Board Work Session 6-14-22

001[Music] good evening tonight is tuesday june 14 2022 and i am calling this meeting to order the orange county schools board of education pledges to our families students staff and the greater community to conduct our business in a courteous and productive manner showing respect for fellow board members staff and citizens the board asks its citizens to conduct themselves with the same courtesy towards all staff members and each other as per board policy robert's rules of order will be used to conduct meetings following the pledge of allegiance a moment of silence will be observed before we begin our business public comment will be held after the board adopts tonight's agenda the board also asks that you check your cell phones and other electronic devices to be sure that they are turned off or on vibrate in

002order to avoid disruptions during the meeting and if you would please stand and join me for the pledge of states of allegiance and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice thank you as we begin our work this evening i would like to recognize that orange county schools was established on land previously settled by the ancestors of the okunichi band of the sappone nation this board has made a commitment to honor and respect the heritage of of indigenous and all members of our ocs community to work to undo decades of racial harm and to build to the best of our ability a community that fosters a sense of belonging for all of our students so that they may thrive and succeed please join me now for a

003moment of silence thank you and now i will turn it over to dr felder who will have our recognitions this evening thank you and good evening chair doyle vice chair stevens the entire board and to our students staff families and guests tonight we have six recognitions and celebrations thursday and friday of last week many of us had the privilege to attend one or more or all four of the ocs high school commencement ceremonies thursday morning at cedar ridge high school partnership academy graduated 10 seniors the ceremony was full of energy and set the stage for the ceremony for the ocs online academy which also occurred at cedar ridge high school in the afternoon while only five seniors folders are on this slide eight seniors from the ocs online academy became the only alumni of the

004only virtual school ever to exist in orange county schools and while the online academy will not be offered next year we are so proud to have this class of 2022 represent the school and to mark the end of an era when ocs served families who needed options for educating their children in the midst of a global pandemic on friday afternoon and evening the commencement ceremonies for orange high school and cedar ridge high school respectively were back at the dean dome prior to the pandemic it had been tradition for graduates and families to fill the dean e smith center to celebrate the closing of the chapter of their high school years and it was great to be back 305 seniors became alumni of orange high school this year once a panther always a panther and 196

005seniors turned their tassels to become the class of 2022 red wolves alumni of cedar ridge high school words aren't enough to try to capture the energy and excitement displayed and felt for our graduating classes of 2022 we are indeed so very proud of each individual who received high school diplomas last week and we are forever grateful to the families and staff who supported them all along the way and helped them reach this unforgettable milestone we wish them only the best as they take their next steps into the world and in case you miss them you can view each event by visiting graduation.orangecountyfirst.com again that's graduation.orangecountyfirst.com where you can find the recordings for each ceremony okay well next we would like to congratulate coach chris walker of hillsboro elementary school who recently was named the north

006carolina 2022 norm leaf elementary teacher of the year for physical education by north carolina society of health and physical education norm leaf was an influential educator who worked with the north carolina department of public instruction for many years this award was established in his honor coach walker who is joining us will be presented with this award at the annual uh nc shape awards gala and reception in october in winston-salem the executive director of nc shape said being selected as the norm leaf elementary pe teacher of the year is the highest honor for a k-5 physical educator chris walker has established himself as an outstanding elementary physical education teacher within orange county schools but not only within orange county schools he has established himself as such in the state he is a former president is the

007former president of the physical education association and the nc shape coach walker is well known across the united states for his exciting and inspirational workshops [Music] dr kim ballard also wanted to chime in she is the president of nc shape and she said mr walker reflects the highest level of professionalism dedication and commitment as the state's 2022 elementary physical education teacher of the year this award is a reflection of his leadership his energy and love of his students nc shape is honored to have such a talented individual representing the 2600 k to five elementary schools within our state coach walker will go forward to apply for the southern district elementary physical education teacher of the year there he will be up against top professionals from the 13 states in the southern district and as the

008district winner uh will advance to uh events to be up against the professionals from the 13 states okay and so um as the district one winner that person will advance to the national shape america awards so congratulations to coach walker we are so proud of him on uh earning this prestigious accomplishment and so uh he has joined us i believe his wife is with us as uh is his principal miss christine kreider so come on down we want to celebrate you so um i just want to say thank you to the board um dr felder and to my lovely wife laura who supported me over these years for having the opportunity to um not only present in our school district and for our community and my students but also i've had the opportunity to probably

009present all those 13 states and i think seven others and then over the last four years i've been honored to go to mexico right prior to the pandemic i went to mexico for two years to present in two different cities guadalajara and uh um queretaro and then i went online the last two years so i've just been very fortunate to be surrounded by such great leaders educators and a lot of you i've known over the years who've supported me and i just want to say thank you and hopefully i can continue to represent our community in orange county schools moving forward thank you wonderful thank you [Music] so you know when you meet somebody for the first time and you having a conversation with them and you like slowly figure out what they're really passionate

010about because they get really excited you know maybe it's the grandparents showing off the grandbabies or you know maybe it's the parent showing off you know their child who just graduated you know or whatever hobby it is if you've ever had a conversation with coach walker you realize that that passion is not about him but it's about you and it's about his opportunity to learn about you and that's what he loves it's all about people because it's health and fitness and wellness but it is really about people and he does not hide this talent he shares it across the state he shares it across the country and you heard he shares it internationally so i do want you to hear though what some of your students said about you these are quite funny all right

011fifth grader says he's really funny he's really active and he likes kids i'm glad in class he will do jokes on you and say funny things and it's just fun to be in the gym my favorite thing about his class is his jokes and if we're running he runs with you and he chases you and then you have to tell him how many jumping jacks you did and then he'll try and run away from you and then you have to chase him he makes us feel special and important he is my favorite specials teacher we won't tell the others because of his energy and how happy he always is and how funny he is i think he won this award because of how he acts and how sweet he is to everyone and that he

012is really good at teaching stuff because i'm terrible at hockey and now i'm pretty good i think he won this award because he has taught a lot of people how to do a lot of great things i like i like the words he uses to help encourage you and how he forgives and how he listens sometimes he will let us help demonstrate how to play and it makes you feel really great in two words he's kind-hearted if i could share a personal message i would say coach walker you are the best pe teacher that ever existed in this entire universe and you will always be my favorite pe teacher every universe congratulations oh thank you [Applause] okay so next uh we want to recognize former cedar ridge high school senior now alumna carolyn folks who

013won the high school state championship in the women's pole vault at north carolina a t university this year she also earned the title of regional pole vaulting champion and franklinton this year i believe that's what it's called and uh she was named the field events athlete of the year for the central 3a conference wow carolyn participated in track and field and cross country for all four years at cedar ridge she plans to attend appalachian state university in the fall where she will try out for the cross country team there cedar ridge high school director uh athletic director andy simmons said that caroline has an excellent work ethic he said caroline has worked hard to get to where she is she is an excellent role model for young athletes who want to do well and go

014on to participate at the collegiate level she is a model for how much time and effort goes into being a strong athlete and she gets the job done in the classroom and running track and field so congratulations caroline we are so proud of you and we wish you the best as you start a new chapter at appalachian state i understand carolyn is here tonight along with members of her family there she is well come on down carolyn so we can celebrate you congratulations did you want to say a few words i wanted to say thank you so much for this opportunity this is a really big honor thank you so much you're so proud of congratulations [Applause] okay so next we'd like to recognize emily gaddy is athletic trainer at orange high school and she

015was recently named athletic trainer of the year by the north carolina high school athletic association she will be officially presented with the award at their summer clinic in july the athletic trainer of the year award was named after elton harley who was a pioneer for athletic training in secondary schools in north carolina he worked tirelessly to improve the health and safety of student athletes across north carolina this award is meant to highlight athletic trainers who embody the same work ethic and passion for improving student athletes health and safety in addition the north carolina athletic trainers association celebrated national athletic training month with an event at the north carolina museum of history in march 2022 you guessed it mrs gaddy was a speaker and a panelist for the evening's discussion and in 2017 mrs gaddy was

016also one of five finalists for the training and conditioning magazine and school health's most valuable athletic trainer award mrs gaddy could not be with us tonight she is on the beach enjoying a well-deserved vacation with her family but we want to congratulate her and i see her principal mr jason johnson is here so mr johnson did you want to come up and uh lord uh miss gaddy good evening good evening i hope everybody as well um it's nice that the north carolina high school athletic association has acknowledged something that we in orange county already knew that we have the best athletic trainer in the state of north carolina ms gaddy puts in numerous hours to ensure our student athletes are safe but not only our student athletes our opposing team students athletes are safe so

017this is truly an honor that you all are recognizing her tonight with that said thank you for supporting our athletic trainers we need them to keep our student athletes safe so thank you mr johnson all right and so next we want to recognize uh that on june 19 1865 u.s major general gordon granger issued general order 3 which informed the people of texas that all enslaved persons in the state were now free this day has come to be known as juneteenth a combination of june and the 19th juneteenth is a federal holiday in the united states commemorating emancipation of enslaved african americans it is also often observed for celebrating african-american culture this year the federal holiday will be observed on monday june 20th since the 19th falls on a sunday and next we want to

018celebrate pride month so according to the popular site awarenessdays.com pride month is celebrated in june because that's when the stonewall riots took place way back in 1969 these riots were promoted by a raid that took place during the early morning at the stonewall inn in greenwich village manhattan the lgbtq plus community held a series of spontaneous demonstrations to protest against the raid and calling for the establishment of places where lgtbq plus people could go and be open about their sexual orientation pride month is now a movement that celebrates diversity for the lgtb lgbtq plus community it is a way of protesting about discrimination and violence it promotes their dignity equal rights self-affirmation and is a way of increasing society's awareness of the issues they face pride month is important because we continue to raise awareness

019improve the attitudes of society and encourage inclusiveness among the lgbtq plus populations chair doyle that concludes our recognitions and celebrations for this evening thank you so much dr felder okay now it is time to adopt tonight's agenda do i have a motion to do so so moved second motion from a smiley a second from miss mckenzie all in favor aye aye any opposed okay great and now it is a time for public comment after each speaker has been recognized they will have three minutes to speak the board will not have a discussion with any speaker no profane or vulgar language will be permitted nor personal abuse against any person any speaker that uses threatening language will not be permitted to continue public comment should not address any specific confidential student or personnel matter complaints concerning

020any specific employee or students are not permissible during public comment speakers must conclude the remarks at the end of their three minutes and we have two people signed up tonight our first speaker is meg tucker welcome ms tucker thank you good evening my name is meg tucker and i'm a proud parent of a rising first grader and a rising kindergartner in orange county schools i stand before you as a concerned citizen and as a representative for nearly 30 parents grandparents and citizens of this county to ask for information and to offer our support to the orange county school board i speak on behalf of those standing behind me a group of neighbors that meets weekly to discuss school safety issues with the number of mass shootings and specifically school shootings on the rise around this

021country we can no longer afford to assume that it won't happen here that it won't happen in our schools that it won't happen to our children as a group we are eager to learn about orange county schools plans for keeping our children and educators safe so that they may teach and learn in an environment free from fear we humbly stand before you offering our support and our assistance in whatever way we can to ensure that the district's plans are up to date and that our teachers and students know what to do if they see anything related to a potential threat however it presents itself we do not stand before you lightly and we do not stand before you advocating for any political party we stand before you as human beings who are concerned for their

