to leverage in an effort to do more for Gravelly Hill Middle School so whoever's going to speak I would like to know how we're covering every day in front of the students and core instruction with a licensed person when there's no teacher available as mentioned we're we're
07325 into the school year and we need to do something larger I I think the this so again I believe Dr Rolex she's the principal of the school so we can start with her but yes some of the uh gaps are due to vacancies and some of it is due to attendance so um do you want to speak to any of that please yeah thank you so as I mentioned um the last time I I presented one of the reasons that we did elect to use ncbps the North Carolina virtual public school for our math classes is so that all the students would have a certified math teacher providing the instruction that instruction is asynchronous and it is not a person who is physically in the building with them however the instruction is being provided
074by licensed North Carolina Math teachers we then have a long-term substitute teacher in one of the classrooms and then we have one of our staff members in the other classroom who is the regular person who is physically in the space with the students to provide assistance um they are not licensed Math teachers and then we do have support from our district math facilitator who has been at Gravelly pretty much every day I do believe and has been in the classes to support students has also led a morning um support um groups so tutoring sessions with students who want to you know get to school early and before their first class of the day starts can get some additional support so that's how we've covered those classes at this point is you know making sure that
075with the online instructor that they do have someone licensed in North Carolina in math to be able to teach those classes so Mike I just want to say my comments are not directed Dr Olek at all my mine is directed at our district and us because even though I I hear what you're saying which is yeah we have someone there all of these plans are talking about mtss plc's and the virtual schools are not part of that and I I'll stop to let others speak because I just I I think we we deserve to do something different to look at this problem yeah my thought is that that someone from central office that is can teach math would go and teach math until we get a teacher in that classroom is that a possibility well
076then where were they today when Dr rule like had to keep six yeah so what's being referenced today because I was there covering those classes today in the auditorium as well we also had another facilitator there they had housed three classes in the auditorium um Dr rolack was also a part of that coverage um our math facilitator at the district level has been actively in a math classroom where there is an actual vacancy students are on ncbps but she's been there literally every day since the beginning of the school year if she hasn't been there certain days it's because she does have other schools that she has to go and support and and that that's being strained to a degree because they have needs from her her position as well I think a challenge for
077us right now is today this instance these weren't vacancies these may have just been absences and so prior to this we had a plan that was in place at the beginning of the school year when there were multiple vacancies this went from Ela classes across math where we were sending facilitators in on a rotation to be like two people in a room with an actual sub that was also in the room once Dr rolack was able to establish long-term Subs into those rooms we had communication that those people could be backed out because the students were on ncbps with the sub in the room if that's something that needs to be Revisited we can certainly do that but they were in that space up until that point in time and same for English class they
078mapped out a plan of people and they were on a coverage rotation for the for the full day for a class with a vacancy they have now hired somebody that's in that position but the reality is and to hear that earlier this evening it is a challenge like it's a challenge in all of those spaces but there have been people that are there serving and we're happy to continue working you know in tanning with Dr a lot to keep providing that support yeah is there somebody that could go on a day-to-day basis so those children know that this is this is my teacher until somebody comes here is hired for this job and I know it's hard I've been in central office I know but I also know that these children need some help and
079Dr rolack needs some help we can certainly look at that that uh plan um as Dr Gammon said you know at the very beginning of the year we develop a very extensive plan involving everyone in central office including Dr Felder to provide support in schools recognizing that we absolutely we wanted to have someone in classes and to be able to cover classes now the question around certification not everyone in central office has the certification to go in but they're they've got teacher certification exactly so um to provide that day-to-day coverage as Dr Gammon says we do have someone there it will certainly mean and we will be glad to address that and look at our neediest places in our neediest point in using that person there in the school which would mean that you know
080some other schools would not be able to to have that service but certainly we'll go back and look at those at our plan and if I could just add that we don't um inject ourselves into the school we take direction from the principle the skin I understand a principle and So based on how she what she requests and how she uh needs support that's how we navigate and support the school and I understand that yes I know you do as a principal and I know sometimes you you sit back and you don't ask for help when you really do need some help so I'm saying well doctor if you really need some help we're trying to get you some help thank you and I have asked and I I as I said the last time
081I presented I am so appreciative of um several members of Gravelly staff let me start there of gravely staff who have filled in as well as central office staff who have filled in but we still need more help and I think that's that's where we are um we need the consistency um you know as you mentioned on this Purcell of students knowing who's going to be in the room when they show up who they can you know email if they do have questions um and you know working with ncbps has been a process there's been some learning curves for all of us I'll be the first to admit that I'm in using an online um class to provide instruction to a group of students who are assembled physically in the room together but we have
082learned some things and you know as we go you know get ready to start you know the next quarter we've made some adjustments that I think will improve on The Learning Experience for students but at the end of the day you're right we we definitely want and need a consistent teacher certified to teach math in the room with those kids every day Sarah um I appreciate that um Dr rulak um one thing that I'm thinking about is we're having this conversation is um as schools across the country were virtual how much math in particular fell off in the virtual context and how math in particular was a harder thing to teach virtually and so I hope um it's I'm assuming that you all are using things like I think you use Ames Webb in Middle
083School to assess progress and and really understand where are those places where that online instruction is not working where we need to figure something else out a lot of our students have they have advocated for themselves I'm really proud of them for that and they said I need this printed out and so we have printed pieces of it so that when they are meeting with um the district math facilitator for support or even when they're in class and working with um the long-term substitute teacher that they have access to our copies of things um we have talked with the students about um you know having the videos in some ways can be a benefit because you can review on that instruction um as we start this next unit we're going to be working with the
084students to create um interactive notebooks just so that they have some additional resources that are not just all on the computer um to really um we think help them learn even more and you know naturally there are some students who who Thrive with online learning and that's great but many of the students have said that it is a challenge and so as we're listening to them we are making changes and adapting to to be meet their needs as as best we can [Music] Bonnie yeah I think what we're what we're kind of what we're asking about how if your filling positions is one thing absenteeism is another getting Subs to show up at Gravely is another I know we just approved one on the Personnel report which is great but I look at like a
085406 it says all teachers are attentive to students emotional states guide students in managing their emotions and arrange for supports and interventions when necessary and how do you do that if you don't have permanent teachers in the building or teachers and even if it's not if it's a sub if it's not someone that they know is going to be there every day for them how does I don't know how this I don't know how this plan works without teachers in the building and what can we do in an imperfect situation to relax how many classes are we talking about that does not have a teacher for that seventh grade math is it there are seven sections so our seventh grade is our largest classic gravity there are 170 students in seventh grade and so that
086would be two positions one of them is a teacher position that would teach four sections of math all day and the other position would teach three sections of math and one section of science so those two positions cover all students in seventh grade not having a permanent um full-time certified math teacher in the class in the classroom with them okay so it's an all-day all-day coverage all-day teaching yes yes so I would just say I would like to see the Staffing plan as part of this before I approve it that's where I'm sitting as opportunity may I chime in briefly on that I just I think it might be helpful to sort of untie a little procedural tangle so one one thing that's uh maybe um we may be getting hung up on here is
087this is a both a school Improvement plan which I think several people have identified correctly is developed at the local school level it's initiated by the school Improvement team it comes to the board for an up or down vote and that and it's really things within the power and authority of the school Improvement team so you wouldn't expect a school Improvement plan that the typical School Improvement plan to have additional funding because the the the school Improvement team can't fund itself but this plan is also serving another function which is to discharge legal obligations because of the low performing School designation so I guess my suggestion would be so that we don't get tied up in these things if if the board if the majority of the board feels additional measures are needed to to
088raise the performance of the school that could be separated out from an up or down vote on the school Improvement plan as presented that's one thing I mean the law is quite clear you have to just vote vote Yes or reject the plan that's been presented to you by the school Improvement team um but separately you could have a discussion and separate action over other information you would like to make part of your plan to improve performance at the school and something that you would submit to the State Board as part of that plan and that plan has to be submitted before uh it's within third well it has to be approved by the board within 30 days of submission of the preliminary plan which was the preliminary plan December 9th is December upcoming yeah
089so if the board rejects it it could come back well that's you know this there's there's two different there's two different um two different issues the school Improvement plan um you know it's it's an up or down vote by the board I guess you can defer consideration of it but I wouldn't vote it down unless you think there's something wrong with the school Improvement plan if you think there's something missing from the plan to raise performance at the school to address the low performing School designation my point is you can address that separately because otherwise you're asking the school Improvement plan team to change its plan to do something it can't really do which is address funding and position allocations so that's something the board and the administration can do but I would keep it
090separate from the school Improvement plan per se does that make sense yeah the problem is the school Improvement plan is based on something that we haven't seen what that plan is and so until I see how the or understand how the Staffing is occurring and how it's being covered and how it fits into our mtss plcs and Etc I don't know how to prove a plan that can't be successful without those items uh I'd say I guess that it could be tabled as well again I'm not sure if I'm explaining it clearly enough but the it sounds to me like your concerns relate to uh you know programmatic issues and issues that are within the purview of the superintendent and board but not not things that the school Improvement team in a school Improvement plan
091could address the school Improvement team doesn't have authority to add positions to its school for example or to increase funding to its school so that would Norm not normally be part of the school Improvement plan so that's why I'm saying it's absolutely valid to have those discussions as part of the low performing School plan what's confusing is this the state has asked has basically said we should use the school Improvement plan uh template and document to implement the low performing School plan but I think you could do something separate you can say here's what the school Improvement team has said we can do with the resources that we have and here's what we think we we should do to raise performance you can vote that up or down and then if you think that's not
