BOE Meeting 2-7-2022

001hello just doing a sound check i can hear you i can hear bonnie and will so the three of us are good hello hello testing um deborah would you like to be renamed so that you're that if if it's easy to do otherwise uh that's fine okay mr showfield are you able to rename eva to um deborah tell me your last name again okay okay you can rename yourself great thank you dr felder i think we have all our board members here would you like us to wait another minute or two for anybody or you're ready for us to get started ready to get started please okay great thank you um good evening everybody tonight is monday february 7th 2022 and i'm calling this meeting to order the orange county schools board of education pledges

002to 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 uh we're skipping the pledging pledge of allegiance tonight since we're um virtual but following a moment of silence um which we will observe before we begin our business we will have public comment um after we adopt tonight's agenda and um let's see i think we are now ready for the moment of silence so please join me um as we begin our work this evening i would like to recognize that orange county schools was established

003on land previously settled by the ancestors of the okinichi band of the saponi nation this board has made a commitment to honor and respect the heritage of indigenous and all members of our ocs community to work to undo decades of racial harm and to build 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 and please join me now for a moment of silence thank you dr felder i think i will pass it to you for recognitions this evening well wonderful uh good evening chair doyle vice chair stevens the entire board to our students staff and families this evening we have not one not two not three nor four we have six special recognitions it's february so lots of recognitions

004in february all right and so uh next slide please uh so the first recognition um would be around our female student athletes the last friday approximately 20 female student athletes from orange and cedar ridge high schools engaged in a special event for the first time ever our senior female student athlete celebrated what was this year's 36th annual so it took us a while but we jumped on board in the 36th annual national girls and women in sports day uh girls were treated to lunch and a panel discussion among some of the area's most accomplished women with careers in sports a huge huge shout out goes to mr dwayne foster the ocs director of athletics student health and operations as well as guest sponsor blue cross and blue shield of north carolina staff and student athletes

005from north carolina central university kiwis restaurant and many others from our ocs faculty and staff who helped make this possible the event panelists included kelly johnson assistant volleyball coach for duke university dr ingrid wicker mccree director of athletics for north carolina central university heather ryan senior associate director of athletics for duke university sierra solomon academic coordinator for nc state university and dr calisha menendez deputy director for the durham sports commission the event was held at the mebbin arts center in melbourne north carolina words aren't enough to describe the magnitude and power of the statement shared the topics discussed and the uh immeasurable impact the event will have on those in attendance to say that it was an inspiring and motivating experience doesn't come close to capturing this very special afternoon next slide please saw a

006second recognition for tonight um would be our spelling bee champions so the valuable learning outcomes of spelling bees result in students gaining competency over vocabulary and this allows them to excel at reading and writing the ability to understand more words will allow students to become literate and enjoy reading an extensive range of material the benefits of spelling bees extend beyond language spelling bees also develop students self-confidence communication and public speaking skills as well as their ability to thrive under pressure they will surely spell no pun intended success for their futures so in orange county schools students in grades three to eight have the opportunity to participate in a spelling bee each year at their school each student participates in a classroom spelling bee one winner from each classroom advances to a school level spelling bee

007where they compete to represent their school at the regional duke spelling bee this year due to covet protocols the regional duke spelling bee will be held virtually on saturday march 26th each school spelling bee winner has been recognized by the uh ocs literacy team uh that would be um the three women uh on the right decked out in their spelling bee gear uh at their school with the presentation of a trophy and an award certificate next slide please and so tonight we are proud to honor the school winners who will represent ocs at our regional spelling bee and um and so first uh at ale standback middle school is zion green river park elementary school uh ian aguilera new hope elementary school caitlin gibbons hillsboro elementary school peyton shaw next slide please at the ocs

008online academy elementary school is felix travers orange middle school gabriel r central elementary school xinjiang bang grady a brown elementary school jake elkins and gravley hill middle school andrew so congratulations to all of our school spelling bee winners we are proud to have you represent orange county schools next month at the duke regional spelling bee again that's saturday march 26 and it will be virtual additionally we are very proud of all of our students in orange county schools who participated in the classroom and school spelling bees we are also very appreciative of the school spelling bee coordinators who worked hard behind the scenes to make each school spelling bee a success so congratulations and thank you all more recognitions to come february 14-18 is school bus driver appreciation week this commemorative week recognizes all school