022children and for teachers that we must come before you at all brings us here with heavy hearts but we are also here with a strong sense of purpose and resolve that this county must be prepared we must do better and we must advocate fiercely for our children's rights to live and to learn and so we humbly ask that you place a high priority on your school board agenda to review to review and address any gaps in the school board safety plans so that orange county schools may be a model district moving forward specifically we request that orange county school board make a school safety update a permanent agenda item for each school board meeting in addition for the next meeting in july we ask that the board share their top three concerns for school safety

023in orange county so that we can keep the discussion moving forward we offer our support to assist you in this endeavor thank you thank you so much miss tucker our second speaker this evening is ms gretchen schmidt good evening uh board and superintendent felder um teachers and staff share that they are expected and oh i wanted to say first thank you so much for the simplification of the uh signing up to speak in public comment process um teachers and staff share that they are expected to keep political talk and political politics period out of the school environment in their work space in the classrooms and this is a good policy it has parents at large there's no place for it in the school system and unless we're talking about like a political science class um

024and in that situation we're talking about the um the actual system you know and how it's supposed to work this policy is followed by some and not by others an increasing concern we hear from teachers and most recently around 50 parents who have been asking you know what can we do in the district is the political messages from the from this body seem to be fair game most recently a message to the whole district following this tragedy in buffalo went from heartfelt expressions of sympathy for individuals whose lives were taken but then ended in the projection onto the community onto this school district community the same horrific qualities that inspired this evil behavior and we've asked from this podium and emailed a significant number of inquiries from the time that this hate began being spoken

025of back in october asking what and where this has been seen and exactly what here in this community inspired such a response that continues to be projected on to the families and the students of the district here at this time we ask again and knowing there is there's not a back and forth dialogue here we would be happy to receive a response to any of the emails that we've sent or a follow-up to the district letter explaining to the community why the horrific spirit of that individual is projected onto the community this brings me to the ironic question that has now come up in the way of both the political messages and symbols in the school and both the resolution against hate it's not a new phenomenon to have a symbol or an image change

026over time from the original inspiration about when that symbol came came to be the recent mural that's been created and largely on display at cedar ridge high school reflects the politicized symbols formerly associated with political lobbying groups as well as one of the symbols which has been co-opted by actors who have successfully over time associated the symbol with hate as everyone has witnessed over the recent three years being attributed with billions in damage and the violent attacks against individuals who have sometimes ended in death we're asking for an inspiration for creativity that's original that's not commercialized that's not politicized to be inspired for the the symbol of unity in the school that is actually truly welcoming and doesn't bring up these these images and this feeling that's been over the last few years thank you

027thank you ms schmidt okay okay that concludes our public comment um and as was mentioned we have the paper signed up now and there's still the written sign up that you can um submit um until midnight tonight for uh your comments written comments to be included with the minutes for the meeting and at this time we have board comments and i would like to start by just saying the graduations were such an exciting experience of the successful conclusion of the school year it just felt so wonderful to be with our four groups of high school students celebrating with them and with our recognitions tonight um just a real sense of how important physical health and well being are with um mr walker ms gaddy and miss folks all being recognized so really appreciative of that

028nice to your stevens well i guess it'll sound like ditto but you know i attended the full graduations uh graduation ceremonies last week and warmest congratulations on their well-deserved success and it was a good feeling to being back in the dean dome again thank you yeah let's continue to your left ms mckenzie yes also on my list is to congratulate our graduates thank you to our families also and all of our staff members all of the staff sitting in this room who have worked tirelessly this year to keep our schools open in such a difficult time as a parent in this district i cannot personally thank you enough and also as a board member you are all truly incredible um i also wanted to mention pride month here and just say that during a time

029when the rates of our lgbtq plus students and staff members are under assault that i really am appreciative of all of our administrators and teachers who help create inclusive and affirming spaces in our schools your work is truly saving lives and um i am very grateful miss houser yeah so i just wanted to echo the congratulations to our graduates and thank you to our teachers and school staff and the entire staff for making that happen in in what seemed to be um an incredibly challenging year or a couple years but congratulations and thank you also just wanted to extend my congratulations to everyone on the graduations um i did not remember my tissues and that was a mistake but the student speakers in particular i thought were awesome and thanks to all the staff members

030who helped make it happen because it's quite a big event logistically mr etherton yeah me as well um congratulations to all our graduates all the ceremonies excellently done so i appreciate everybody involved in those activities i also just wanted to take time to thank the budget committee for this year those that had helped set it up attended and all the board members that were part of that um i think we had a lot of challenges this year and glad we were able to focus on a lot of those big challenges dr moore um graduation was was beautiful i think we all cried at some point during graduation um congratulations to all the graduates and thank you to all of our teachers and staff who played a role in the graduations thank you all right now

031we're moving on to our consent agenda and i know there are a few items um that folks may want to pull but just to mention quickly what's on here um we have um our minutes do we have our minutes did they get added okay okay we have our personnel report to approve and the monthly um mask face coverings uh discussion per senate bill 654 there is a change in what uh is being proposed from the secondary transmission to the following clusters with the orange county health department i just want to note that for everybody um our budget amendments on the purchase contract for the stop the bleed kits the 90-day contract extension from the bud group janitorial services curriculum instruction con contract with branching minds for mtss teacher support the school bus fuel purchase contract

032and the durham tech college liaison memorandum of understanding so out of those nine items are there any that board members would like to move to the regular agenda for further discussion bonnie yeah i just wanted to pull um the branching minds item will did you have yes um the bud group extension and the fuel purchase contract okay and so i'm just wondering um [Applause] when we should dr felder do you have an opinion about when you want us to add those into the uh regular part of the agenda probably i would recommend maybe before uh the policy discussion okay would that be a good place that's fine with me okay okay so um do i have a motion to adopt tonight's uh revised consent agenda removed second a motion from ms mckenzie a second from

033miss hauser all in favor any opposed okay great our first discussion action item is a pride month resolution and i want to express my appreciation to ms mckenzie for all her work in drafting that and i don't want to say too much because a lot of it's in there but it's just a really important um resolution that i'm glad you brought forward and the the significance of it is incorporated in the resolution itself so pass to you thank you resolution honoring pride month and celebrating lgbtq plus students staff and community members whereas the orange county board of education acknowledges the dignity and worth of all students and employees and strives to create a safe caring and responsive school environment to facilitate student learning and achievement and whereas the board prohibits discrimination on the basis of

034race color national origin sex gender identity sexual orientation disability or age and as noted in policy 1710 the board will not tolerate any form of discrimination harassment or bullying in any of its educational or employment activities or programs and whereas ocs gender support guidelines state that ocs staff play an essential role in creating a supportive school culture and advocating for the well-being of all students it is important for school staff students and parents to be aware that transgender non-binary and gender non-conforming students may be at a higher risk for peer ostracism victimization and bullying because of bias and or the possibility of misunderstanding and lack of knowledge about their lives schools must be proactive in creating a school culture that respects and values all students and fosters an understanding of gender identity and expression within

035the school community and whereas june 2022 marks the 52nd anniversary of the first pride parade which came one year after the stonewall uprising of 1969 which was six nights of riots led by transgender women of color like marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera sparked when lgbtq plus people resisted police harassment and brutality during an early morning bar raid it was a historic moment that served as a catalyst for the lgbtq rights movement in the united states and around the world and whereas the decades since have been one of struggle and celebration for the lgbtq plus community despite increased support and acceptance lgbtq plus young people still face many challenges for example without accepting families they are more likely to experience homelessness and nearly five times more likely to attempt suicide and whereas more than 300

036anti-lgbtq plus bills have been proposed in 2022 throughout the united states including bills that would limit representation of gender diverse and lgbtq plus people in the curriculum in schools access to medical care and participation in sports and whereas the trevor project reports that 85 percent of transgender and non-binary youth say that recent debates around anti-trans bills have negatively impacted their mental health and whereas the trevor project national survey on lgbtq plus youth mental health in 2021 reported that 75 percent of lgbtq plus youth had experienced discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity at least once in their lifetime and over half had expressed had experienced this form of discrimination in the past year and whereas lgbtq plus people in the united states face disparities in employment healthcare education housing and many other areas

037central to the pursuit of happiness in the united states and whereas cornell universities we know what we know project found that lgbtq plus people of color face disproportionately higher rates of discrimination in the workplace and community at large exceeding discrimination experienced by both white lgbtq plus people and by straight people of color and whereas the orange county school board appreciates the many contributions made by lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer students staff families and community members to the vibrancy of the broader school community and whereas it is imperative that young people in our community regardless of sexual orientation gender identity and expression feel valued safe empowered and supported by their community and now therefore be it resolved that the orange county school board does hereby proclaim the month of june as lgbtq plus pride month

038in orange county schools and be it further resolved that the orange county school board commits to working with lgbtq plus students family staff and community members to build safe and equitable schools where all students families and staff members are valued for who they are and where diversity is celebrated and be it further resolved that the orange county school board encourages central services and administrators to support educators across grade levels and content areas to acknowledge and celebrate lgbtq plus pride month each june and be it further resolved that the orange county school board urges all students staff and community members to respect and honor our diverse community and to build a culture of inclusivity and equity not only during lgbtq plus pride month but during the other 11 months of the year as well thank you

039hillary you're welcome okay any comments before um i take a motion um to approve this resolution sarah i'd just like to say thanks to miss mckenzie for drafting the resolutions thank you very welcome well done thank you motion to approve second motion from ms smiley a second for mr atherton all in favor aye aye wonderful thank you so much hillary done a tremendous amount of work thanks for supporting it everyone okay um we now are moving on to our work session which is just one information item dr felder indeed we have one information item uh however uh chair doyle would it be possible to move the curriculum instruction contract with branching minds for mtss teacher support up on the agenda uh miss ware our mtss director is here with her two children and oh absolutely

040perhaps i didn't realize i saw the children and i saw her but i didn't realize she was here just in case we needed to speak to this item so that's awesome and they're doing such a great job i mean they are okay she's got them so would it be this is a good time okay okay i'll move to move that um agenda item for the branching minds up to uh are we gonna do that right can we let's do it now can we do it let's do it now next on the agenda second great thank you emotion from ms smiley in a second from miss mckenzie all in favor aye many opposed great right welcome yeah really well but we may be reaching the end of that thank you i appreciate it so sure okay

041so miss meyer thank you so much um this is actually i was getting these questions i'm getting from the community so i just wanted to relay them um they wanted to just understand more about the contract i understand it's something we were looking at a couple years ago and so the information that goes into branching minds does that go from an electronic system or is that going to create an additional work burden on our teachers that was one question will it include second questions will it include the aig assessments and third is the data in it protected or do will we be sharing it um with the vendor to use in blind data analysis so those are great questions um i can answer the uh the first one quickly um branching minds is a platform

042that has the vast majority of their data auto fed so it is considered like an automated automated batch import um and so it essentially picks up that data and feeds it in there are as i turn to ryan miller in case i miss speaking um there are a few things that our team at the central office level may need to do some data kind of um preparation for that to be picked up however that will all live with us at central office we will not be asking teachers to hand input data that's not a good use of their time right right and um what about you know because in addition to the mtss measures will it include any of the aig assessments so we can do some of those assessments those would be ones that

043we would most definitely have to prepare um because of the nature of the assessment and some of them honestly we still score by hand so that makes it difficult um that can be done we will need to work with the vendor to talk through what that may look like in addition to look at what the plans that are generated may look like that we could adapt for our aig students so that's something i can check on okay and we could i could see if that what the parent wants to do and finally the data is the data how is the data protected and how is the privacy protected is really the essence of the question so we have looked through their data processes ryan miller has talked with them to ensure that like with all