092enough to achieve your overalls you can take separate action as opposed to rejecting a plan that on its face um you know meets the requirements below so just to be clear I wasn't saying there needs to be additional roles at the school I'm just saying the current roles aren't filled and they're not consistent and so what is the plan to cover those and make them consistent I heard there was plans but we haven't seen them so I I wasn't I mean obviously that could be the plan that they would bring additional people in but that's not my understanding so I guess I'm struggling with we're being asked to approve a plan that we know there's gaps in the existing resources that are approved and there or hosted but at the same time we're being asked
093to approve the plan as if they are there and it's working well so that's my issue is I anyway yeah so I just said we're being asked to approve a plan that's not practical given the Staffing situation in the schools and so we're asking for a supplement an additional piece of the plan that sounds like Dr rolack and the school Improvement team are working on to say here's what else here's what we need to do to make this plan work So the plan we're seeing without that additional piece is not quite it's not finished say it that way so what you're asked being asked to approve is the plan that the school has purview over and what I'm hearing uh Mr Ramey say is if in addition to that we can all and it's a
094plan so we can always be revised so that's first and foremost but certainly we can come back as a district and say here are the additional things as we continue to work with Dr rollack around the plan in terms of Staffing and uh any other additional things that are needed that she cannot control in her staff can't so by not approving the plan you we are sort of tying up this staff's hands with what that school has said this is what we can do that's what a school Improvement plan is this is what the school is saying they are capable and planned to do and in addition to that if you want another plan with regards to how the district is getting at Staffing and supporting the schools in that way we can provide that
095because those pieces are in motion as well I would I would find that helpful so I'm I'm fine personally approving this school Improvement plan tonight as the sort of core of what the school Improvement team can produce as a plan um but it would be helpful to me to understand the rescally around the core core instruction what is the resourcing look like like sort of position by position or need by need and what else is needed for support there um so I'm okay moving it forward to to approve this tonight but I think yeah and from a lot of board members I'll probably just talk more this meeting than I will admit for the next six months but just to I I don't want to be clear I'm not suggesting by any means Mr rather
096than the board not take up your concern I think they're very valid concerns that the board should discuss in the administration my point is rejecting a school Improvement plan because it doesn't include things that a school of improvement team can't do doesn't seem to me the best way to get to the end zone if the end zone is we want we want to do more for Gravelly then it would seem to me you could if you support the school if you don't think there's flaws in what the school Improvement team has suggested as within their purview you say that's good for what you the resources you have we approve that you can also add more but but that's not the same that doesn't require rejecting the school Improvement plan so my I'll pivot a little
097bit my issue is we've had two people from the school Improvement plan that says the plan's not going to work so I when I hear directly from the team members saying that I then have concerns about we're about to prove something just to prove it without having all the facts and how they're going to do it so that's that's the issue I have is not not me saying that we've had two people from the group say it and she is on and she has presented this plan and led the work uh if she doesn't think I don't think she would present a plan that she and her staff don't think will work which within the purview of what they can do so correct me if I'm wrong Dr rolack but and you're welcome to do
098that um that's why we have the plan before us tonight and so if there's additional information you want we can certainly provide that so it's a school's plan right as I'm saying talking with the full um School Improvement leadership team um today I believe this plan can work I also believe we will need the additional support um I like the idea of the plan I like the way it's situated within the NC Star platform because it allows us the opportunity to update as we go along even today as we met like I said there were no major changes but we made we updated some of the time uh there were some things that we were like we can accomplish that um faster and there were other things that we said you know what based on
099where we are right now we may need to push that out still within this um school year but we may push it out a month or a month and a half um to be able to accomplish it so this is the plan that as a team we agreed on it's the plan we believe in and that we will work with everything that we have within us we're not giving up on looking for Math teachers for this school year but until we hire those teachers this is the plan that we believe will help us get to where we know um we can be in terms of achievement for our students um and I I personally will say that I I believe in this plan and I believe in the work of the team I'm met to
100help draft this this plan yeah Dr rollick again this is not aimed at you at all I my concern is nothing in the plan talks about not having teachers I mean it assumes they are there they're in front of the students it is it assumes that I mean it everything talks about the retention of teachers and staff members regularly coaching them and that's not what we have right now anyway I'm gonna stop because we've got to get to a decision and this is partly a question for Dr rolack but I would like to propose that we choose option C and that's that not an up or down vote but that we delay the vote until we see the additional piece and let it just come back to us and just tell us so that we
101have that piece of the plan of what else is needed to make it work resource wise and that's all you know I don't want to vote on it at all because it you know we're all admitting that all the pieces are not there so let's put the pieces there and we'll vote on it and I would like to see Dr rolack be able to work with central office staff to come up with that plan because I think it's going to take both of you working together to do some kind of plan to get those somebody in front of those kids every day all right go ahead um for Neil isn't there a isn't there a deadline for approving the school Improvement yes I was just talking to Dr Felder about this 30 days from this
102initial submission of the plan so again it's confusing because we have two two plans that are required by law and there and we're and there's sort of been combined into one document the school Improvement plan it's not on a normal cycle for a school Improvement plan you don't need to take any action on the school Improvement plan for its own sake which which um what you need to do within 30 days of the submission of the initial plan for improvement it's called for low performing schools is the deadline is 30 days after the submission of the initial plan Dr Felder is telling me she thinks it's December 9th the early December would be the debt that deadline based on the initial presentation at the last meeting so you could you could defer final action on
103that on that um to to that meeting and or and just kick the whole you know can down the road again just not to belabor it but the what you what is submit what is the the board's overall plan for raising uh achievement at the school can Encompass more than what's in the school Improvement plan the school Improvement plan can only Encompass what the school Improvement team and the principal have authority over so I would urge you to keep the separate consideration since they can't go out and you know I you know they're not hiring the staff directly that's coming through central office if there's a recruitment issue if there's concern about understaffing that's something I would take up at the board level add as a supplement to the what's submitted to the state as
104part of the low performing School plan the school Improvement plan itself again it's it's this is a sort of typical it's following a rubric there's only certain things that a school Improvement team can do they can't solve all problems so it's not really a flaw in the school Improvement plan if it doesn't address things that are perfectly addressed at the board level in my view but um to answer the question again directly yes you could defer consideration I believe till the next meeting and still hit the deadline as long as you take action at your next meeting all right thank you are there any further discussion before the board takes some action okay I would prefer that we approve the plan and then ask for the extra layer um of resourcing and Staffing detail that
105we want and I'll make that motion then right we have a motion do we have a second second all right we have a motion a second is there any other discussion all right all in favor say aye aye opposed I Dr Moore which is your vote hi okay the motion fails do we have a second motion I move that we delay the approval of the plan until we have the supplemental piece on the interim Staffing and long-term Staffing all right we have a motion do we have a second a second okay uh we have a motion and a second from Mr Richmond uh any further discussion all right all in favor aye aye opposed Dr Moore no all right motion carries uh we will have this on the next agenda all right with that we'll
106move into the finance audit okay so for that we'd like to invite Miss Rhonda Rath a chief finance officer good evening everyone as we know North Carolina General statute requires that we as a district have its accounts audited every year by an external vendor tonight we have Dale Smith from Anderson Smith and white to provide you a report of the financial audit that was just completed for the district for the period ended July June 30th of 2022 so I'm now going to turn this over to Dale and I will be driving the presentation for our public all right good evening board members Dr Felder hope all of you are doing well can everyone hear me okay yes we can thank you okay good uh I think each of you should have a uh a complete
107copy of the financial statement so hopefully you've had time to look over them uh what I plan to do this evening is uh uh go over just a few pages out of the report uh the financial statements cover two main areas there's a financial section that covers the first 62 pages of the report and followed by the compliance section starting on page 63 of the report we'll be starting on page 13. if everyone could turn to uh to page 13 and we will look at The District's governmental fund balances as of June 30th uh 2022. and I'll quickly point out while you're turning there that uh on pages one through three of the report uh is the financial statement opinion letter and that opinion is a clean unmodified uh opinion which is exactly what the
108board wants to receive okay and on page 13 we'll be focusing on the First Column which is the board's general fund and there at the top you can see the district had um total assets of 6 million 36 171 at June 30th 2022 and that was composed primarily of cash and cash equivalents of 6 million eighteen two eighty three and there in the middle you had liabilities of a million 903 244. and if you take your assets minus liabilities you get your fund balance which is the next to last number in that column uh four million 932 927. and that amount represents a decrease of about 1.7 million dollars from the fund balance that was reported at June 30th uh 2021 and in the year June 30th that ended June 30th 2021 the district actually
109reported an increase in fund balance that year of about 490 000. so for the past two years combined the district uh has seen its fund balance go down about 1.2 million dollars and currently the district has budgeted to spend about 984 000 of its fund balance in the fiscal year that you're currently operating in 22-23 fiscal year and the district's fund balance is currently at what we would consider to be an adequate level for a district this size but with all the uncertainty in the economy right now along with minimum wage increases Rising health care costs and retirement costs we do feel it's important for the district to have adequate reserves and fund balance especially with the federal coveted relief funds expiring uh in the next couple of years and obviously the district can't continue
110to spend down its fund balance at the rate of of you know about 1.7 Million last year and you're budgeting to spend another close to a million this year so the board just needs to monitor its fund balance situation and be sure to maintain its fund balance level uh fund balance at a level that's considered adequate uh to meet the cash flow needs of the district and also have some funds set aside uh for any potential emergency needs that might arise anyone have any questions on the general fund fund balance I see none okay and if you can read across on that line the fund balance line I'll just quickly point out uh the district did have four million 832 999 a fund balance and the other special Revenue fund that June 30th 2022 and