009transportation personnel who are involved in the highest standards of safe practices to ensure the protection of their passengers who happen to be our district's most precious cargo our students each bus driver dedicates their time and talent to ensuring students are safely transported to and from school and activities our bus drivers are the first staff members to greet our students each day setting the stage for a great learning experience stated plainly each bus driver is a director of first impressions in the district orange county schools is honored to have a hundred bus drivers and we appreciate each and every one of them as well as each and every member of our transportation department next slide please so february is also cte month it is time to raise awareness of the role that career and technical education

010cte has in reading our students for careers and college and helping our nation achieve economic success and workforce competitiveness korean technical education prepares our students to succeed in academics and careers in both established and emerging industries and empowers all students to be successful citizens workers and leaders in our global economy for the 2021-2022 school year guess how many students participated in an ocs cte program well if you guess 5 311 you guess the right number now that's pretty darn impressive and something to celebrate and recognize for sure next slide please well this week is national school counseling week school counselors play an important role in ensuring that students have excellent educational experiences they are part of a school support team who provide essential social emotional support in addition to academic support to students school counselors

011can have a tremendous impact on helping students achieve school success and plan for a career by helping to uh increase student achievement and provide a much needed resource for students but not only for our students but for their parents uh teachers and administrators so school counselors are absolutely integral to student success the 2022 theme for this year's celebration of school counselors is better together ocs is very fortunate to have 23 school counselors ocs is certainly better having these 23 counselors as part of the orange county schools team so thank you to all of our district school counselors february february is black history month uh black history month also known as african american history month in the united states is an annual observance not only in the united states but in canada the united kingdom the

012netherlands and the netherlands black history month was started in the united states in 1926. it was conceived by historian carter g woodson who proposed making a time to honor african americans and raise awareness of black history we look forward to sharing the many lessons and activities at our schools on our social media accounts and websites this month so stay tuned madam chair that concludes the recognitions for tonight thank you so much dr felder and congratulations to all our our honorees um particularly our spelling bee champions and um big shout out to our um our bus drivers and our counselors and our female athletes um it's time for our agenda adoption do i have a motion to adopt tonight's agenda so moved uh motion from ms smiley becca second from stevens mr atherton yes hey i

013vote yes miss houser yes uh dr moore yes ms smiley yes and vice chair stephen yes okay thank you all right and now is the time for public comment um after each speaker has been recognized and unmuted 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 comments should not address any specific confidential student or personnel matter complaints concerning any specific employee or students are not permissible during public comments and speakers must conclude their mark their remarks at the end of their three minutes and so actually we have our time up um mr is is uh mr dutton our first speaker

014tonight yes that's correct okay mr shofield do you see mr dutton mr mark dutton i'm uh uh we're just doing a sound check yep we can hear you ahead mr dutton thank you thank you much madam chair and fellow ocs board members i wanted to first just say that i love each of you and it's committed by my faith and i just anything that i say is to take it hard to try to improve the district for all children um that's the first and foremost so what i wanted to just say is i don't share all the same views and positions as the board um because i don't i would have voted no for retaining the books and most simply the way i could put it i just would like my kids to be able

015to pull any library book seamlessly to be able to share with their grandmother and keep it simple my grandmother doesn't have a formal education per se but she does have a phd in ethics and morals uh she's a first generation immigrant from sicily italy and she's like her catholic faith the second piece i just want to share um that when i met with charles blackwood i want to clarify that in december it was more about the division in the community that i felt at the time i had 25 years in the county 10 in chapel hill five in car world 10 in hillsborough and i just felt something in the landscape was off and that's mostly why i met with charles blackwood it was nothing more than trying to understand the division of how we

016could come together as a community and then the other one was to clarify other topics uh december and with my children um i'll be submitting that and pay for paperwork so that everybody can have a better understanding but i want to get into what i want to talk about tonight was ocs educational gap that i believe is district wide i think it's systemic i've i've been working with uh the middle school with my son my daughter she learned seamlessly as a traditional student but my son worked very hard and he's got a one to two year gap i'm the most concerned and i wanted to let parents know tonight and in the district there is a uh organization out there i've been working with with doreen ecas out of uh and it's in the parent