044of our vendors that have access to student data that they are meeting our requirements for student privacy um and so that of course is part of that contract um this is an internal tool so this will not be something that will be parent or community facing and the data will be protected like all of our other data sources like powerschool and aims web and dibbles the same contract applies for student privacy okay great so okay that that's helpful i don't have any other questions you can i can probably clarify as far as their data privacy they have a data privacy policy so it's each company has its own they are different policies but branching minds does have one great thank you any other questions sarah this is a question i just want to make sure

045that i'm understanding this um well so something that we talked about in the student achievement committee earlier this year as we were looking at some student assessment data was how incredibly manual it was for teachers administrators for us as the board to look at each of these pieces of data and so part of what i'm unders i'm ex i'm guessing is here is that that this is going to improve that process right so that's like the data analysis at the school level or classroom level or like even the student level right of these different sources um that we're going to be able to it's going to up our ability to analyze this data is that solving that problem yes and um branching minds is a platform that allows us to take just like you said

046multiple data points and we actually have some ability to change the thresholds for risk within the platform and so we can do that based on local norms we can do that with any number of variables and then with that we're able to take those multiple data sets and we're able to really drill down to groups of students who are at specific risk levels all the way down to individual students so we can ensure that we are able to identify their need accurately and then a make a decision as a team how we are going to meet that need and so what supports we'll put in place and that will go all the way from core which is you know what we talk about a lot that core instruction is our first and best defense and

047so we will be able to look at core data as well so we'll be able to look at grade levels we could look at the whole fifth grade across orange county schools we'll have that option as well and then we can go like you said all the way down to class we can go to small groups of students we can create custom groups and we can look at students individually as well so it's a very powerful platform it does a lot of that kind of data mining for us which really allows us the time to work with the data and determine instructional goals and next steps and then work with our students and so when you say us you mean like a teacher too right like once we all once everybody knows how to use

048this it it might save some time actually so you're not needing to log into these multiple places yes ma'am and it will be um extremely helpful when we're having parent conferences when we're having conversations about what support students may need with their parents and guardians we will have everything in one place in a way that will be very clear and concise that's awesome right motion to approve second great emotions i think go ahead i did have one question um on the the cost aspect of it i do see it's 57 this year but then it talks about annually there'll be a 300 per school and then a per pupil license fee is that included in the 57 so we're expecting it to be 57 per year or is it going to jump up and it

049will be lower okay optimistically the next several years because in that quote that you're seeing there is also professional development and so once we have trained the majority of our school-based teams our central office staff and we begin on the implementation we would not then need to have that same level of professional development in future contracts okay thank you for the clarity thank you so much you're so welcome again motion to approve motion from miss hauser second second from ms mckenzie all in favor bye any opposed thank you all so much for your support of mtss and your family our little family as well we are for sure and they're waiting at us way back at them she was waving at us that's our heart all right and so dr felder i think we're going

050to keep the other items sold before the policy item and so now it's time for our work session item yes and so orange county schools is so super duper excited to challenge all students in grades k to 8 to a game of book monopoly workopoly there we go i keep throwing it in there which is our summer reading challenge at this time i'd like to invite dr denise green our new chief academic officer to tell us about our summer reading challenge welcome dr green and we enjoyed all the graduation festivities with you get me all hooked up to you well good evening everyone good evening chairman doyle and vice chairman stevens members of the board of education superintendent dr felder i am very excited to be here this evening and very excited to be a

051member of the orange county family and also excited to have members of my team here thank you team for being a part of this evening and they gave me the easy job they said i could come and talk about an exciting reading program this evening they book opely a take on monopoly and except that you don't have to go to jail you get to go to the library it's exciting that's cute well i know you have your game board right well this is our summer reading program and our summer reading program is not only to challenge our students k8 in the summer scholars and the read to achieve program but it's also to challenge all of our students our staff our parents and our community we challenge you to not only read your favorite book

052whether it's the latest john grissom book which is a series of short stories which by the way do you know that he starts a book every january 1st with a goal of finish it finishing the book by july 1st or if you're going to read and as an adult my favorite section of the bookstore is the children's book section i find that the children's books find many wonderful stories as well as new learning so pick up the latest books in the children's books so we do challenge our students and our adults to read this summer as you read check out ocs read please place your reading books there because we want to challenge our community to see how many books we are reading as we challenge our students when the students return please make sure

053that they turn in their bookly to their teacher we have prizes for every student who completes their chart and also we have big prizes for students for all the students who complete every round bigger prizes that they will be able to submit and and have a chance to win got your books ready got your hashtags all set you're going to go to the library and not to jail that's right all right thank you very much thank you thank you i have one question um have we shared this with the orange county library so they're prepared and maybe have the board up and all those boards and all things we will make sure they have them excellent okay thank you thank you bonnie i was curious with the food for the summer program that we're running

054it are the the board's going out and our books going out with our with the meals when we bring the meals out to the community centers and other places that's a great question i don't know but one thing that we will research thank you because we want to make sure that all our communities are horrible here other questions hillary i just wanted to say thank you for this program um i um i think that this is exciting to have something the whole district is doing and that my kids who are in different grades can do sort of not that they're reading the same books but do together and something the whole family can talk about absolutely my husband and i are doing it with them and reading our own books and um they've already asked

055to go the library twice so that is twice more than at this point last summer so thank you great i hope to get into some book talks with some of you right here and so if you're reading the john grissom book join me several squares you could count that in i'm curious later tell me where you decided to put that on your on your game board the prizes we really want to know what the prizes are they will not tell me [Laughter] well my kids told me to ask so i'm glad she did surprises excellent okay now we have quite a few um items coming up for a vote in our discussion and action section and i'll pass it back to you dr felder and i believe we're gonna hear from mr abele as well

056you got it thank you uh chair doyle absolutely yes so um mr patrick abele our deputy superintendent operations has the next four items and that would be school calendar revisions for the 2022-2023 school year a bell time update for 2022 2023 school year limited spot reassignment to cedar ridge high school for new developments and activity bus driver incentive pay programs mr appley thank you thank you thank you good evening so we'll go ahead and get started here school calendar revisions on the board may recall earlier this spring you passed calendars the academic calendars for students and staff the 2022-2023 school year we're back tonight asking for minor revisions to those calendars and i'll outline within each of the calendars we have a traditional school calendar and then we also have a year-round calendar that impacts

057hillsboro elementary school our only year-round school within the district we'll start with our traditional school calendar revisions you'll see some general themes i won't read everything that's on the slide to you about how and days that are moving but i'll certainly make sure you're well informed so first and foremost as we experience with the primaries this year several of our schools are polling locations and voting locations and looking at future years in the elections and based on anticipated voter turnout currently four of our sites are slated but there could be additional need within the community in future years for voting locations and on school campuses and we do know when school is in session that creates an impact to the school operations and can present a safety concern and challenge we did work for some

058time with the board of elections local law enforcement we also hired and had staff on site from a security agency and made sure that we put plans in place for that day some of those were seen some of those were were not so obvious but wanted to recognize just the concerns from staff and the public with with schools being open on such a monumental day for our country when individuals go out to express their right to vote and we know that individuals are authorized and allowed to be within 50 feet of a voting location of the polling sites based on state law as well and that that also can create some concerns as we have school in operation and we always can't visually separate students in classrooms from where those locations are and so the

059first change on the calendar is to make november 8th 2022 this upcoming november which is the voting day polling day in our schools to make it a teacher work day i would further recognize on our calendars that the superintendent have the authority to make that a work from home a remote work day and that just lessens the amount of staff that's in our building we did that in a previous district i was in and that worked well limiting the number of cars or individuals on a campus except for those who would be required to be there which are typically our custodians and so the first change on the traditional calendar is moving the october 31st teacher workday to november 8th and november or october 31st would become the student day and so there's not any

060um adjustments to the instructional hours for the for the year for that the second change as we implemented our calendar revisions we wanted to make sure we had a clear um notations within both calendars as to what days would be implemented other makeup days for next year that is part of the calendar process and so when we looked at possible teacher work days on schedule that could be used for inclement weather makeup days january 23rd on the calendar was a required teacher work day and january 24th was an optional teacher work day and if we had to use the optional teacher workday it would create a situation where students would possibly come back to school on a monday and then be out the next day and so we just wanted to swap the required teacher

061workday for the optional teacher work day that keeps that long weekend together um should we have to use the optional teacher workday as a student day and again there was no net changes to the amount of time on the calendars for that switch i mean again these these changes were reviewed and we met with the calendar committee just to kind of update them and to get feedback on possible days to use the third change to the calendars to just clarify that the last day of school june 9th for the traditional calendar will be an early dismissal and that will be a three-hour early dismissal without parents trying to figure out is it 11 o'clock 11 15 11 30 12 30 1 o'clock it's just three hours and so um they can uh just back track

062from the bell schedule the ending time three hours and that will be consistent at all of our campuses as to the early dismissal time and then again the weather makeup day so right now on our calendars as we discussed at length when you approve the calendars there's 174 student days in the calendar for next year there's six hours of instructional time that we built under the calendar so 174 days at six hours of instruction equals 1044. instructional hours were required by law to have 1025 instructional hours that gave us a bank of 19 hours of time that we could use for inclement weather now remember this top bullet right here we just took three hours of that away because we're no longer now in school for the six hours the last day of school it's

063three so we're down to 16 hours of bank time we propose the first day that is missed for inclement weather there would not be any makeup we'll use six of the banked hours for the second day there would be no banked uh no makeup we would use banked hours the third day as mentioned we would use the optional teacher workday on january 24th the optional teacher work day on march 24th and they would uh teacher work day on may 5th and then with that leaves four additional hours in the bank that we could use for school delays as needed during the next school year we're only showing five days on the weather makeup calendar there certainly are other work days that are possible or possibilities to be used but with having a tremendous amount of

064professional development and staff activities already planned on those days we didn't want to pull that or put those on the inclement weather plan but we recognize once we exhaust five days we would be back the superintendent would need to present a plan on how we would make sure we meet the thousand and twenty five instructional hours for next school year questions regarding the calendar revisions and you also have the full calendars within the packet online sarah this isn't a question um thank you for making the shift on election day i'm very very glad um that you did that um i a couple of just a note on the the family-facing version of this calendar um i think that there are there are like some small things in here that can be confusing for families so

065optional teacher work day versus required it it's i think in the family-facing version we should just like not make that distinction but but like teacher work day is no school for students like just the the clearer we can be about like when students need to be there or not for better we we will and we absolutely do on the public-facing documents what's in your packet tonight is just the combination of a calendar for both students and staff because one impacts the other when we're talking about a student day or teacher work day but you're absolutely correct when the documents are uploaded after this evening based on your approval then there is a completely separate document for staff from students it's very clear about it's just a student day off and they don't have to get

066into whether it's an optional required teacher work day what we do want them to make sure is they know that you know there are these inclement weather days that are designated and so if we have inclement weather those could be days that you know end up being school days down the road we might need a little bit of language around that since it's been so long since we've i think we used to have a little bit more of a bank maybe than we we did you're correct so we did have more instructional days and as was discussed through the calendar process and the feedback was to provide more time for professional development professional learning next year allow students an opportunity to recover and learn um and you know really to make sure that the focus