111most of the revenues that flow through this fund are restricted for various uh grants and programs uh that flow through the districts such as Medicaid uh NC Pre-K and you've also got your health and safety uh revenues uh from the county that flow through there as well and your Capital outlay fund had an ending fund balance of 2 million 301 968. and your individual schools combined is that last number under the special Revenue column of 983 000 oh 22. so again I think overall the district's fund balance situation is is uh is good as of June 30th 2022. all right and the other page that I plan to look at if you'll turn to page I think it's 61 and we'll look at the Child Nutrition program [Applause] okay and this schedule shows the revenues
112and the expenditures of this program for the year into June 30th 2022 and about three quarters of the way down on that page you see a line that says net change and fund balance that's the last row that has three columns to it and in the middle you've got the actual uh results for the year uh the school Food Service program uh reported a profit for the year of nine hundred and thirty thousand eight seventy two and in the previous year the program reported a profit of about five hundred and seven thousand and the Improvement uh and profitability over the prior year was primarily due to an increase in food sales uh you also had an increase in federal reimbursement revenue and you also had a slight decline actually in uh in operating expenses um
113to end the year the district had about 2 million uh dollars of cash in the bank in this fund and most of the districts that we audit actually saw their childhood nutrition programs do really well uh the past two years so the district does not uh y'all are right in line with what we're seeing at other districts as far as how your Child Nutrition program is doing um I think in the current operating year the state is not going to uh be reimbursing uh districts 100 percent for the meal served so uh more than likely the district may see a uh a drop in profitability uh in the coming year so management will just need to monitor the program closely to try to keep expenses down uh where possible if the revenues do tend to
114to drop a little bit since the government won't be reimbursing the district any longer at 100 percent uh but again I think the program right now isn't about as good a financial shape as I've seen it in uh since we've been doing the audit anyone have any questions on the Child Nutrition program I do uh Bonnie I just on the uh 1.2 million dollar cash balance we're seeing an increase in our prices we have not increased our lunch prices so I assume this money can carry over and it serves as a a cushion to help us in next this year if we run into a deficit yeah absolutely yeah so this okay thanks I guess real good that y'all built that up just in case you need it uh in the coming years it says
115no restrictions on how we can use it as long as it stays within the fund correct that's right okay all right and uh and starting on page 63 of the report uh compliance section and uh page 63 is actually the first of three letters that we issued related to the compliance portion of the audit and we're required to perform testing over the board's internal controls and expenditure of state and federal Grant Awards and uh we perform a lot of payroll testing General disbursement testing on that grant money that flows through the district and we're happy to report that all three of these letters are clean uh unmodified reports which means there were no internal control weaknesses findings or question costs reflected in any of these letters and there was also a separate three-page letter that
116we issued uh that each one of you should have received and it basically we call that letter a required Communications letter and it uh it has boilerplate language and it discusses that there were no difficulties or disagreements encountered uh in dealing with management there were no uh incorrected misstatements noted and basically there were no reportable issues noted during the audit uh I think overall the audit went very uh very smoothly and again I think financially the district appears to be very well managed the finances are very transparent and I think Miss wrath and her staff they continue to do an outstanding job of maintaining accurate books and records and uh and more importantly they're maximizing the state and federal funding that flows through the district that's something else that we always look at and our
117department does a great job of uh trying to squeeze every penny they can from the state and federal money each year and that was pretty much all I had planned to cover was there anything that I didn't go over that someone wanted me to touch on yes and we completely agree with you about Miss wrath and the way she manages These funds it's quite amazing um just did you when you looked at the internal controls did you look at our use of Esser funds and the reason I asked is we had a lot of new programs different programs some of them large like summer programs that had they were all new processes I was wondering how if you looked at the controls uh yes yes we did we had to select a sample of expenditures
118from the answer funds and we didn't have any issues that we noted in that testing great thank you go ahead sir I just wanted to say thank you Miss wrath this is um just representative of the excellent work of you and your team so thank you very much thank you any other questions I had one question on page 76. okay the last uh paragraph talks about um how the indirect cost and it says that we've elected not to use the 10 percent uh can you explain what that means uh to a non-accounted I have no idea what I mean um basically the Board of Education y'all are uh I think Child Nutrition has an eight percent rate and then y'all got a uh a restricted rate that uh the state imposes on the federal funds
119that flow through the federal grants fund of the district um so with that said there is a 10 percent de minimis rate that can be used I guess if you don't have a restricted rate and in y'all's case y'all really don't have uh uh I guess a situation where y'all can use that de minimis rate um I've never had anyone ask me that question that standard word oh man but yes I don't think it really applies to y'all but that wording has to be in there y'all are basically restricted on what you what rate you have to charge so um but I could be wrong on that but I'll I'll uh but I do think I'm right so you are we are restricted on what we can charge particularly to the federal grants we were
120also restricted on what we can charge to the Child Nutrition Grant this is actually the first year that we have been able to apply indirect costs and did apply that to the Child Nutrition fund because of the state and how well they were doing we have there are and I will be stepping out here a little bit so Dale you can correct me if you know but I believe that we the Child Nutrition funds are required to have three months of operating expenses in their fund balance before you can charge them in direct calls they've never been in that position where we could charge them we also do not charge indirect costs to the after-school fund more of a statement that we're not doing it versus others do do it at 10 percent I'm trying
121to understand the context of it because it just says we don't use it I think y'all are trying to tell me that we we have used it in specific cases we're allowed but we haven't enough uh we all we audit about 75 districts I've never seen anybody use it okay yeah it's one of those things that has the wording has got to be in there but for for school systems it really is not applicable okay yeah that's fair again just read it and it was like yes I have no idea what the statement means that's a good point if we could get 10 I'd do it I believe you all right any other questions from anyone I'd just like to thank both of them for a job well done and I know Ms wrath is
122she knows this backwards and forwards for Orange County because she's been doing it so long and we appreciate your your job and appreciate you coming in and auditing set of books thank you all right thank you thank y'all so much have a great night all right thank you thank you hi Dr Felder uh on to our updates on curriculum and instructions yes uh Dr Denise green and members of the cni team to the podium thank you it's always a delight to have them behind me I tell you it's a great team it is a fantastic team well good evening board chair and Mr Appleton Vice chair Ms Purcell void members and superintendent Dr Felder within the office of curriculum instruction we have developed an instructional framework which is centered around differentiated core instruction data informed
123decision and conditions for teaching and learning it also focuses on several questions but four I want to highlight which you'll hear woven throughout the the presentations this evening one is what are we teaching how will we know when students have learned how will we respond if students don't learn and how will we extend learning for students who've mastered this evening the people behind me will bring life to these questions through their presentation on the ELA curriculum implementation and rollout the thanks Circa relaunch a program solution tree and branching and branching Minds so I'm very delighted and pleased to bring forth Miss Amber Wilson executive director of literacy Miss Mariah Morris director of literacy Dr Chris Gammon executive director of curriculum and instruction and miss Emily Myers director of mtss thank you Dean good evening it
124is so exciting to be back here with you this evening um to share more about our timeline and implementation plans for rolling out the new literacy curriculum hmh so Houghton Mifflin Harcourt into reading and hmh into literature so I feel that it's important for us to share briefly how this plan and timeline were developed by harnessing the voices and perspectives of our amazing teachers our administrators and our instructional coaches who serve our students directly each and every day can you please ensure that our board members have the packet that I will reference momentarily and I have to get the clicker thank you there we go okay so curriculum implementation planning team was selected that includes diverse representation from every Elementary and Middle School some schools have more than one person in order to ensure that
125we had voices that represented the K2 teachers three five teachers Middle School teachers literacy coaches at each level principals and assistant principal voices the first implementation planning meeting on August 26th the team spent our time focused on introductions of each member and the lens that each of one of them brought to our team we also spent time learning specifically what we were going to be implementing getting a sense of Readiness for implementation across the district and we had a discussion around professional development and supports that are available through hmh implementation we were excited by the vast majority of our team members saying that their schools and teachers were eager to get started an already unpacking boxes of materials that had just arrived at their schools the team members shared positives that they were already noting
126about the new resources as well as posing questions and concerns that had already come up the second meeting of the team was held on September the 15th we did hold an elementary team and middle school team meetings separately based on our first meeting discussion and feedback this meeting was focused on reviewing feedback from the plcs discussing the material distribution and begin drafting implementation timelines and priorities we also had time to share celebrations challenges and questions that had come up as teachers had begun using materials already at this point we looked at the data from the PLC surveys and were very encouraged by the high percentage of teachers who were already implementing components of the program or who were getting ready to begin prior to implementation requirements coming from the district there was an overwhelming amount
127of gratitude that was shared by teachers for having time and the opportunity to try things out in an organic way that allowed flexibility for teachers in each classroom and every school the next meeting was on October the 6th I'm sorry where draft implementation and professional development timelines were reviewed again for tweaks and final feedback from our team additionally Middle School level novel Point selections were finalized based on teacher Choice yet again every teacher in ela in Middle School got to put their say into the novel points and how they were utilized in their building the media technology and advisory committee also known as mtac those processes were followed for all books to be added into the collections for each School per policy 3200. working with this team has been a wonderful experience an example of
128how powerful collaboration can be in developing shared plans and vision for the work so in the packet that you received from Franklin thank you Mr McCune for passing those out you have a copy of the implementation plan that looks like this um you will note that it is organized um with a curriculum overview there are timelines for implementation that are there for you I will go through those in just a few minutes with Miss Morris here on the slides as well as the professional development plan and then there are three phases of implementation there's planning and preparation implementation and Fidelity checks and advanced implementation support also in your packet you will see resource overviews for each of the curriculums we have the into reading resource overview and the resource overview for into literature these were
129provided so that at a glance you can see all the various components parts and pieces that are within this curriculum to support instruction for both the core level as well as differentiation and support for our EC AIG and ESL learners Peter Ducker famously stated culture each strategy for breakfast when discussing how to effectively Implement change this quote simply means that no matter how well designed your strategic plan is it will fall flat unless it shares the appropriate culture with the team who is charged with implementing it at the end of the day the people who implement the plan matter and for us that is the teachers and the administrators and the literacy coaches of our schools the timeline represented on this slide as well as in your packet reflects the idea that the voices of