067is on academic achievement but teachers needing the professional development to do that especially as we emphasize data and assessment and mtss and practices letters you heard quite a bit about the last few months the teachers have that time for the professional development to ensure they have rigorous and high academic standards within the lesson plans so as we think about kind of moving forward we certainly will address that and make sure that we're we're covering that in the plans other board member questions motion to approve second from ms mckenzie second for mr atherton and and i'll now present the year-round calendar revisions for approval so again the same thing we did one item we did adjust the quarter three just so we added instructional day by making the shifts february 3rd the optional teacher work day

068becomes a student day that work day moves to november 8th we did change december 16th to an optional teacher workday so students would be in school the entire week in order to provide additional work day in may 8th that could be used for inclement weather there was no loss to the scheduled teacher workdays on that switch last day of school for them is scheduled right now for june 7th early dismissal because they do end their school year on june 7th they do have an opportunity for additional inclement weather makeup days after june 7th but remember the calendar law requires us to be out by the friday closest to june 11th and so their inclement weather plan would be day one no makeup bank six hours day two no makeup bank six hours may 8th june

0698th and then may 5th and the reason the inclement weather days seem a little bit out of order is because we take advantage of the extra day at the school year we can use and it puts may 5th on both the traditional schedule and the year-round schedule as the fifth day for inclement weather makeup and the reason we did that right now that's a combined day on both calendars where there is scheduled professional development both for traditional teachers and year-round teachers and we didn't want to take a work day for professional development have one school being in session and the other school being out because of inclement weather and so that's why it seems a little out of order there but it was done on purpose so that day five equals may 5th on both

070makeup plans i have a question just in general do we know and if you were dr felder no um is there going to be any um inclement weather remote like you can have you know if we have five days that we need to cancel because of inclement weather do we end up having two that we could be visual days there is not they actually within the law um very specifically stated that that is rescinded that section of the law effective june 30th 2022 so school districts no longer have that option thank you any other questions it's the last day at hillsborough elementary school a half day as well it is yes motion to approve second motion for ms mckenzie a second from vice chair stevens all in favor bye and he opposed great thank you

071so much mr oberle all right thank you so the next uh item we've discussed a couple times now is to propose school bell times with adjustments for next school year obviously number one priority is ensuring all students arrive safely and on time to schools each day we did work through a couple feedback cycles with district administration and school principals on proposed bell times and looking at what would best serve our students with the instructional day and how we're accounting for students in minutes within the school day one item of note is as we present the bell times on the slide for the proposed bell times that is the start of the instructional day and the end of the instructional day so students pack up and start leaving the classroom after the instructional day ends when

072those bell rings and so we also would say to our parents and the public you know it is very important and one of the items we'll be addressing with communication to parents over the summer and as hillsborough starts back here shortly is how critical it is for students to arrive by car just like we're addressing students coming in late by bus it's critically important students who come by carpool each day or at school on time so that they're in their classrooms ready to begin instruction when the bell rings we have started the process for developing a survey we have not been able to launch that survey at this point in time so certainly the board can adopt the recommendations this evening or we can bring this back on the 27th our focus the last several

073weeks as you know has been on safety initiatives and other initiatives at the end of the school year and so we're still working to get a survey launch we still feel it's essential we get staff and parent feedback not only about with the proposed bell times but also some of the information but then our calendar our calendar committee will be meeting in the fall and we want to go ahead and start the process early for adopting calendars and as i mentioned previously in our meetings school bell times and school calendars go hand in hand as we look at the instructional minutes the instructional time and what we're accomplishing with the students but i didn't want to recognize i had spoken in reference to conducting a survey and i wanted you to know that that had

074not been launched at this time okay questions from stravley i i just want to know how the principles are reacting to the shortened school day you've so positive so far from what i've heard i'm certainly the middle schools liked having the additional time they lost so much some time that they had set aside for meetings with individual students when the school day but they have adjusted to that high school certainly you've heard feedback previously about not ending the school day at 4 15 pm and elementary school is approximately the same although it looks as if they've lost 20 minutes what we found was the practice of students packing up and starting and leaving the instructional day happen much earlier than the 2 50 pm posted time and so we have clarified 2 30 is the

075ending time so their instructional day really does mirror maybe five minutes difference than before the middle schools have adjusted to their plans to be able to meet with their students as they anticipated and again we had very robust conversations with the instructional day being six hours and then the schools being consistent looks like you know about a seven hour daily time that students would be on campus because of those non-instructional times like the eating of meals and the passing periods or passing time between periods don't count in instructional do not count in instructional time other questions motion from vice chair stevens in a second from miss mckenzie all in favor aye aye opposed great thank you uh just one clarity how are we communicating this to the families so um well one it'll go out

076automatically tomorrow with board matters we always send out board matters with the communications department the day after the board meeting um secondly when we send information out with the survey that we're still doing we're still communicating we'll have that out obviously hillsboro elementary school is the first impacted and so we'll be working with the principal for direct communication for all of their families as well and staff will be notified tomorrow as well so that they receive that we'll go through our texting system as well we have the ability to send by text email and phone calls so we can we can start the trio out of communication all right thank you you're welcome next item is the limited spot reassignment we discussed new housing developments in western orange county ms mao could not be with

077us this evening and so just wanted to again bring us back to what we had discussed because of the future growth and anticipated growth of new housing developments that are currently slated to attend orange high school but orange high school high school is projected to continue to be overcrowded for next year it's already been closed to transfers at this point in time we brought to you maps and we looked at both our capacity within the schools our future projections and a plan that would allow for some limited spot reassignment of new developments this primarily impacts students as you see on the screen from these subdivisions zero students are currently enrolled because some of these have not come online at this point in time we do have a few students from the havenstone community and one

078other community i believe that are already in the schools and so what we would recommend is those students would move over to our student transfer process where they would be grandfathered in to that school and any rising sibling coming in we would provide transportation to them through next school year and a couple of the students are already attending cedar ridge high school so that's why it's zero with an asterisk there wouldn't be any impact to them because they're already attending cedar ridge high school so we those 10 families we will be reaching out to them helping them understand and explain what this means and their options for either continuing at orange high school or moving over to cedar ridge high school and then we would provide bus transportation to all of these zones to cedar

079ridge high school because that would be their school of assignment and so our recommendation this evening is to move forward as presented with the limited spot reassignment of these developments for the starting with the 2022-2023 school year any questions from stravalay ocean to approve second question from ms mckenzie a second from vice chair stevens all in favor aye any opposed thank you all right next item up is activity bus driver incentive pay programs when we brought back a couple months ago incentive programs for our bus drivers for the 2022-2023 school year including retention and other bonuses it was mentioned by the board and about that night in our discussion about activity bus drivers and we said we would bring that back and so this evening i have mr dwayne foster our director of athletics school

080health and operations and mr larry albert our director of transportation both of them will walk you through the proposals because we have activity buses that cross over multiple areas and so what we tried to do in our presentation in our proposal this evening is be equitable across the programs because we know when we say activity bus driver it involves multiple areas and has different meetings so gentlemen thank you mr foster mr albert thank you mr abele good evening chair doyle vice chair stevens the board dr felder and all in attendance uh today we would like to present uh the establishment of a driver incentive program for our coaches and activity bus drivers we believe this incentive program will we'll do two things one it will increase our pool of drivers as well as get our

081athletic coaches that drive as well as our non-activity non-athletic bus drivers in alignment um together uh we understand that a a is a major need for pool of drivers and and we feel that this incentive will increase that pool uh in in several ways and again ultimately get those two uh groups in alignment with each other as it relates to incentive and pay uh for the most part i begin first with our coaches uh currently our our coaches that drive are not compensated during the end season to drive buses they receive a coaching stipend but they're not do not receive a stipend for driving during the end season during the off season if i'm a coach i can go and drive and receive an hourly pay during the off season but the end season i

082don't i do not receive anything so we present an opportunity for coaches during the end season to receive a 250 dollar incentive for every five trips during the end season all right uh so in season as a coach we will ensure that a designated driver is assigned whether i'm the head coach or if i'm a head coach that doesn't have a cdl we then move to the assistant coach if that assistant coach has a cdl and uh wants to drive uh they'll have the opportunity to receive that incentive or even a manager uh for that matter all right and that will occur uh during the end season uh during the off season uh well let me take a step back if in fact there's a coach you know certainly at this point that has a

083cdl and and is the head coach or an assistant coach uh they in essence do not have to drive their own team so we have to bring in a driver that we pay obviously to drive the team all right so we really believe that it will encourage coaches that do already have their cdls to go ahead and drive so they can get this incentive as well and encourage coaches that do not currently have a cdl to go and obtain one all right to kind of get in alignment with potentially receiving the stipend for after five trips uh we then move to the off-season or non-activity bus driver who typically or normally receives their hourly pay these coaches i'm sorry individuals would also receive the 250 um incentive for every five trips all right we did

084make a note that let's just say you drove three trips for athletic purposes and two trips for non-athletic purposes that you know it will combine for your five uh in that way as well uh but it both gets this opportunity um the incentive to put coaches in alignment with each other and again really believe that it will improve include uh and improve uh a bus pool of coaches that will uh decide to say hey i'm in season i might go ahead and drive considering that i'll be able to get this stipend here uh for the most part um i'll go to that final slide there i think i made the point about the non-uh athletic school trips and and and the like uh these drivers also again would be included into that uh 250 dollar

085incentive for every five trips questions for mr foster or mr albert sarah just um one i'm glad we're looking at this um one specific scenario i was curious about so field trips let's say i'm a coach who's a teacher i have my cdl i might normally you know drive the bus with my athletic team i'm presuming like if your class is going on a field trip you need to be like on the bus but not driving the bus during that field trip is that like if you're a classroom teacher and you're managing your classroom i i don't think you should like that's a scenario where we would want to let that individual also drive the bus while their class is going on their field trip thank you for that question as a principal when you

086send children on a field trip there's multiple adults i would it would be very similar to when a teacher or teacher assistant and we would have teacher assistants driving buses there would still be the teacher on the bus none of the incentive programs will put students at risk or trips at risk we would make sure that with the other adults the teachers other individuals they would they would have monitors or individuals on the bus um with them for for the trip and the in the um the safety of the individual so um certainly we could have folks who volunteer to do that um but if the board feels that they need to be excluded then we certainly would say you know you're excluded if it is your your class that's on the trip we did

087talk about coaches and coaches driving their teams and that is something that is a routine practice um and that that is something they have to do most times out of necessity because they can't find drivers and but every coach knows that if they're can't drive i mean some games are physically exhausting i was a coach i did rec league two and you know sometimes you're just you're not able to drive after a game then you know there's plans to handle that and account for that as well but no driver should ever be in a seat that's not comfortable and ready to take on that task but i don't see that with the field trips that we would run into too many scenarios with our cdl drivers just because of the number of tas or individuals

088who have a cdl that are licensed teachers is pretty small okay so there would be a there would be another adult in this scenario there should never be a situation where the only individual who is the adult on a trip is the one behind the seat that is the only thing i wanted to make sure was not going to happen so i'm happy to put that in policy and regulate or procedures and regulations thank you i have a question just a point of clarification for myself so so if i'm a basketball coach and i'm driving my team i'm really only compensated through my coaching stipend i don't get additional money normally but this every fifth trip then i would get that 250 whereas if i'm not a basketball coach right now i'm in some other

089sport but i come to help out the basketball team by driving i do get the hourly wage for driving right now and then i get the fifth trip 250 what could you remind us what the hourly wage is for our best drivers 14 and 25 cents an hour okay thank you other questions okay motion to approve second position for mr atherton and a second from vice chair stevens all in favor aye aye any opposed [Music] great thank y'all thanks okay okay so next on the agenda for tonight we'll be beginning teacher support program and uh a staffing request and so uh this time i'd like to invite dr chris gammon executive director for curriculum instruction and miss connie bremer director of human capital to the podium as they're coming up just want to note what

090we know research and best practice state and are very clear and that is that not only do teacher mentoring programs build teacher capacity they promote retention and increase job satisfaction but they also have a program teacher mentoring programs have a positive effect on student achievement and engagement and so again miss bremer and dr gammon will share how the district endeavors to strengthen our teacher mentoring program and also support teachers who are pursuing their national board certification ms brimmer and dr welcome good evening orange county uh school board first i just want to thank you for the opportunity any of you to discuss i'm sorry i always think i have my teacher voice that's better um i want to thank you for the opportunity to discuss beginning teacher support it has always been crucial in in

091recruiting retaining and building the skills of our novice teachers this is especially evident during the pandemic as teachers across our nation stay in our district has been have been forced to navigate new challenges many of our teachers in years one through three are now arriving at teaching through alternative options and did not come through a traditional teacher education program those who did come through a traditional teacher educa education program may not have had a traditional student teaching experience or intern experience due to remote teaching and school closures all of these factors have made it critically important that we evaluate how to support our newest teachers to ensure they have the skills necessary to meet the needs of all of our students and the confidence to remain in the profession long term as you know goal

092three of the orange county strategic plan is to recruit hire support and retain culturally proficient and highly qualified staff committed committed to providing all students with the excellent education in a welcoming environment in addition the goal outlines that by 2026 the orange county students teacher turnover rate will will decrease to at or below the state average according to the national association of educators approximately 50 of teachers are leaving the profession after five years moreover teachers cite the same reason for staying in the profession as they do leaving the profession it's either the support or the lack thereof from their colleagues and administrators beginning teacher support programs play a significant role in providing the support it is not enough to retain our novice teachers we must also ensure that they have the skills necessary to provide

093a positive impact on student achievement teacher experience is directly correlated with the teacher's ability to improve performance of students novice teachers are still developing the tools required to meet the demands of the classroom effective and intentional mentoring programs not only increase job satisfaction of novice teachers it helps grow our novice teachers into leaders and has positive effects on student achievement and student engagement orange county's data much like the nation has shown a steadily a steady increase of novice teachers since the 2018-2019 school year approximately 16 percent of all orange county teachers in 2021-22 have between zero and three years of experience this year orange county has 84 beginning teachers which is the largest cohort in four years today we have hired 18 beginning teachers for the 2022 school year the shortage of qualified teachers across

094the u.s has contributed to the popularity of alternative certification programs that's what you might know as lateral entry alternative licensure programs allow teachers to enter the classroom without having completed the educational class work of a traditional teacher education program these programs assume that individuals have the content area to teach but they like the methods classes taken in a traditional education program alternative licensed individuals have to take the educational coursework during a three three-year time frame after entering the classroom the number of alternative licensure employees in orange county has seen has drastically increased over the past four years from making up about 26 percent of our bt population in 2018-19 to now making up 44 of our beginning teacher population in 2021 21 22. these individuals are entering the classroom with no teaching experience and need

095intensive support and supervision to be successful another data point for beginning teachers is retention rates retention is divided by the state as being on the payroll in march of one year but not on the payroll in march of the following year as you can see the retention rates for beginning teachers in their first year hovers around 90 percent it is noteworthy that in our current model of service beginning teachers in their first year only only beginning teachers in their first year receive intensive coaching support from the north carolina new teacher support program via collaboration with unc chapel hill this program is a comprehensive university-based induction program offering a research-based curriculum and multiple services designed to increase teacher effectiveness enhance skills and reduce attrition among beginning teachers the north carolina new teacher support program provides each

096teacher with one the opportunity to attend the new teacher annual conference this gives first-years teachers the opportunity to network with other beginning teachers across the state two weekly intensive individualized classroom coaching sessions these sessions are 45 minutes each and targeted to support each first year teachers needs and three align professional development sessions throughout the year that focus specifically on the struggles encountered by new teachers this partnership has been crucial in supporting our first year teachers in contrast we are not able to provide the same level of support for our second and third year teachers as we look at the data we can see that as the intensive support drops off so do the retention rates this speaks volumes about the effectiveness of intentional coaching and mentorship in retaining our beginning teachers and the need to

097revamp support for our teachers in years two and three we also know that the attrition rate for beginning teachers statewide increases from eight percent to thirteen percent if you're alternative licensed person this can be due to a variety of factors but it includes the inability to meet all the licensure requirements from the state including the state board exams and an extensive portfolio required that we otherwise know know as the ed tpa the north carolina general statute tced supplies requirements set forth by law for beginning teacher support ncdpi develops specific standards that drive quality the quality of beginning teacher support programs across the state the standards are one systematic support for high quality induction programs this standard among other things includes a three-day pre-service for beginning teachers in their first year and 40 hours of in-service

098training for employees on alternative license standard 2 is mentor select develop and support all beginning teachers must be assigned a mentor the mentor is selected by their principal and meets the minimum requirements outlined by the district mentors must complete both the early training and conduct regularly meetings with bts complete paperwork for documenting their work with their bts orange county mentors are paid a 200 minimum stipend standard three and four teacher professional development and mentoring for instructional excellence both of these standards include tiered staff development offers offerings designed to meet the specific needs of beginning teachers beginning teachers should also receive the support of instructional coaches targeted feedback for improvement and intentional instructional planning opportunities with content area experts standard five formal formative assessment of candidates and programs each year districts participate in a peer review

099process to evaluate progress in these five standards once every five years the district participates in a monitoring visit to ensure compliance with state law all of these standards work cohesively to ensure novice teachers develop the tools required to educate students and to positively affect student achievement we are coming in front of you tonight to ask for consideration for three recommendations to improve the quality of our beginning teachers support the first one is to hire a beginning teacher and mentor support coordinator the beginning teacher and mentor support coordinator will be responsible for the general supervision of the program including professional development for bts support of professional development for alternative licensure employees oversight of mentors and keeping abreast of north carolina standard course of instructional and initiatives as they apply to new teachers hiring a beginning teacher

100and mentor support coordinator will increase the bandwidth to provide layered and targeted support for our teachers the sheer increase in numbers of bts coupled with the fact that almost half of our beginning teachers come to to us through non-traditional routes provides the needs for a full-time person whose responsibility is to oversight of the beginning teacher support program the addition of this position will allow all beginning teachers to have targeted tiered and intentional support that can have a positive effect on student outcomes equally as important this position is also to provide support for mentors to hone and develop their skills one person alone cannot support beginning teachers this position will be responsible making sure that our mentors our coaches and our administrators understand best practices for supporting beginning teachers in addition we would like for this

101position to act as our national board district contact in numerous studies national board certified teachers have been shown to have positive impacts on student achievement as i stated earlier many of our alternative licensure employees are struggling with the state-required portfolio process known as the edcpa this process is very similarly aligned to the national board certification process both portfolio processes are designed to collect standard bait evidence of accomplished practices both processes require candidates to gather analyze and reflect on their teaching practices by allowing this position to act as the national board certification contact we we would be supporting our experienced teachers who are interested in national boards and building the capacity for our beginning teachers to explore national boards in the future recommendation two is to revamp our existing mentors to approximately 20 lead mentors across

102the district the lead mentor's role is to promote the growth and development of the beginning teacher to improve student learning mentors are are critical supporters in guiding new teachers to enhance their planning instruction and content knowledge mentors help orient our new teachers to our school community teaching in general and serve as emotional support currently the district has 84 mentors although our mentors do a great job there is limitations on being able to effectively train and provide support for 84 mentors in addition we only offer mentors a very minimum stipend for their efforts restructuring the program to have lead mentors will lower the number of overall mentors that it will increase the quality of training and support it will also allow us to pay a sizable stipend to our mentors as well as increase the accountability

103and skill set of these individuals the beginning teacher mid and mentor support coordinator will be responsible for the training the mentors and standardizing the experience for all of our beginning teachers in addition creating lead mentor positions serves as a growth opportunity for our individuals to learn coaching skills mentoring skills and leadership skills that can be used to advance to other leadership roles across the district recommendation three is to continue with the north carolina new teacher support program in providing intensive support for alternative licensure employees these are our teachers who did not graduate from our teacher education program as stated previously orange county school has about 42 percent of novice teachers pursuing licensure through a non-teacher education program alternative routes to certification have a major impact on the teaching profession we know that these individuals can

104be as effective as teachers coming through traditional routes but they need support and that support has to be targeted and intentional the north carolina teacher support program has the bandwidth to provide this type of intensive support for alternative licensure employees all right thank you so currently we are paying the beginning teacher support program through a combination of human capital funds as well as title ii funds as noted in recommendation number one by ms bremer orange county schools intends to hire a beginning teacher and mentor coordinator from title ii funds in an effort to preserve the bt support program in its current state as well as add the recommendations that were listed or mentioned our leadership team discussed multiple creative solutions with different federal funding sources to make this happen so our team also sought guidance

105from ncdpi and assurance from ncdpi that an existing position that's currently funded out of title ii funds can be shifted to title four funds to increase our flexibility with those title ii funds the proposed solutions that ms brimmer and i have brought forth this evening will not require an increase in funds in the budget and i do want to reiterate that the beginning teacher and mentor support position it will be housed in cni and it will collaborate with human capital as necessary it's so so critically important that this position be well skilled when we're thinking about teaching and learning and just best practices but also for those skills to be leveraged and expertise to be leveraged with instructional staff and not just on the human capital side additionally housing this position under the cni lane

106or umbrella does not mean it will not maintain a connection with human capital as beginning teachers are navigating that critical onboarding process so we know that that's an essential piece to that experience so at this time we're at a place to take questions thank you so much dr gammon and ms bremer questions for them and sarah was a simple one and just so i understand today the 84 mentors that we have how are we training them and who's supporting them how does that work so at the current sorry at the current moment i support the mentors it has been a challenge um and you know they do receive support and collaborate with our folks our first year teachers who are participating in the new teacher support program the coaches also help with mentors and help

107support mentors i think that's been critical and it's been a great partnership between the two but currently i am supporting them how do we do that we have a yearly training that we call we do it in the beginning of the year and then every five years each mentor has to go through a uh it's called 24 21st century mentor training so that requirement has to be done every five years okay and just to clarify i can make more money driving an activity bus to games than i can being a mentor right 250 dollars five okay um i have a few questions so i'll just ask one and then um we can cycle back around if we need to um thank you for bringing this um and i think it's really important that we do

108some new things and how we're supporting new teachers and i think you laid out a really good case for why on top of that i'd also say that the teacher working condition survey that just came out laid out um some opportunities for us in doing that more effectively so i'm really really grateful for this um i guess my first question is just on the the peer review process and the monitoring visit what is what is the timing of our next monitoring visit you said that's every five years so our monitor visit is next year okay um and again we do do peer review every year that's a less intensive process and we do receive recommendations from from that um that the district is asked to look at and make modifications for i'd love to just

109i'm just curious about this kind of stuff so someday i did not even know that we did that peer review process so would be interested in seeing outcomes of that will um so one question i had is what review what feedback are we getting from teachers that are going through the current program versus this because i i assume it wasn't explicitly said here but i would assume that our teachers are telling us it would be more effective if we got this or this or this so do we have a process or feedback loop on this so the new teacher support program actually collects data for their for from our first year teachers and they do it from across the state i just had a collaboration meeting with them and i can tell you that the