130our district implementation plan team who Ms Wilson shared with you represents our administrators teachers and literacy coaches leaned heavily into the creation of this implementation timeline we asked our implementation team to design the ideal timeline based on staff feedback from their plcs at their schools and feedback that they had received from teachers in their building we feel confident that the timeline shown on the screen it is moving the work forward at an appropriate balance balancing both the urgency of implementing a new curriculum as well as the realities of what it feels like to be implementing something new each and every day with students in the classroom all grades K through five will launch into reading as our core Ela curriculum at the beginning of the second semester in January K2 will hold off on launching
131the foundational skills component until next school year K2 will maintain Hagerty and Letterland this school year to teach foundational skills which we have already seen great success with so we feel confident in pairing that with into reading for the reading and the writing components of ela additionally grade three will maintain from phonics to reading throughout the course of this school year we would like to note that New Hope um yeah New Hope Elementary School has decided to Pilot the foundational lessons from hmh that data is providing us with great information about the scope and sequence and how well that can push forward our foundational skills when leaning into the curriculum [Music] Amira which is a one-to-one online fluency tutoring program for students in grades K through five will launch in March after we have been
132able to dedicate our time and attention into launching the core components of the curriculum rideable is a personalized writing tool that guides students in grades 3 through 12 through the writing process with a research-backed tool for personalized feedback and revision writable 2 will launch in March after the main components have been successfully implemented teachers are are already excitedly trying out Amira and we already have good information that teachers have really enjoyed exploring it and getting to know the program however Amira and rideable are considered add-ons and we want to make sure that we intentionally launch them in relationship with the instructional core Frameworks for literacy as well as some of the other components that we're noticing we need attention to through our PLC work hmh growth measure is an Adaptive assessment tool that drives differentiation
133of our core instruction we will layer our hmh growth measure into our rollout beginning in year two of our implementation this will provide us with ample opportunity to study our assessment expectations and align this growth measure with the structures that we put in place with our PLC work such as our common formative assessments as well as our mtss structures such as our Universal screening We Believe moving forward with intentionality is best and leaving that to year two of implementation the next slide shows our inter-liter implementation timeline on this slide you'll see that we will launch hmh into literature for grades six through eight in January all students will be exposed to into literature as The Core Curriculum beginning in the second semester again writable will be launched in March as a personalized writing tool that
134helps guide our middle school students through personalized feedback and revision as Miss Wilson noted all schools were provided with novel points that they were able to use to purchase novels that integrate into the lessons each grade level at each School were able to select their own novels based on how they thought their students would enjoy experiencing the integration into some of the larger themes as well as the North Carolina Standards that were presented in each unit additionally in grades six through eight we have already had many classrooms already try out different components of into literature we want to make sure that our teachers have the experience professional development and any support that they need to also explore things like the digital classroom Library which is a wonderful ample amount of online text that they can
135use right now to supplement their work moving forward even ahead of the rollout our teachers have reported that they have really enjoyed using the interactive response logs graphic organizers customizable skills instruction peer coach videos and high level visual summaries of skills and anchor charts [Music] the next slide was also designed by our district-wide implementation team so this was not Miss Wilson and me creating our idea of what we thought support would look like but rather we really did Lean Into the voices of our team to make sure that we were building out support structures that carried throughout the launch of hmh you'll see the top two orange bands represent ongoing professional development the teacher's corner is available 24 7 for professional development on demand through the hmh online portal so teachers can get in their
136comfy jammies at home and instead of firing up Netflix fire up hmh the coaching sessions are also available throughout the course of the Year through a blended model we have invested in securing additional coaching for our coaches so that they feel like they're leading this work and that they have been poured into as instructional leaders ahead out of the teacher rollout in November in just next week and the week after we will be launching our getting started PD which is a virtual two-hour session for both the elementary schools and the middle schools in the next boxes you'll see an open white box with a solid Orange Line This represents the district provided professional development we are providing intentional professional development for all of our literacy coaches monthly and helping them understand how hmh also integrates
137with the solution tree rollout that you're going to hear more about from Dr Gammon as well as mtss from Miss Myers we are providing office hours weekly for our literacy coaches so that they can come on and talk to Ms Wilson to myself about questions and after our getting started PD we will open Office hours online each week for teachers and administrators to get on and ask questions of us as well additionally we are launching virtual text complexity professional development that is also on demand but created by the OCS curriculum instruction team for teachers to navigate how to scaffold complex texts which we know our students are going to be exposed to more than ever with this curriculum finally the boxes that have the dotted Orange Line reflect school-based PD that coaches will be asked
138to lead alongside their administrative teams so at this point I'm going to turn it over to Miss Wilson thank you so we wanted to take this opportunity to hear some voices from the field so that you could hear the voices of teachers and school-based leaders about their perspective with the hmh implementation rollout each of these teachers and leaders have first-hand experience with the rollout and implementation within their school we have classroom teachers who have already jumped into trying out various components in their classroom and additionally we're excited that our Specialists are already working through how they can utilize um the resources as well for differentiation with EC ESL and AIG we're first going to turn it over to Senora Alexandra Faya who is one of the Dual language teachers from New Hope Elementary School just
139so you know Senora is joining us virtually this evening and I'm hoping that she is here and unmuted but she is one of the first I hear her um hello hi she is one of the first dual language teachers that joined the New Hope program and has had the opportunity to be a teacher leader in that building and help build out what the Dual language program looks like at New Hope so I think it's important that you get to hear her voice and how this curriculum is going to support the work that they're doing within that program so Senora thank you good evening bored good evening Miss uh springtended Ms Wilson after three years following the unit of study program here at New Hope we're able to see that that is the program that we
140have parallel and hmh has brought more opportunities to do a cross-linguistic bridge with the English English class we find this program more suitable for developing bilingualism and by literacy each unit proposes the main theme as essential questions that is developed in both classes and students learn vocabulary and skill in context becoming aware of the differences and similarities between Spanish and English we are also guiding our planning with the standard in mind adjusting all the lessons and materials and taking from the program the resources that are more relevant for us to do a language implementation guide provides some tips that have helped us scaffold all the information that we need to become better teachers for our students to read aloud text presents good content and very interesting visuals and are connected to the main theme of
141the unit which enables students to use the vocabulary that is going to be used within a context something that we have seen that is very useful for language Learners is really all this material that we're able to find in the platform the foundational skill slides that we find are very useful to practice phonemic and phonological awareness and that they're totally connected to the practice of Hagerty as well these are also these also show a lot of progression to introduce high frequency words in Spanish even though some of the high frequency words that are suggested are not necessarily the ones that students really work developmentally as the ones that they are able to use frequently but they're suggested to be worked with and our students are learning a lot incredibly a lot and their bridge in
142between English and Spanish they're able to find cognates they're able to find finally the breach that we were finding and looking for it the writing activities are connected to a text and it allows to use this as reference to guide the writing process with them at this point DL second grade is a grade that is working all the implementation of hmh thank you Senora Faya for sharing about how you're using electora also to add on to what Miss Morris shared a few moments ago about New Hope piloting using the foundational lessons some of the backstory on that is that New Hope had multiple programs in place because of the Dual language program right so where you have Letterland on the Spanish side there they currently had estrogita and so that they would have been managing
143three or four different curriculum components which was some of the driver behind the decision for them to Pilot those foundational lessons so that we can streamline the materials for the teachers thank you again miss Faya at this time Miss Morris is going to read um a statement from one of our literacy coaches thank you this statement comes from the Beth karasi the Fantastic literacy coach at River Park Elementary School Miss karasi writes that the hmh into reading curriculum has already been beneficial for the students at River Park teachers and students are pleased with the consumable books which allow for more Interactive Learning and increased student engagement teachers really like that hmh into reading is a spiraling curriculum our standards are not taught as a one and done but are Revisited throughout the modules going more
144in depth with each subsequent lesson knowing that students are not expected to master master a standard in Reading when it is first taught and not teaching just one standard at a time matches the reality of how we read in the real world comprehending reading encompasses so many skills put together in order for us to hold on to the meaning of complex text hmh into reading curriculum follows the research behind the science of reading and includes all pillars of reading in each week's lessons the lessons are set up for teachers to follow the gradual release model with the I do we do you do format overall the hmh into reading curriculum allows for teachers to build student strengths in word recognition skills as well as their language comprehension skills leading our students to become skilled readers
145and at this time I'll pass it back to Miss Wilson for one more voice from our field all right the last voice that we have for you this evening comes from one of our ESL teachers here in the district who's actually pictured in the top left working with one of her groups um and so miss Brennan Patel said some reasons that I like hmh ESL components are first of all the students love the pictures they are relatable appealing and high interest the academic language is Thoroughly Chosen and seems to be well aligned yet not doubling up on core being new to it all and not being able to always get in with my password to hmh online if I just follow along and taught the lessons I would walk into the class and be pleasantly
146surprised that what I did this morning in a small group perfectly paired the students for the writing lesson this afternoon and I didn't even know it in the past the hours it would have taken me to align and plan with six to ten other teachers would have been and was impossible I just did my best and spent countless hours preparing lessons that I hoped for the best regarding alignment if different teachers are doing separate things my lessons didn't make as much impact hmh is great stuff even if teachers skip sections also it doesn't take me much time to prep but I can add on since the base lesson is done for me I love how the listening Reading Writing and speaking is systematically built in a new teacher can step in and feel well planned
147then switch things up as she becomes more experienced planned with classroom teachers and Etc graphic organizers are in the back are included I like the sentence frames that have already been included in each lessons each lesson sorry and the academic language focused vocabulary that is right on each picture I can easily make a good slide deck and send it to my online reading volunteers now and then and they can then re-teach a lesson and continue the conversation each week also why learner teachers can use the slide deck as well in after school support this is good stuff thank you foreign so the next piece of this implementation plan is to talk about the supports that are needed for it to be successful oftentimes we hear Dr Felder remind us that a goal without a plan
148is simply just a wish we are charged to move forward as stewards of this resource in the best interest of our student growth and our achievement with this plan we will go wrong by rung in a method I'm sorry in a methodical manner that is measured progression will there be bumps along the way absolutely will there be moments of frustration and questions absolutely but we will not waver in our journey forward and we will do what is best in the interest of our students as a team it is our responsibility and our mission to be responsive to our teachers to be responsive to our literacy coaches as their needs as we move forward of the board we ask for support for commitment and for Grace as we move forward we thank you for your steadfast
149commitment to the support of literacy across Orange County schools and we look forward to providing regular updates to you on the implementation as we move forward without a doubt the OCS board of education and District leadership are committed to advancing Literacy for each and every student in this District we know we will move forward with this plan as I said wrong by wrong with determination with perseverance and hopefully with your grace so thank you unfortunately we're not done so next up we're going to talk about think Circa which is also a literacy initiative here in Orange County Schools so we're going to provide some updates around think Circa but before we jump into our think Circa relaunch plan and timeline first we would like to spend a few minutes with you ensuring that everyone has
150a common understanding of this curriculum and why we believe it has the ability to be so impactful for the students of Orange County Schools foreign is a research-based literacy framework for reading and writing across the curriculum for grades 3 through 12. think Circa provides students with a step-by-step approach to think critically about academic material as well as read and write across content areas with purpose think Circa lessons are supported with a vast instructional Digital Library authentic texts and embedded scaffolded support Tech selections are designed to be highly engaging and help students see themselves in the learning as they form their identity around the material the power of think Circa is its ability to help students with close reading and academic writing which are two 21st century skills that our students need to be proficient in
151in order to compete in a global economy after graduation when we think about the skills our students need to be successful posts graduation being able to consume information actively think critically about raw information and express their point of view clearly and effectively are Paramount think Circa provides a Common Language and framework to intentionally develop these 21st century skills across the content areas including Ela science social studies and math when implemented with Fidelity think Circa has been shown to improve scores at two times the average growth rate this graphic captures the purpose and the why behind think Circa often times writing is presented as a separate academic activity that is isolated to a designated time during Ela class it's riding Friday kids and that's when we write however being able to digest information critically and express
152oneself through writing is a skill that is necessary across the workforce whether it is in a science lab with having to write a research brief or as a police officer having to present information to the public at a news briefing or as a construction manager having to communicate plans in order to gain Town ordinance approval in order to prepare our students to thrive as 21st century student citizens our students must be able to express themselves and effectively communicate ideas in the real world this does not happen in The Silo of ela rather it's a cognitive process that should be nurtured and intentionally developed across the content areas think Circa Works to be that bridge between different academic areas and provide a clear and consistent framework think Circa provides a Circa framework to enable the development
153of written expression across all content areas through the framework you see on this slide this strategy is akin to the power behind using an avid strategy school-wide the idea is that throughout our secondary schools throughout all the different core classrooms students will learn the Circa acronym where C stands for making claims e supporting with evidence R explaining with your reasoning I identifying counter arguments and a addressing your Audience by overlaying this framework across all academic disciplines and throughout the school grade by grade students will learn this common framework the vocabulary and the structure through which to become critical thinkers and writers the Circa framework provides a Common Language through which to organize and develop arguments in written form it pushes students out of the role of being passive recipient of information and into the role
154of being an active consumer of academic material having a clear framework with embedded writing scaffolds provides appropriate scaffolds to grow writers who can enter the lesson with all different abilities foreign so just as we felt it was important to have shared understanding of the curriculum as Mariah has shared thank you we also feel that you need to understand where we have been in order to comprehend and understand our next steps forward think Circa was initially adopted in Orange County schools during the 21-22 school year the contract began in July of 2021. during the initial implementation implementation usage data showed initial early implementers at each School in Pockets across the district however there were signs that there were concerns about the overall buy-in of the curriculum across the district as we restructured the literacy team in
155March of 2022 the OCS literacy team adopted the relaunch of think Circa as we reimagined its capacity to grow our students in our secondary schools we move forward with the relaunch of think Circa by embracing the plan do study act model which is the four stage problem-solving model used for improving a process or carrying out change utilizing the plan do study act model allowed us to focus in on what was working with our implementation what barriers existed across our school district and how could we improve moving forward here you see the relaunch timeline essential to the think Circa relaunch was spending time listening listening to our administrators listening to our teachers listening to our students about their thoughts and their perceptions of think Circa understanding that everyone involved in the relaunch needed to have a
156real stake in its success in its success it was crucial for us to hear the initial thoughts and experiences with the curriculum as a result of salt we invited um our think Circa Representatives Eric Austin and think Circa founder and CEO Eileen Buckley to come here to Orange County schools and engage in a listening tour across the district so we met at the Welcome Center we loaded us all in my car and we spent the entire day driving to schools to listen we met with teams of teachers and administrators listening at Cedar Ridge and at Orange High School we also met with a group of students at Gravelly Hill Middle School to listen to those students and hear their perspective we asked vital questions and we listened as administrators teachers and students shared their successes
157their challenges and their ideas on how we move forward in the relaunch of think Circa one of the highlights of our listening tour was spending time with our students at Gravelly Hill Middle School who were very articulate about why they liked the curriculum they felt that think Circa allowed them to develop their voice and improve their writing skills and when we asked them if we should continue using the resource they answered with a very clear yes absolutely so the next step in our relaunch was ensuring that we were embedding this curriculum into the curriculum mapping that occurred over the summer with our teacher leaders one of the barriers that teachers expressed during our listening tour was not feeling that they had enough time to implement the think Circa units you see they viewed think Circa
158as an extra or an add-on resource but not the main curriculum that they use during instruction in order to work through this barrier we realized that this was essential to embed units in our Curriculum maps so that teachers could see how think Circa was a viable core instructional resource that can be used to deliver instruction rooted in our North Carolina Standards embedding think Circa into our Curriculum maps has also helped onboard our new teachers with the hopes that they could explore the resource with their Mentor teachers and within their plcs so our next step hinged around the feedback that we received during our listening Tour on frustrations that were experienced during the initial professional development last year teachers expressed that the PD sessions they received were identical in nature due to a miscommunication on behalf
159of think Circa trainers and focused on the operational items of the curriculum implementation such as setting up accounts and rostering students and getting those things settled no time was spent on exploring the curriculum's instructional capacity and how to use it with a true Blended learning environment in the classroom as a result of this information we knew that the next steps in our res launch would have to include reimagining the professional development experience to Center on instruction and student growth in September Eric Austin who's our rep with think Circa came here to OCS again to lead two more three-hour PD sessions um actually hold on let me go back in August he came and delivered a three-hour PD session for our district facilitators including our science facilitator social studies facilitator beginning teacher coordinator and others in
160the cni department during this PD he led the group through a model lesson and explored the instructional capacity of the program we then had a think circuit leadership meeting with Ela social studies and science leads to work through our next steps of implementation in September Eric came back again and led two more three-hour PD sessions for Middle School and High School teachers as well as administrators in this PD Mr Austin Austin went deep into the instructional capacity of think Circa we moved beyond the operational items of the program and explored how this recess can work to build critical thinking skills and writing across subject areas our next steps include working with all of our middle school and high school principals next week to draft a district implementation plan moving forward we think it's Ascent it's
161actually this week sorry we think it's essential to build a plan with our principals voices at the table and we're excited to include them in this work by Leading with their into by leaning into their perspectives including what they see during plcs and classroom observations we are hopeful to develop a plan with increased buy-in and ownership of this curriculum foreign so as we move forward with our implementation we are hopeful that our implementation plan captures our feedback from our students our teachers and our administrators when we launch our new implementation plan in later November we will move forward with clear guidance and suggestions from the people in which who will be impacted to ensure that their voices will be heard in much the same way as our hmh implementation plan with clear guidance and guidelines
162we'll be able to ensure Fidelity of implementation so that we're moving away from just a couple pockets of implementation success at the schools towards a more broader implementation that truly gives students the exposure they need to develop their writing skills part of this guidance will include quarterly checkpoints with our administrators to analyze student data usage and student academic performance data we are committed to continuing our journey with think Circa through the lens of the plan do study act steps and we look forward to providing regular updates to the board on our progress and seeing how think Circa can be maximized to provide growth and learning opportunities for our students again we will need your support from both the board and District leadership to ensure that we have the support the commitment and the grace as
163we move forward we remain committed to our work and committed to advancing literacy across the curriculum in OCS in grade 6 through 12. at this point we will now welcome Dr Green nice you can hear the intentionality in their report and wanted to make sure that they covered all bases we're going to pause at this moment right here because we're watching also time we want to want to see whether or not uh our other two presenters here that will speak on solution tree and branching minds or what's the desire of the board so um board I would recommend that we ask any questions we have on this material defer the other two as we definitely need to cover the capacity review and reassignment plan uh and move out the the equity plan Equity training to