110data points don't drill down to orange county but overall it is extremely positive i can tell you from working with beginning teachers however in their first year they absolutely feel very supportive from their coaches it is not uncommon when they get to their second year for them to ask do i get to see my coach i think the feedback from second and third year is that they need more support thank you i just have a couple questions just make sure i'm understanding correctly um so we're talking about hiring the mentor support coordinator and then the we have 84 mentors but we would hire an additional 20 lead mentors so we would not have the 84 mentors we would have 20 lead mentors okay and those mentors would would be more targeted and specific into who

111they serve and so for example i will give you i know that we have i can't give you the percent but i can estimate um more than 50 60 70 percent of our ec teachers are alternative licensure candidates and so it it we it would be incumbent upon us to figure out uh those 20 lead teachers our mentors who they would serve and so it may be that you know we have several people to serve e.c um so we would need to look at our at our beginning teachers to determine what areas and assign them our beginning teachers accordingly to those 20 people okay so so currently if we have 84 they're like serving one teacher maybe and they have a 200 stipend and then we'd go to fewer but they would get they would

112receive more um compensation for that and they'd maybe be slightly competitive to to be one of those um lead mentors and then okay that makes sense thank you any other comments will and then sarah i i just wanted to highlight because you said it a few times and it may not be translating for everybody the alternate license is really our grow your own which has been very successful for us getting tas into teacher positions and this would help support them who hasn't gone through traditional routes sarah and then bonnie i was going to make that point so thank you and then um you know some of the things that were highlighted in the teacher working conditions survey for new teachers were around um uh beginning teachers not having uh formal time to meet with their

113mentor during school hours um not having release time to go observe other teachers um not opportunities um not being observed as much as in some other districts by their mentor or having the opportunity to observe their mentor teacher and so um i really support the idea of strengthening and shrinking the number of mentors and giving the mentors more support but there's also a piece here that's around release time and opportunity for mentors to meet and observe and the beginning teachers too so how are you all addressing that side of the challenge that's that's a great question we actually had that conversation today in cabinet we discussed the fact that if we have lead mentors they are going to need time to be able to meet and to observe teachers at their beginning teachers and so

114leveraging our daily subs so that it's not an additional cost for the district is the first line of defense it is i can tell you that it is acceptable for substitute costs to be part of the beginning teacher budget that's been in our budget before to provide release time it's something we could add but again we do have daily subs to leverage and i do think that is an important process we're also going to have to be really structured about how we how we organize the time spent in terms of if you're a first year teacher how much time should you be spending as a lead mentor and if you're a second year teacher how much time and third and so on so that it's very laid out for our for our lead mentors okay

115bonnie yeah just really a comment first of all i i like the idea of consolidating the mentors i actually would like to see the program go even broader where i'm um and i really like the increase you know the increased comp for it and the slots where i'm choking a little bit is on the new central office position and especially when i think about the beginning teachers and being in first of all i always think mentors need to be in the shoes of the people they're working with but also you know between coaches and the tentacles that are coming in from central office through the lit through with cni through the coaches and there's so many ways um that you know i don't understand how the principal gets to really manage what's happening in his

116or her building so i'm trying to understand why why we need that central office position i'll add one other point as you know we're in a pretty tight budget situation with allotments to our schools and um so i'm really struggling with adding another central office position when we don't really know how the budget is going to settle out this year so i'm going to let dr gammon teach it yeah and i yeah well and i appreciate the question i think it's it's critically important to really think about across all schools the service that a beginning teacher is going to get currently does have a lot to do with the focus of an administrative team in that building because there isn't necessarily a direct district support position that's just focused on that mr bremer noted earlier

117that she's focused on many things many hats and is also trying to support that program as well in my experience i'm thinking back 14 years ago as a beginning teacher to be assigned a mentor that a is not in your content area that may rarely spend quality time with you there was not a centralized space to structure that network across schools that did not exist in my experience and so what often ends up happening is administrative teams get into a school year you may intently lay out a plan for beginning teacher support but the day-to-day business of running a school it's very difficult for an administrator a principal or print that team to be able to to solely focus on that so the the purpose of this position would be to have an aligning mechanism

118for all schools to be aligned around that support for their bts it's a way to connect the central office facilitators with those bts and it really takes that load off of the administrative teams in the building so that they can be a point of contact and they can also be working within the school improvement goals that may be specific for that school so i think that's why this position is essential because what ends up happening is going from school to school or district to district it could look different without having a consistent vision or focus and this would be the purpose of this position would be to tie those pieces together and if i could just speak to the funding source so title ii funds can only be used for professional development so we we

119can't use those funds for allotments for schools i i understand but we could use them in school roles or move money around i i just to so i understand i mean i'm having one other thing that i'm struggling with is if i go school by school some of our schools don't really need mentors their grades are good their retention is good doesn't matter other schools are really struggling on all funds so how do you manage that and you mentioned already ec so so can i so i will say this we have alternative licensure and beginning teachers at almost every single school they are very rare that there is not a beginning teacher in um in any of our schools during our current year so that's that's and all beginning teachers need support regardless of how

120the school is doing it is the classroom today is challenging um it is more challenging coming out of a pandemic and that support is crucial so going back to your original question and i like to think of this as an investment in our teachers and not a separate position because if we don't provide beginning teacher if we don't provide intensive support we lose teachers and that in itself has tremendous impacts for student achievement i just want to say also the i think the support for um teachers going for their national board certification having that central person seems really helpful i mean part of what i feel is very important to me in having this coordinator role is strengthening the effectiveness of the mentors so like somebody really owning that set of mentors and their role

121as a mentor and strengthening that so that they are then having impact with the set of three or four or five beginning teachers that they're working with um just given the number of things that you are working on you you couldn't possibly like spend that amount of time with the mentors to make sure that they're really getting the most out of it and i love the idea of that then as sort of a leadership opportunity as well and sort of developing a set of skill coaching skills and those folks that may interest them in a coaching role later or something like that so let's have one more comment and then let's um let's call the vote because we have other topics go ahead will so one question i had is so each of the teachers

122will have assigned mentors and the coordinator and i'm very sure that things pop up in between that so the teachers will be able to reach out to this coordinator to ask versus waiting for the next mentoring so that would be the expectation and i also think that it's the fact that we this position should live in cni we should live within the context of knowing our instructional programs knowing the best practices there's still compliance issues that that human capital will have will take on but um having it in cni makes it encumber that they are in schools and that they do know what's going on in each school and what the programs are that that we have in the structures in schools all right thank you okay so may i have a motion to um

123approve this request so move second motion from ms smiley and a second from ms stevens all in favor any opposed great thank you so much thank you miss brimmer okay so next i would like to invite mr abele back to the podium and i believe he's bringing members of his team or maybe not all right so miss compton our lead nurse will be joining the sabli and they're going to present a request for additional school nurse support for next school year we talked throughout the pandemic the support needs of schools having additional staffing has been critical we brought before you this past year a few items to assist with that need one of those was a contract for staffing with metasource which we utilize contact tracers throughout the pandemic that contract ended this month when

124school ended we also have an outside agency we contract with for staffing when school nurses are out when there's a vacancy we try to bring in additional staffing when we can as you know there certainly is a labor shortage for temporary help and it's very difficult even for them to have trained nursing staff just waiting on jobs because there are plenty of jobs open for full-time employment and then the third is we utilize obviously with the state mako and having individuals from the state come assist with kova testing on school campuses and their personnel helped assisted with the um any of the pool testing that we did with the weekly testing so those were three really big lifts during the pandemic we do know um right now as we said the mako contract has um

125scheduled to end with the state we're just not sure yet what that looks like for the fall and the amount of authorization that they will have for testing or supporting schools we also know that we don't have the contract continuing with metastores and we also want to be prepared as we think about where we may be in the fall all indications are we will certainly see a resurgence of covet in the fall has been that pattern the last two years once schools open back up and colleges and universities open back up after students being home traveling summer programs etc that there seems to be a resurgent that we have seen with this the waves each fall and so what sylvia is going to present is you know we don't know the unknowns but we do

126know we have nurses who really for going on two and a half years now during the pandemic are very concerned about the support and what that support looks like moving forward and as sylvia will discuss case load certainly is a concern especially at the high school level where we have one school nurse and over a thousand students on the campus from a school safety standpoint i will tell you um over the years there it's not often that individuals may go to a school nurse because of a headache or stomach ache or some other issue and school nurses help to work with guidance counselors and social workers because students open up and talk about things that are happening or things that are going on and things that are causing them to have that headache or to

127have that stomach ache and so oftentimes school nurses can also be that first line to help identify where there may need to be additional supports provided to the student or to the family as well so i just wanted to mention that not only do they serve an important role with all the health um needs and the health components that we ask them to do but they also are there for students who just you know need to talk privately with someone about their medical or other concerns good evening everyone i would just like to say thank you all for welcoming me into this position you guys met me um back in the fall in a similar situation asking for help for our nurses and i'm back again asking for the same the pandemic is not over

128even though we're not doing individual contact tracing we still are required by law to report any and all communicable diseases to our local health department so right now with the strong schools recommendation and changes we still do also have to notify anybody that's a potential close contact we were doing a two percent uh threshold within the school setting i know summer's here in agreements with the health department we will review any and all cases and we'll likely start doing weekly letters that we'll be sending home at this time as you can imagine um there's no nurses over the summer they're 10 month employees i'm an 11 month employee so it's very crucial and critical to have coverage for our our summer camps right now and we're struggling with that um as well as supporting our

129nurses i heard a lot of support for teachers and i in no way shape and form want to come across disrespectful because this cannot happen without all of us um as a community i've learned a lot in the 14 plus year or almost 14 years i've been here um and it's huge that we all work together with each other but as nurses we also are licensed by the board of nursing and there's what we call the nurse practice act that we have to follow that's law and what we're seeing is an increase in the school nurse workload as far as nursing practice goes we ourselves we only have each other to support and fall on to guide with our nursing practice and to assure that we're also filing guidance with the school board and the

130policies that are put with us that will also help dictate our nursing practice with the tremendous call of extra work and load with covid as well as the numerous amount of students that's not evenly distributed without the district so for example an elementary nurse may have 400 students where your high school nurse at cedar ridge has over 1200 orange high school has over thirteen hundred um and then we gotta look at the student population within that school um so our special education is not evenly distributed either throughout each school and that's not to say that the elementary nurse has an easier job than the high school nurse because you also have to think and reflect on what age group they are also servicing so our little ones need a little more guidance they need a

131little more time more education when we're talking about asthma diabetes um you know we're definitely there to help them grow and manage those health concerns by the time they do get to high school and when they do leave us we're hoping that they're independent with that but then we also have staff education that is constant and continuous you have to think about there's no written script for a school nurse day we don't get a lunch break there's no schedule time i should say we don't have planning periods we don't have office hours so whatever comes in the door is what we're seeing from the minute we get there to the minute we leave and we may see 30 to 40 kids a day and that does not include our children that we know are going

132to come to us that might need medication might need help with diabetes might need some extra education so we can assist in their classes the teacher can understand what's going on either social emotional uh physical so all of that on top of also doing you know the the continuous work and reporting to our local health department um trying to keep our nurses with us um you know our goal is definitely as well me myself i don't know if many of you guys know this but i've been here almost 14 years i started out as a licensed practical nurse working one-on-one with an ec student and i went back to school and i've stayed with this county that long and now i'm here and i'm very proud of that and i'm very proud of this entire