164our next meeting which is focused on equity and I've just been chatting with Dr Felder about those and I believe that's the recommendation is the board amenable to that yeah just Just one thought which is um the other two um curriculum items potentially we could talk about those in student achievement we'd plan to use some of that time to follow up to ask follow-up questions if we had them so depending on their availability to come there we could discuss up there that's a great suggestion um any other thoughts from board members the the only comment I had on the two was thank you so much I I learned a lot personally and one of the things that came to my mind as y'all were talking is there was a wonderful thing that y'all did um
165I don't know a couple of I said a couple of years now it feels like it where you all set up times and we actually got to go in the classroom and actually see this and it it it meant a lot more to actually understand from what we talk about here to seeing the passion and the students and the interactions and I I would just recommend if when is the right time the grace that you help facilitate us to to do that that is one of the plans that we have moving forward not only with the implementation of our curriculum but also some of the other programs so we'll be talking more about some board visits to some to see some of our instructional programs the topic on the student achievement committee thank you all
166very much so we are at 9 55 about to start the clock of financial cost to extend the meeting and do you does it have to be asked now can you yeah like just about these two things some confusion for me do you mind you're going to cut a question I'm going to cut off questions because we we've got to go unless the board wants to override me okay thank you we I will send them I will send them thank you thank you and I would recommend Dr Felder how much time do you think we need for the I'm going to defer to uh Mr abili what's that 3-0 20 minutes 2-0 okay uh can we just go ahead and get a motion to extend for 20 minutes so moved second yeah just as a
167reminder we'll need a second closed session as well I don't know if you're calculating that time in the I don't know how much time you anticipate we need for that but um there will be no no action coming out of that closed session but we do need the closed session so I think we'll probably need an additional 10 minutes minimum to to talk because we've already gotten the material so uh can we amend that to 30 minutes sure it's amend it to 30 minutes but 20 of it is here yes and can we get second okay the second you're okay so we have a motion and a second for 30 minutes any discussion all right all in favor say aye aye aye the opposed Dr Moore aye thank you it's all yours was traveling all
168right good evening thank you uh so I just want to recognize joining us virtually is Miss uh Dr Glenn Rolex principal of Gravelly Hill Middle School and in the audience with this as well is Kelly Park's principal of efflon cheeks uh Global elementary school and I'm also assisted by Catherine Bauer student assignment and Technology coordinator because part of the assignment capacity scenarios and next steps planning has to do with capacity concerns at efflon cheeks Elementary School in the current capacity that we have in the district at Gravelly Hill Middle School and talking about configurations of school is one possible solution so three items we wanted to review this evening um we'll cut short the legal requirements those are in your packet those are also posted online we do want to discuss the short-term long-term capacity
169issues that do impact our schools especially to the West although we are seeing overflow and capacity issues at River Park Elementary School New Hope Elementary School as well and then approved planning processes and timelines for deeper Dives and engagement into the work necessary to bring back plans to the board and so that's why it was critically important that we have this discussion this evening so that we can begin the processes on those timelines just again our four pillars within policy are listed wherever time we think about our schools and how do we best meet the needs of our students our staff and our community also keeping in mind how we equally operate these are the pillars within our policy that we'll utilize um wanted to just talk about again why we're at this point in
170time and we have some schools that are overcrowded and we have some schools that are um have capacity and so looking at that future growth I want to highlight that third bullet dare I'm looking at Future students projected to enroll Elementary 407 students of which we only have 200 and some students current seats currently available in The District Middle School an additional 208 students in high school 245 students and we'll talk about some of the short-term solutions that we utilize to date this brief and a deeper plan of the datas is is posted online but you can see some of the developments that are currently planned and this is out of Mebane Mebane as a um entity governmental entity is not part of sappho the school's adequate public facility ordinance of which we operate under
171in Orange County that ordinance helps us with projections on student growth and student enrollment over time there's also levels of service that are indicated within that ordinance and as we look at expansion of school buildings or we look at Future needs and capacity it's driven by the membership projections that that ordinance utilizes Mebane is not part of that and so that does cause concerns when we look at long range forecasting and forecasting at the county says you may not need a new school for another 10 or 15 years but when we look at our projections and we include that growth that's expected it does show a capacity because concern much sooner than what the county projects because again the county projections don't count students until they actually enroll and I will tell you time and
172time again I've worked in several districts around the state you we just can't wait until the students enrolled to start talking about fixing this issue so that's why it's critically important as we're experiencing capacity concerns that we think about long short and long-term solutions for that again here's just a layout of those projections and um we already mentioned that and so when we look at our actual School utilization you can see here um where we have uh schools that are under capacity um at uh Central Elementary School at 69.69 effluent cheeks when we factor in pre-k is 21 over capacity 1.21 and you can see some of our other elementary schools New Hope in River Park also over capacity Hillsborough is over capacity but that is a choice school and we do have um safeguards
173in place for the number of students that's authorized to enroll annually so although we're not mentioning that one that one already has a built-in process for the capacity limits at that school when we look at the um at the levels of service again that's based on sappho you can see the spread and the range of the capacity differences between the schools when we look at middle school you can see we actually have capacity and seats available in our middle schools with Al stamback at 87 percent capacity Gravelly Hill is down to 61 percent of the capacity of the building and orange middle schools at 72 percent so we have a 26 percent range there of availability and then at the high school you can see the level service at Cedar Ridge is at 0.74 74
174and that's because of the new addition that was opened up just over a year ago on that campus Orange High School at 96 and we did do some spot reassignment prior to the start of this school year to lower that risk that student capacity at Orange High School so we do have capacity because of the new building at Cedar Ridge High School for high school we do have capacity at middle school we do still have a capacity issue at the elementary level and these are our projections and models and you've seen these and we went over these last week in your work session so I'm not going to go through these again but there are challenges when we talk about spot reassignment when we take a zone or an area you can see a couple
175here highlighted especially in the Southeastern part of our district where a section or a neighborhood or a multi-family unit has been reassigned from one zone to another Zone there are problems when we do that it's a short-term solution we do create more issues with transportation and trying to keep efficiency and so those factors we look at can compete with each other because we want operational efficient buildings and we want to utilize buildings but then also for bussing students back and forth across zones because we're spot reassigning that can cause inefficiencies in higher costs in our transportation department so we want to talk effluent cheeks we know effluent Cheeks is the highest school over capacity at this point some of the things that took place we did open up the transfer window only one student transferred
176under that option we did a temporary spot reassignment for havenstone to Central Elementary School only one student was identified that had rolled to date and then the family indicated they were enrolling elsewhere not going to the Overflow School the other option another area that the board approved we do have an RFP out for mobile units we do have a design and we have located um Power sewer all the conditions on the campus where mobile units would be located so we will have bids coming in next week for mobile units we'll be bringing back those lease agreements for the board for consideration but we were already planning to mobilize mobile units for construction there over the next several years with some of our older school facility improvements but we are you going to utilize those to
177help somewhat with some capacity overflow concerns but just keep in mind we can't just necessarily increase the capacity on the campus one that has impacts with sappho but it also means we haven't increased the core capacities the cafeteria for instance with additional classes and what that looks like students moving around the building and restroom capacities Etc with additional students but it would give us a little bit of flexibility as we talk about some of the other options there are other things the board can do I want to be very clear about that you know there are other options that we considered but didn't recommend such as capping the school we we just simply say the school is closed period not to students in in certain new developments but any student in the existing School boundary
178zone for F1 cheats cannot enroll at this school and you are assigned an overflow school one of the issues with that is transportation because every student regardless of where they live we're still obligated to provide School transportation and you can imagine what the needs and the stresses on our transportation department today and the lack of drivers how difficult that would be it also I'm very concerned from a safety standpoint for students you you know this morning it's still dark outside at 7 A.M many of our elementary students are already on the bus by 7 A.M and you have multiple buses traveling down roads or in developments for different schools that can be very confusing as just young students which of us they're getting on are getting off of and so I do want to recognize
179that there are calendar-based tracking options we can do we can certainly put more students in a track school program to increase capacity and then we do have 16 non-staff transfers at the school in the board you know would have an option to to have those students return back to their home schools um some other items and I will ask Miss parks to come forward there are some school base items um that are possible possibilities when there's capacity concerns and such as combination classes moving students to carts and then what you approved this evening was class size reduction teachers with sign-on bonuses so Kelly I don't know if you want to speak to you know these items are other things because I know your school internally has been trying to address this challenge as well hey
180everybody so I made a list because I'm really tired and we're getting kids in like nine hours um so some of our facilities um we've made adjustments to arrival and dismissal procedures to streamline and protect instructional time to basically get them in faster so that we're not interrupting our morning instruction um we do have a couple teachers that are on cards and we've created transitional spaces we have also repurposed some spaces we've got some instruction happening in hallways tables that are set off to the side it's not ideal but it works um and then General housekeeping and cleaning you know getting rid of things that we do not need anymore things that are broken or not usable so that we have maximized space um as far as instructional time we have a lot of on-site
181coaches and we're having them push directly into classrooms to maximize space so about 90 of their day is spent in the classroom with the kids to maximize the time and maximize the amount of kids that they're able to see because we do have so many children we do have internal tutoring support and again we're being creative with our spaces and we're also utilizing Outdoors so we do have some small groups happening Outdoors to maximize the space um we have a protected time throughout the day what we call wind time it stands for what I need and so we're being very creative with the instructional support staff to maximize small groups again to see as many small groups as possible throughout the day as needed because of this year just number of of children that we
182have and the needs we have we also have added an additional rotation of specials because each of our grade levels have between five and three teachers and so some grade levels require a fifth specials rotation because the amount of classrooms um and we wanted to protect the planning time we don't want our teachers to not get their planning because we do not have enough specials so we added that rotation um and our staff are incredible um we have added about 15 new staff members this year and we're very very excited they have they've been great um and we're really pouring into our staff because they are doing a lot of of work um in addition because we do have so many children but we're really working on building them up as well so thank you
183Kelly and so the next item I'll ask Gwen to speak to this as well you can see on your screen some of the data we've pulled in school districts that have fifth grade and middle school around the state we also did a query there are 298 other combinations throughout the state grades three through eight four eight K-8 Pre-K 8 Pre-K 12 there's 17 of those K-12 there's 71 of those 5 through 12 5 6 4 6 3 12 3 11 3 8. so just about any combination of school configurations you probably can find them throughout the state so one of the areas we looked at was knowing um that fact and knowing that we have a middle school at 61 percent capacity Elementary School 121 or a 21 over capacity and a hundred percent of
184the fifth grade students leave efflon cheeks feed into Gravelly Hill Middle School unless they transfer to an another location would this help and assist in having fifth grade on the Gravely Hill Middle School campus as a reconfiguration and so Gwen did you want to talk to or just address your thoughts as a principle as we've talked about that just internally with both principals at this point in time yes thank you what I will say at this point is that I've appreciated the opportunity to just start to engage in some of the research to look at which other schools in the state have a 5 8 or other Elementary with middle school I'm combined students in a single school I'm wanting to just start thinking about you know the viability of the plan as we think
185about after school transportation um Staffing which I know we've talked quite a bit about this evening I actually have a family member who works in a K-8 school and so doing just some soft research there as well as looking at some of the resources that I saw on the amle on the association of middle level Educators website around some of the successes that some schools have seen by having um students in these sort of critical transition years together you know for a longer period of time at a single school so I know we're you know just at the beginnings of you know this you know consideration but I am looking forward or to I'm learning more about this possibility and so as we think about reassignment and temporary reassignment options and I'm just kind of
186jumping ahead here there were two items that we're looking at one is addressing the short-term capacity issues at elephant cheeks Elementary School over utilization under utilization of schools but secondly is the students are still coming there's still new developments every week that I drive through Western Orange County there's more developments and more building that's happening we know we have again other capacity concerns and the board was presented a reassignment plan in 2019 that was not implemented or approved and so what we're recommending is a reassignment plan takes a minimum 12 to 18 months to get it back before you that while we're working on short-term Solutions we also begin the long-term planning processes for a comprehensive student reassignment plan so that we can be prepared to address the additional growth and needs and balancing of
187the schools to meet the future needs of the com of the community and those timelines are presented in more detail in your packet and so you know that leads us to what happens if we don't do anything at this point in time well you heard some of the issues and concerns we're going to have buildings that are over capacity you're going to have higher teacher loads you're going to have more students and playgrounds and cafeterias more students on school buses longer route times with over capacity schools there will be some students eating lunch very early and some students eating lunch very late because core capacity may not match that we'll over utilize in most cases mobile units those do present Safety and Security concerns outside of brick and mortar buildings and then the we still
188may not be achieving the board's goals on for student achievement stability proximity and operational efficiency and then you know overcrowded schools and over capacity schools also Drive parents to look for other options and so you know we may lose students because parents threats here that they can enroll their child in another public school that's offering class sizes much less than what we're able to provide so that leads us to two things we're asking this evening approve the planning scenario of moving fifth grade from effluent cheeks to Gravelly Hill Middle School again you're not approving the plan this evening what you're would be approving is the planning scenario so that we can can take the next steps with staff and the engagement as Gwen said you know there has been some incidental in uh research done
189but really to look at that and how we make that be successful um in speaking with schools that have that configuration around the state um and then the second thing would reprove the planning process timeline for that comprehensive reassignment plan for the 24-25 school year that would be the very earliest um and we're really pushing to be able to meet that timeline at this point in time so with that I'm at 19 minutes and 42 seconds so I'll stop there all right questions from the board on either honey I just I just want to start with just a really basic question and that if you move the fifth graders from F1 to Gravely are they elementary school kids or are they middle school kids and do they have specials or electives and what's the transportation
190what's the calendar and uh lunch and everything so I'm just curious what and are they miss Park's kid are they Dr Rolex kids so they are middle school students the state recognizes the school based on the highest grade served and so because the students at the school go through eighth grade they are considered middle school and is a middle school configuration of grades five through eight what that looks like whether we have them in an academy type setting or a pod type setting whether they're mixed in with the general School population that's what the planning processes looks like looks at that the best practices in order to one achieve the goals and the transitions because whether they make a four or five transition to middle school or a five six transition to middle school we
191know Trent that transition is very critical to their success and so there are different models and different programs as to how that looks we do we have not explored will be have we'll have to come back as part of the plan specials and the other areas I have seen in other districts where the only time students are outside of their wing would be for PE would be for lunch recess Etc so those are all things that would be decided especially with the school Improvement team and what that would look like have you have you heard of have you looked at do you know if North Carolina has four through eight school yes there are there are four through eight schools there are a couple of those primarily what we're what I'm seeing is grades um
192k-8s there's 106 k8s in the state um there are different configurations grades five through twelve five six three through eight Etc and so we can send you the database and you can you can kind of look at but I did make a summary like I said there's 298 other combinations outside of the 28 just specifically grade five through eight well I'm gonna reiterate what I said last week and I have a really hard time putting a fifth grader in a sixth grade uh in a six through eight School now if there is some way that it could be done with 4 8 where you've gotten more Elementary there I might think about that but right now I I just don't see putting fifth graders in was six through eight yeah I I need to study
193that need to look at it need to know a whole lot more than what I know right now Gary yeah I I feel like it seems like a a quick plan that would have to happen and there's so many questions I have questions about transportation and families anticipating that they'd have their kids in elementary school longer or there's so many dynamics that seem like we wouldn't be able to adequately get a community input on between now and January I'm curious how Miss parks would feel about if we were able to get the mobile units and we had specials in the mobile units or are there things that field doable or that or do they not feel doable because it seems like you're running a really successful School despite the challenges we just want the space
194and the resources to keep them all together with me could you use one of the mobile units for uh music and art and I'll be kind of hard for PE but music and art definitely our teacher teachers are and I say teachers but oh sorry our entire staff is ready for shifts anyway they you know a couple moved in at the beginning of the the school year and said you know how much do I need to decorate like they are they're ready for transition and they are flexible Andre yeah I just I just want to kind of reiterate what's been said and that you know some of the concerns that everyone else is having were some of mine as well um like transportation and transitioning I know how tough it was but the transition from
195uh fifth grade to sixth grade and eighth grade to ninth grade so I can only imagine how tough it would be for a fifth grader going into um middle school but also like Kerry said um how will the families feel about that transitioning being that it's a short period of time and notice Sarah um I'm having a couple of thoughts one is I think the four through eight ideas interesting um I think if if there were any movement over to Gravelly Hill I would have I mean I couldn't support it with it without additional resources um just thinking about the literacy and math coaches and all the all the support that they'd be losing um and um you know Gravelly Hill needs all of those supports for their six through eight students um my question
196is I understand that the plan for the mobile units is around construction but um what does the construction have to happen in these two years or could it wait until we've got reassigned schools with lower capacity yeah we we have um Bond money and we have money that the taxpayers are paying debt on the money that we have from the county the longer we delay the more costly one projects become but two um that impacts the debt that the the counties holding and carrying um my understanding is so I I think the the goal has been to spend and to do the projects allocated for the money that has been allocated to us and we have to use mobile units to move students out we will not be able to do large-scale projects including the
197mechanical system upgrades on campuses while students are in classrooms and there's no way to do that in six weeks over the summer they're just it's impossible to do especially with electrical upgrades and other upgrades that are necessary we're looking at at least eight mobile units just needed for construction that's the largest Wing at the school right now it's eight classrooms and you can't have that kind of construction going on without sealing and separating those wings from the other areas in the school while while the school's under construction and and again um you know I know certainly I understand that the board's perspective on students going to middle school and that transaction transaction but do understand we have classes on the campus that are over capacity limits for state law and so we are working to
198correct those the class size reduction teachers you have this evening are assisting with that but we are limited even with mobile units to the number of students we can serve successfully on that campus based on the hallway capacities based on the cafeteria size based on the number of students we can serve in the media center based on the space we have for where OTP EC classrooms all of the other ancillary services that service students the more students on that campus the more people that have to be on that campus to service them the more books the more supplies the more and they're just they're out of space on that campus um at this point in time we do have buildings that are under capacity and so regardless of whether or not we reconfigure Gravelly Hill
199Middle School something has to be done to address the capacity of the number of students assigned to effland cheeks Elementary School we are over capacity at the school we have schools that are sitting at 60 percent capacity that is that is a decision certainly with the board my job as administrator and overseeing is to give you all options except for the reassignment processes and if I could just add that so the request tonight is to approve the planning scenario so that would give us the opportunity to engage with uh families it would give us the opportunity to do to look at Transportation how might we make this happen and then come back to the board with that to make a final decision by January well not on January 1st but certainly by by that time
200so that's what the request is tonight right I have um two questions um one is at River Park and New Hope do we we have mobile units out there we have uh mobile units at River Park there is one classroom that's assigned to the mobile unit the other one is used for services at New Hope there are two mobile units on the campus one is not being utilized as a classroom and I just I don't know at this late hour or what the other one's used for I was curious how that factors into the capacity numbers and if those schools are less less stress than Evelyn is sappho doesn't any of our Sapphire numbers don't cons don't count any mobile units it doesn't change the the sappho capacity um so those schools certainly have more