133district so we also in our nursing department we want to retain our current nurses we want them to stay we want to give them that incentive we want to help them you know not only with getting these positions we're also struggling how competitive can we be with pay only a nurse can do a nurse job only a registered nurse can be the school nurse right now you know there is a shortage of nurses and nursing staff yes we do have a contract with the company to help us when there's a nurse out but in reality they don't have staffing either or if they do we still have to orient that nurse school nursing is no nursing you have ever done just right for example i could not go in and do any ob nursing okay

134we just don't do that we still need mentoring we still need training yes we know the logistics of nursing and and our nursing practice but being a school nurse is a lot more than just being registered nurse we also have it takes a good three years to become proficient in what we do in any field requiring school nurses to come in with their national school nurse certification that's rare that is very very rare um school nurses don't quit we retire um and that's a fact um since cobit has hit we've been struggling we've had we've lost in the last two years five nurses that resigned and five retired because the work alert is just so overwhelming compared to the compensation and compared to the risk that we take with our very own license um because

135again you know when it comes to nursing our consequence of error is life and death and we do this because we love it if they don't have a competent nurse they don't have a nurse that has time it's it's our student population that's suffering our staff need to know how to care for our kids so with that said and we know the contracts over we are definitely asking for assistance with a full-time 11-month school nurse position that nurse we would we would hope to be a student support service nurse school float nurse so they can help us with our students with the 504 plans health plans iep plans can float to other schools mentor our other school nurses we have seven new school nurses to our school district seven right now as the lead nurse

136i'm the only one that has availability to go to these sites it's nearly impossible so that would help us our two permanent full-time 12-month communicable disease certified nursing assistants we would want them to be nurse extenders they would be housed in the high schools to assist the high school nurse as well as take on the role of the communicable disease and that could be any communicable disease right now it's covet but they would be also the primary person that would contact the health department and communicate as well thank you so much ms compton mr abele i know we're going to have questions for you go ahead mr oberli i just wanted to quickly say this slide deck here is updated from assembly the one permanent full-time is an 11-month school nurse and then the two

137permanent 12-month are cnas and so i did want to recognize right um if you're approving the staffing it would be based on what you see before you hear in the slide deck okay questions or comments so i i do understand the need and my concern is i know the recommendation is to go to the county commissioners to get this funding if they do not fund it really has to come back and us to talk about it in the overall picture of all the other things that we have that we talked about in budget committee that are competing for this this money that would be reoccurring so i personally would be very supportive of requesting the funding through the county commissioners but if it doesn't go through that it comes back in the bigger picture of

138all the reoccurring fundings that we're looking at for next year okay another comment sarah yeah i mean i i also am very supportive i definitely hear the need for this um and um i have not heard of us going back to the county commissioners and asking but this is certainly a good case for it i think i would um my concern was what i saw in simply about potentially going to fund balance then for this um just adding on to will's point here if we think that the cnas and the the 11 month nurse in particular need to be permanent positions um i would be concerned about funding them out of unbalance and 200 000 out of fund balance right now um my understanding is we're pretty close to we don't have a lot of

139wiggle room even in fund balance to be able to spend that kind of money yes and you're exactly right the public may not realize that school nurses are funded directly from the board of their two areas one of those is our school resource officers the second is our school nurses are funding directly one nurse per building from the board of county commissioners and that had been the model for many many years what we want to address is that model no longer can support the school health and safety and nursing needs of schools today we will also be meeting with the orange county health director and just making sure that we we help clarify what those current needs are in order for school nurses on the campus because one nurse per building 20 years ago was

140a different outlook and what the requirements were for schools when it comes to the number of immunizations alone the health assessments health records and the medical plans that are now in place of diabetes plans there's so many more requirements when i started over 20 years ago in public education that we're not a requirement for school nurses or schools and so the workload of of the nurses the one per building just may not be the model but we do agree um this is a an expansion item and that we are funding for school nursing nurses through the county commissioners and we would ask that we we use that as a first resort we're certainly we'll be looking for grants or other funding and certainly you know requesting any assistance from the state that would be able

141to assist with this as well but certainly you're right i mean there has to be an adjustment to either utilize fund balance or to look at other operating expenses that wouldn't occur so that this could occur because you all i know are in a very tough position and still not knowing our final allocations from the county plus as was discussed in the budget committee there's other concerns of of things that may happen in the state with employee salaries i don't want to speak on behalf of my colleagues or the board but certainly there could be other changes at the state levels that would be requirements of the local to pick up additional dollars next year that aren't budgeted at this time so we recognize that sony so i'm ready to make the motion that okay

142i'm sorry i need to ask a couple questions before that okay okay so let me let me ask one question if you don't mind i understand the two permanent 12-month actually i like the idea of a second nurse in a thousand or 1500 person high school i understand the floater nurse because we've had that before and then we have miss compton of course as the lead nurse what is the role of the 11th month school nurse so um we've got a couple breakdowns here so the what they're talking about the one permanent full-time 11-month school nurse yeah that would be utilized as a float nurse right now so when we have nurses that are out we have nursing vacancies we have additional needs at schools either cases clusters there's an influx of students who need

143additional review of immunizations caseload health plans that float nurse then floats to that loca it's not assigned but they're they're school based they they would float to that location to assist outside of the high schools so you're saying there's two float nurses there's a 10 month and 11 month yes the temporary one at the bottom that is strictly temporary and that that's primarily help us with covid um and we would anticipate that that um full-time 10-month district float nurse is temporary and it would not be something that we would continue after the next school year okay um thank you i had a couple um questions so the um with the contracts ending like with metasource um that's where the cna support would be kind of a replacement um so that funding though too like the

144funding source for that um i guess that was something we had approved from fund balance as well wasn't it we didn't have like sr dollars or something we we did use esser dollars last year for supporting that contract and that work okay and then i'm just curious because um we're talking about like expanding numbers of positions but we have had um don't we have some long standing vacancies as well um at this point i'm just curious how how we're doing filling vacancies that we already have so absolutely yes um we've had an orange high school that's been open since the nurse retired and this is going to be part of when we talk to the county commissioners there's some other things on the agenda as far as funding we would like to talk about incoming

145so the answer is yes but we're we're it is on the agenda to discuss yeah well because i know we had done some um like retention bonuses for our you know we we had real difficulty keeping nurses filling vacancies you know since the beginning of the school year and i know where are we with those bonuses i don't remember the status of them at this point they're any they're still available they're still available yeah the big issue is salary salary the competitiveness of salary okay okay so um so if i know bonnie said she's ready to make the motion i just want to have clarity over what and sarah has a question i want to have clarity over what we would be voting on to will's point because part of the most the request is

146that we seek funding from the county commissioners but go ahead sarah um yeah i was just wondering if you all are in communication with chapel hill as well i think you have a really good case here for um to the county for increasing just like the basic level of nursing support that they provide for our schools with the cnas and the floater and i imagine they would want to do something equivalent with chapel hill so are you all talking to them as well yes and and we do recognize um you know because chapel hill does have um local dollars as well um one of the areas that they're they currently have a school nurses for their pre-k programs and we do not have um separate pre-k nurses or funding for pre-k nurse that is also

147areas that our school nurses work and support and assist with i just think it might go best if we go to them together um as the two districts who uh presumably their high schools could also use an additional cna supporters thank you okay so um i'm ready for a motion and will are you you look like you want to help clarify what it is all i would say for the motion is a motion to approve to go to the county commissioners to request funding for these positions second and i'd like to just make a friendly amendment and that's if they don't approve it it comes back to the board that's the plan yes yes okay yes okay so there's a motion from will in a second from sarah and all in favor aye aye and

148the opposed okay great thank you so much welcome bunch you all all right mr ability if you could um stay at the podium please well okay well before policy are we doing our other you sit next you remember the topic you said put it before policy yes and that would be that's him awesome great thank you felder bring your blanket just camp out there get in the store [Music] did you need mr albert to join sure director of transportation mr larry albert i was just trying to figure out which one we were doing first so um all right so we'll uh we'll talk about the school bus fuel purchase contract um we do recognize that where we are at this point in time is still exceeding our fuel allocation for diesel fuel as we outlined

149in your abstract several months ago in february we were paying 2.93 cents per gallon on state contract for diesel fuel in early may we brought a proposal to you for approval for additional purchase authorization diesel at that time was 4.75 per gallon and now we surpass 4.98 per gallon for diesel fuel so we have exhausted all of our current funding for fuel and we still have a shortfall at this time of approximately 322 thousand dollars for fuel in order to meet the end of the year balancing of the fuel contracts that we would have in place we also recognize that this board will be meeting again in two weeks but then not be meeting over the summer months for approving contracts we know starting july 1 we're going to need fuel contracts for the next

150school year that purchase amount we're bringing tonight for your approval but that purchase amount will come from our state transportation funding we're not asking for any funding because july 1 we will have a new funding for next school year and we will just start that purchase authorization based on those funds so this evening we're bringing both for you for approval because they're over the purchase limit thresholds but it would require um an additional appropriation for the 322 000 um that we're anticipating needed um at this point in time and i'm not sure if miss rath wants to address any of your financial questions because she would be the best person to be able to help us with that yes so the the reason i requested to pull this is i know at the county commissioners

151meeting when they were asking about our fund balance and where we were we were 100k below where we're supposed to be and now we're allocating another 322k allocated 9k earlier for other items and i just see a lot that's coming against the fund balance so one i just wanted to understand where will this put us on the fund balance but i do know we have some other things that are going on as staff and such so i know we don't have the full picture right this second but again that amount of money just wants some to hear some clarity on where we are with the fund balance with this allocation we have to do it but where does that leave us yes so um if you recall in the board weekly update i believe it

152was last week we had taken a look at a projection of where we were looking that fund balance was going to come in for the end of this fiscal year and that projection of course is based upon um june expenditures as a projection looking at where our spending was in previous years and identifying those things that we're aware of at this point anticipating our f final unassigned fund balance to be coming in around 2.3 million so this um [Music] additional fund balance appropriation would get us potentially down to a fund balance unassigned of 2 million one other item that i will be looking at is all of the funds that we have received from esser we have the ability to charge indirect costs i assume everyone understands what indirect cost is but basically that is

153a rate that we're able to charge to federal grants for those programs who aren't typically charged to those grants for example the finance department takes care of all of the payroll all the invoice processing but none of our salary is charged to the grant human capital takes care of all of the hiring all of the personnel issues none of their personnel costs are charged to the grant so as a result they allow us to charge indirect calls to recoup some of those my goal is to recoup as much indirect cost as we can from those sr funds to be able to offset any additional fuel costs that we're seeing come in as a result and on the um over the summer program where we have the optional friday would that be covered under esser as

154well yes okay we you know we will utilize where we can and are you know within the the legal limits of those funds to use those sr funds for those fuel purchases as much as we can you know i see this as a um a protection to ensure that we can continue to make sure that the fuel is there for those buses to transport those students and you know i the maximum impact that we're looking at of course we're bringing to you the worst case scenario is 300 000 um but in actuality i would hope that i could recover more than half of that from these indirect costs and just as a reminder what is our our required fund balance amount 5.5 of our local budget and that is roughly 2.1 million all right thank

155you okay any other questions sarah just a quick comment that i i appreciate that you're looking at the indirect costs for esser but i also know that we have plans for all the s or money too so it seems like there would have to be a trade-off somewhere probably yeah in actuality yes that that is a potential as well but the indirect costs were not factored into any of our plans uh at this time and we still have the opportunity let's say there was a trade-off to them down the road pay for that out of fund balance or something so yes yeah okay thank you okay motion to approve exactly question from will in a second from brenda all in favor aye aye the opposed great so we have one we have the yeah so