201room to provide services and individuals and people but then we get into the safety concerns with monitoring and and especially the older schools they don't have restrooms out in the mobile units and so that's another issue where we are working um at effluent cheeks to try to get the restroom and services in the mobile unit so that that eliminates that constantly just leaving to go to the restroom but students certainly have to leave to come in to go to the media center to go to the specials the other areas within the building and to your point earlier yes you know what what can you move outside certainly we can look at moving coaches or moving other staff outside the mobile units and keeping as many students inside the brick and mortar as possible and also
202you know I was a principal on a campus with mobile units you know there comes a point when severe storms or hurricanes or tropics I mean you have to evacuate the mobile units and so they're just not to the same standard as your brick and mortar is going to be so you know we also have to consider all the safety factors involved so I nobody has mentioned this but the one of the items on my mind is we're in the process of approving a performance plan for Gravelly Hill and now we're talking about putting another change in that environment where now we're going to tell students you can't go down this hall or that Hall we're gonna have kids that can't see each other or minimize it and I just it just seems off to
203me to put that on top of everything else that we're trying to do there and that that's concerning to me I'm just making a statement it just it's concerning to me on top of everything else they're having to deal with I would also say it could also help the situation because the 100 of those students leaving Gravelly Hill go are leaving F1 cheeks go to Gravelly Hill but I don't know what that looks like again we we mentioned possibilities I will not be the decision maker as to that's our academic team and the school team and the principal will make the decisions as to what that looks like I just gave examples of what it could look like so on the reassignment plan is there no chance that middle school will be shifted for any
204of the middle schools that depends on a couple things one what is the capacity in the planning scenarios two are you expanding any choice programs or options because what we've eliminated here that we've discussed twice is before we can give plans and recommendations we need to know what are the options are we expanding or is there other options that are taking place at the middle school because that will change the capacity planning scenarios so I'll just take this moment to insert this I would be more than willing to consider year-round for more of the schools if that is what comes out of the discussions with the community and staff so I just put it out there I would be willing to consider it um I just I have a um just a question about the
205timing because if we with the big redistricting plan obviously in an Ideal World we would want students that are east of eflin to go to Central or to go to the under the schools with capacity is this you know so if we bring the mobile units in a very interesting idea from from Miss Smiley about delaying the construction we have a capital planning project that's about to start that might give us a proposal to put capacity on the building but what if we we just didn't worry about this part and we go ahead with the redistricting in a in a couple years and put the trailers out in F1 and so we don't have this interim interim step that throws that just disrupts every it disrupts our students that are less that are most vulnerable
206to disruption we've not discussed any meeting or previous conversation about delaying construction what I've heard is get it done get it done get it done and we actually have bids that are coming in this week on Central and bids that are due in two weeks on F1 that we have probably spent um in excess of several hundred thousands of dollars designing and planning and if we're going to shelve that I need to know that very quickly because contractors are going to be very frustrated and upset with how we're spent submitting bids to projects we're going to delay and I just I would want to respect them and get that word out there if that's what our plan is fair comment I think we first need to know what the timing would be to bring in
207the mobile units and how soon we can get them right because if we can get the mobile units in then we go with that and and um so the mobile units and construction go hand in hand we we won't start construction without mobile we cannot do construction without the mobile units so construction starts when we have the space that we can relocate students do and we're looking for additional mobile units for capacity we added two based on the number of mobile units we can get on the campus where our plan is to add additional two mobile units to help with capacity or when we get the hallways and there's only six classrooms that have to relocate in the wind and that just gives us more capacity so we do need to extend we are past
208smiling motion to extend 10 minutes all in favor aye Dr Moore yes we are extended by unanimous so to help this conversation out a little bit um is there any concern with item number two with the excuse me with the with with the item two of approving uh the assessment plans to to move forward can we at least approve that one at this point yeah I'll make a motion to approve the second recommendation for the comprehensive reassignment plan timeline my second now okay we have a motion a second any further discussion all in favor aye Dr Moore aye thank you motion passes okay we'll go back to the first item go ahead sir um I I just wanted to say about this proposal against all of the Alternatives when we think about the fact that
209we're going to reassign in a couple of years I do think this has potential to be less disruptive than some of the other options of like the new developments go to Central and then in a couple years they're reassigned back to F1 so but I I do have concerns about some of the things people have mentioned about fifth graders going into Middle School I think it would have to come with additional resources and answers about all of those logistical how would you make it a good transition and a good experience um and so um if if what we're talking about approving here is just the opportunity to plan that and answer those questions I'm okay with that I'm not sure that I would ultimately vote to approve it but I'm okay with doing more discussion
210to figure out all those answers we'd want to know yeah I I personally lean towards your record well your suggestion about looking at delaying the construction I mean even if it's X thousand it's still is less impactful in the long run but that's that's where I'm thinking at this point and to Mr abily's point we need to make a decision on that I'd hate to go to the end and then say Oh pivot to that and all of a sudden you're way further along in that process so and let me clarify that January 1st so the January first deadline on this scenario again what you said is correct we're just approving the planning scenario the deeper dive to get the questions answered the research the analysis of of this as an option the January first
211deadline is because this would go into effect with the 23-24 school year starting in August and with our reassignment processes we try to have a six-month window from notification to families and making sure because we also have transfer options that open up in January and you know what is allowed or not allowed so that's that was the January deadline the board as far as that plan you know concise that you know even if we go through the planning process that's a great option we like it we'll wait to do it when we do reassignment or we like that option but we don't want to implement it next year we want to implement it the year after and so that the timing of this was the January 1 is if this was going to become an
212immediate to help the capacity issue at the school an immediate option for next school year then we really need to get the planning process completed so that we can get families notified Etc so just understand that the planning process and the board approval and the implementation could still be decided as to if and when that would happen but like you said you'd have to approve a plan first just for clarity but then the next year we're redistricting all the elementary schools so all this is doing is it's creating a disruption a year earlier and and maybe even limits our options on the redistricting so reassignment and redistricting um I didn't say was just going to be Elementary I think we we have to look at the District K-12 and that's what was happened in 2019
213although we do have less capacity issues and concerns there may be other items that need to be part of that reassignment programming to be aligned to policy or to be aligned to what the district wants so I the reassignment planning processes item number two that that to me is a K-12 items as we've discussed but even so it will be one if we do the Gravelly the effluent Gravely fifth grade shift it's a year before we do the reassignment for the entire District or you say that's a that after the planning process is completed we want that to not occur next year but we we would wait and do that with reassignment that certainly is an option yeah I'm not forcing again I want you to hear me say I'm not forcing the issue before
214it's ready to happen what I'm saying is in order for us to back map when it has to happen we we're trying to understand there's a lot of work in detail that we would have to do to be prepared for next school year I know there's a there's a need for an immediate solution right now but no one's suggesting just take the fifth graders and tomorrow move them to Gravelly Hill we understand there's a lot of questions you have there's many questions we have as well to address this but it's an option yeah and I was just going to add based on the orange high capacity right now they would have to be considered because they're feeders so whether we yeah it's gonna we'll have to look at all of it anyway Andre did you
215nope just I'm inclined to do it all at once and and do the reassignment in two years from now and bring in interim capacity for efland and um and I'm concerned about the additional work frankly for everybody to start looking at this single District into disruption again is we'll point out the disruption to a school that's got a lot to do you know so I I'm I would I would prefer to to let go ahead and and move it into the redistricted the full redistricting sir um it looks like you're projecting an additional 50 students next year so if we did not do this we'd need space for those 50s we do we will be one of the items I skipped over tonight because it's um it is a next year item we still have
216a couple spot reassignment options which would impact Grady Brown um Grady Brown's under capacity so without a plan we we still are going to have to address the growth of students enrolling um whether they're at effluent cheeks or they're at another school and so we'll continue to discuss what can we do utilizing mobile units in the short term because that is let's just add keeping in mind that the strategies that we've engaged in to date have not been successful that's right in fact have opened up a pathway to Charter Schools so we need to keep that in mind as well just on the spot reassignment thing I think it create you know when we go to do the reassignment there's going to be a lot of committed communities who are far who are we're trying
217to get to go to a closer school where it's so that I think could be a problem but if you're talking 50 students maybe it's two additional mobile units above what we'd plan for construction if there's space on the campus maybe there's a way to do it that way and trust me we're working on it every day we are really working to solve this issue yeah but he has said this but I'm not here in the palatability of a fifth grade option I'm hearing looking at how do we leverage the mobile units or a plan around that versus putting the effort into a fifth grade at the middle school that's what I'm hearing I don't want I'm just trying to facilitate this along so we can get to an answer to get everybody out of
218here because we are past time again I I agree I do too I just I agree so if if I was to facilitate a little further in going down that Avenue is the thought to delay construction for the purpose of that or just take additional well I I'm just we've got to give parameters we can't just say use the so are we thinking the Construction Plus additional ones to cover capacity or just what they have now can I suggest that staff come back to us with okay so if that's if this Gravelly Hill fifth grade is not the plan maybe they can suggest how they might want to address it that's perfectly fine with me as well yeah and I I'd like that plant to hear about the options for what what moves into the
219mobile units is it specials is it classrooms is it offices so what are the options and you know and then what is it what would it look like to do construction and when are the when will they be here how quickly can the mobile units be here so with that I don't believe the board is required to take action for that request no I don't think so that's an informal uh Direction but I'm sure staff have been taking good notes and can come back to you with a set of additional recommendations and information so with that could we get an extension and then um talk about going into closed session motion to extend 10 minutes so we can go into closed session second we have a motion and a second any discussion all right all
220in favor aye uh Dr Moore okay uh we have extended 10 minutes uh anything else from a board member all right to thank um both uh Miss parks and Dr Rolex for hanging on this late thank you both yes thank you both all right with that do we uh do we have a motion to go back into closed session uh so I moved second from uh Miss Purcell all in favor aye aye aye Dr Moore oh thank you uh we are now in closed session