156um so i understand it's just a contract extension i do have one request that i would like to consider on this is i saw that it was to look at doing a um a bid i would like us to consider bringing this in-house and paying living wages as part of that plan when the bids come back and see what that would take if we brought this back in-house and we owned it for all of our schools i know originally it was done for cost reasons and i just think if we're going to be talking about living wages we should consider that thank you mr aston we did make a note of that to ask for living wage non-living wage and then as you all recall several years ago core management came through and did an

157assessment both of our custodial program and maintenance program so we would be utilizing their their analysis of the district as to what our internal staffing may look like in order to get our in-house costs but yes our plan was to bring back to the board three options one of those would be to bring staff in-house option two would be two parts with the vendor outsourced at the non-living wage and vendor outsource at the living wage excellent thank you quick question on this one i see that we have this um the extension so that we have time to do the formal bidding process is is the rate that we're paying for these few months of this extension higher than it was in the earlier part of the contract it is there is a cost a cost

158increase which we're experiencing across the board it's not unique to janitorial services that's why we were only recommending a three-month extension and not a six-month or 12-month extension to minimize the additional cost that we would be paying but we also know schools haven't stopped um you know we had graduation on friday schools ended traditional schools ended thursday hillsboro wednesday we had students back in buildings today so you know we recognized that that trying to switch out companies this is going to take us a little bit more time to analyze and to make sure that we recognize what our needs are going to be moving forward and to mr atherson atherton's point that also includes supervisory staff for custodial services because we do want to make sure that if it is outsourced services that we detail

159the expectations for that as well and that's a staffing issue question from mr atherton a second from miss houser all in favor aye on the opposed thank you so much okay and now i believe we are ready to talk about policy and i think that um eva's gonna walk us through this a little bit so these policies have all been through the policy committee and the drafts that you see here reflect the policy committee's recommendations um and these were discussed over several hours over two meetings so you can look at at the bottom the supporting documents there's a cover memo from each department reflecting the recommendations so the first three recommended for deletion i do want to note that um so 8425 staff recommended and the policy committee agreed that this should be deleted it's

160an idiosyncratic local policy that just is unnecessary um 411 the kindergarten health assessment the recommendation is that that information will be folded into uh 4110 which is also here for approval and the section 504 policy 4020 is outdated and the recommendation is that we adopt which is here in the below the school board association updated 504 policy which would be numbered 40 20 40 22. um so just wanted to clarify that they're not being the information is not necessarily being deleted so with that i think um [Music] all of these are first reading except for 3620 which is at the end um and so i will i think we can just go if there's any questions before these are passed along just for first reading yes so why is there a request to waiver the

161second reading of so many policies there's one oh this one i think it was worded the wording of it okay i'm okay with that but the wording of it makes it sound like and the waving of second reading right so yeah okay they're only asking i'll take a second reading be waived for policy 3620. okay all of the others would come back at the second june meeting right okay okay does anyone have any do you want us to just wait and maybe take one vote or does anyone have questions about one vote for the first reading and then a separate vote for 36 20. okay so the first vote would also that include the deletion of the three first yeah first reading of that so the three that we're deleting do you want us separately

162on those would there be a first reading on the delete deletion can we just motion because it has to come back for the second agreement that it's being deleted yeah i think generally emotionally first of all um it's showing policy 8101 be deleted also so are we deleting that or that's no that's those are edits well mine says delete so i just didn't know are we writing at 81.01 i'm looking at the memo here it's a local current expense fund i didn't bring my notes yes that should have been listed for deletion as well um and the reasoning there was that it's not it seems to be a commissioner's resolution that was then adopted into policy but it doesn't quite make sense to have it as policy it references chapel hill cardboard schools well what's

163important about it is it it puts in answers a question that that miss rath gets asked every time and that's what our fund balance percent needs to be it wouldn't be eliminating that requirement we just found it and i think staff found it odd an odd thing to have in the policy made right so where would it continue to be the local policy of the commissioners the county commissioners not ours oh it's not our policy it's not it's there it's a commission it's put up on us yes just not in our policy manual it's a requirement um the other question i had was i i understand you know we don't get a lot of people showing up for our budget hearings but i like us being accountable and i'm not sure what one i realize

164the school board association said to do it one way but i would like to continue to say we will hold public hearing public budget hearings as opposed to we may which policy are you looking at i'm looking i'm sorry 8 100. the staff recommendation was to align that with the law which is that budget hearings are optional but it's obviously up to them and we said at the meeting yesterday that it was a law we were just trying to follow the letter of the law right but policy and culture of as you know orange county we like public hearings we like you know and so if so i kind of would be inclined to leave it um and then on policy 8300 and maybe i just don't know how the board what the board sees

165but um one of the statements is the superintendent is authorized to transfer monies from one appropriation to another within the same fund subject to limitations and procedures that may be prescribed by board resolution or state or federal law or regulation and any such transfers must be reported back to the board at the next recorded at the next meeting so the question um because if the general fund is a fund right 100 million dollar fund is that's a fund right so so that so i read it as a as a superintendent is allowed to move money within a fund and just tell us after the fact and i guess i thought there were other policies that said we had to be notified am i am i crazy this is not within an account or within a

166departmental budget but it says the the superintendent can transfer monies from one appropriation to another within the same fund and is that something and i i don't know what the answer is i just don't know what we typically allow budget amendments yeah um what something i'm noticing in the that language comes from the ncsba model policy and it um it references a general statute by adding that language and so i think that's what we said i understand i'm just asking the board you know what what is that is that where we are you know i don't know yeah i see what you're saying you know but do we want more control over that because i know the board has wanted to approve it in the past right so they are brought to you as information

167in those like you approve the budget amendments but the superintendent has long been authorized to make those changes in other words budget amendments tend to be retroactive right right i guess i may be confusing this a little bit with some of our rules around central office and moving staff positions in central office and so i don't know if that how that of how this affects that that's where i that's kind of where personality i don't think it was policies and yeah requirements so we have a separate so to connect what i think you're trying to talk about is we do have a policy that says you can't remove a position and move that funding to something else you must bring that back to the board that's not the same thing as this this is talking

168about i don't know you need more money over here and you moved it over our our checks and balances are around the people resources from the policy i remember so we do it through the personnel side not through the accounting side is what you're saying okay all right that was those are my questions okay other people with questions okay so setting aside the 3620 that we're doing for now um madam chair yes ma'am i um like to make a motion to approve the recommendation of uh first reading for these policies that's been presented second recommendation for vice chair stevens a second from ms mckenzie all in favor okay so this houser requested the one word change to may to be will are you including that no i don't because we talked about it yesterday in

169policy and we said it was it comes from the law it's in it's a letter of the lawsuit then i have a clarity question to the attorney so my understanding is we can always be more restrictive than the law we can't be less is that correct you can't it's correct so it's but it's like the a majority of the board would have to decide that you want to do that [Music] so the motion would not include that change so i guess it's the question of where a majority wants but yes it's i mean you have had that in your policy before so does that mean we would not have a public budget hearing where people could come in and talk no it doesn't mean we're going to have budget here we're not required to it's

170just that that's the way the law states it and so that's what the policy committee adopted but we're going to of course have a budget we'll always have why wouldn't we put it then why not leave it and why wouldn't we put it if that's what we're gonna do that's the purpose of policy is to say we're following it and this is what we're doing it seems like it really doesn't matter one way or the other to me personally oh i'm not going to withdraw my motion because we spent hours in policy yesterday talking about this and uh the attorney did tell us you know it's the law and we pulled it from the north carolina school boards association and of course we're not going to say no public hearings we're in orange county we

171know that we're going to have public hearings then we should possibly should say that i should say it the policy now says we may doesn't say we will makes it optional future boards could decide not to do it okay so we have a first in a second okay and all in favor aye aye aye aye opposed nay okay and now we have the policy 3620. motion to approve revisions to policy 3620 with a waiver of second reading second all in favor aye aye any opposed okay dr felder is that the end of what we need to do oh no we don't we have i'm so sorry yeah one more thing we'll have one more thing for ten minutes we have um miss pitt to mr avelay that would be correct uh and so did you

172did you mr director of child nutrition services and miss oblique actually i'm very familiar with uh would like to uh present a bid for meal contracts so good evening chair doyle vice chair stevens board members dr felder staff and members of the public it is my honor to present to you tonight information regarding child nutrition services vendor contracts for the upcoming 22-23 school year each year child nutrition services must bid or renew contracts for food and dairy products fresh produce chemicals and supplies the following vendors have agreed to renew their contracts for the upcoming school year pet milk for dairy products the contract total is 191 474 dollars and 20 cents foster cavernous for fresh produce total contract is 37 849.45 these contracts will be renewal one of the four year renewal option per the

173original contract new contracts for the upcoming school year include cisco raleigh for food products the total contract will be 1 million dollars and 38 cents in cisco of raleigh for supplies and chemicals with a total contract of 222 492.56 both of these contracts will include an option of up to four one year additional annual contract renewals so these contracts are essential as they provide the necessary food products and supplies needed for our dedicated staff to serve nutritious meals to our students some fun facts regarding the volume of food and resources included in these contracts for this year um the child nutrition services this year with these contracts served 8 000 or sorry 856 143 meals so in the 21-22 school year that's what we served could you say that number one more time it's 8

174or 856 143 thank you this included the usage of 4 764 gallons of milk 940 oranges just to give you an idea of the amount of fresh fruit we go through and here's the kicker twelve thousand six hundred pounds of beef patties wow so as a reference that's the size of an elephant oh and that's the weight of an elephant so the recommendation is for the board of education to enter into renewal contracts with foster cavernous and pet milk with the option of three additional annual renewals and also to enter into contracts with cisco raleigh with the option of four additional annual renewals motion to approve it okay hold on did you have something you wanted to ask about sarah i did i was curious how these prices compare to previous contracts so with the

175renewals we just had a tiny increase i mean we've seen a little fluctuation in those prices but they have essentially stayed the same our milk price goes up down market value so it has stayed it has gone up but it stayed relatively normal same thing with our fresh fruits and veggies we're seeing an increase in those the increase has been with the cisco rally contract they opted to not renew and we had to go back to a bid market value because a lot of these items go through manufacture guaranteed pricing so those are definitely up and we've seen increase in some of our staples you have a sense of like ballpark how much they're up um i believe our contract for this year was around 845 000 and next year we're over a million now

176keep in mind we added a couple additional items that were probably um a little more expensive due to interest with you know our students and some of the things that they've tasted in getting feedback from them what they're interested in but we're looking at going up from 845 to over a million yeah the question i have is similar to sarah's is uh if the state does go back to charging uh do we know how much the meal prices will increase based on this we took that i think a month or two ago and you voted on they're staying the same this year okay so yes we'll have to um unfortunately due to the paid lunch equity we'll have to look at it increase next year but this year the board voted to keep prices the

177same excellent and bonnie that was my question okay great we're right at 9 30. there aren't future questions or further questions miss mckenzie emotions on the table second well that was the discussion part of the motion right second just okay motion from ms mckenzie a second from by sheriff stevens all in favor aye any opposed thank you so much miss pitt sorry you had to wait so late this evening okay he's thinking about elephants okay and um we actually have to return to closed session so do i have a motion to return to closed session um pursuant to this to the statement i read earlier this evening second promotion from stevens and the second from miss smiley all in favor aye we are now in closed session you