017handbook but it certainly allows parents to um get into the weeds of understanding where their children or students might exactly be and here's the home run that i want to get across when a parent now understands and i work with dr moore's cousin ellis parks and his son up in uh raleigh he's an ec teacher when i ask this question what is the ketchup plan for my son that's the answer i get and i really ask the hard questions i get nothing it's of concrete i get nothing in writing and i think that this is a systemic issue going across the whole district you know distractions of changing the school names that's a distraction that that was my tiny concern coming into this school year and the last piece is that i would ask the

018board to help me put a plan together in writing that can help with the equity for my two children that my son is is reading on the fourth grade level and when i ask that district level they say it doesn't apply to my kids i don't understand thank you for your time thank you so much for your comments tonight mr dutton um i believe miss aleene dutton is our next speaker she's going to provide hers in written comment okay um and then mrs though is uh i have miss laurie a temper she's not muted thank you okay can you hear me yes miss tupper thank you please go ahead okay sorry good evening i represent moms for liberty and i'm commenting on last week's special meeting i sat and discussed as i watched and listened

019to your reasoning regarding how how you came to the decision to retain all three books in question i started to write a response that night but quickly realized how angry i was i needed to take time watch it again get god's perspective and wisdom and how i respond miss mckenzie how do you consider genderqueer a resource for the lgbtq students it's described as a graphic novel and contains sexual pornographic images that isn't useful therefore it is not a res a resource i'm sure there are plenty of other books that are truly written to help the students navigate their special their sexual identity ms smiley you stated that all the books had serious literary value and are not pornographic isn't blatant oral sex pornographic miss mackenzie regarding out of darkness you said there are some references

020to sexuality does violent rape qualify as a reference to sexuality miss smiley are painful scenes of sexual assault okay to put in the minds of impressionable youth does it not undermine the god-given gift of healthy sexuality in a loving committed relationship you mentioned nc kids digital library just because they have it doesn't make it right they state this collection was designed for youth ages pre-k through fourth grade they apparently believe out of darkness is appropriate for that age group ms stevens no one wants to sweep anything under the rug in fact we want history to be taught correctly as it happens so we don't forget learn from our past mistakes and celebrate the exceptionalism of this great country book challenges are being brought up because of their inappropriate content available to students in our schools

021ms smiley moms for liberty is not well funded or political we are parents grandparents and tax paying citizens who care about the well-being of our youth who will be our leader someday we don't want history erased for that matter we don't want statues torn down either we encourage students to read materials of all perspectives not just one side in order to think for themselves and not be indoctrinated we applaud teaching students to think critically use good judgment and engage with heart history while living in a diverse world but these books do not at all represent that miss doyle why do you selectively ask lgbtq students for their comments and omit the entire student body it's clear you didn't want any opposing viewpoints miss hauser you said the images and passages of these books made you

022feel uncomfortable that is your conscious convicting that you that these books are wrongfully put into the hands of impressionable youth seriously asking the question that what are we protecting have you not heard the parents cries the board's lawyer conveniently left out an explanation for paragraph c regarding what sexual conduct means certainly genderqueer violates these statutes mr atherton parents are opting out of books located in the school library does not prohibit the students from looking at them you can be sure i will be voting on may 17th thank you thank you miss pepper um next on the list is miss uh miller but i believe she may not be on the call do you see her um miss joetta mcmiller mr shofield sorry she's not on the list okay thank you um next is miss mel

023mealy do we know if miss mealy's on the phone on the mainly has been unmuted okay okay can you hear me now yep welcome ms mealy i'm sorry thank you um my name is mel mealy and i'm also representing moms for liberty orange county i have four children that this pandemic has affected i believe it's time to follow the science the pandemic is over this is um isn't necessarily a popular opinion for this area where many passionately equate actions like no masking to large-scale homicide however i believe that many parents agree with me but are just afraid to speak up from the children's health defense this week little updates europe is accelerating steps to roll back covet restrictions as efforts to control the spread of the virus have failed and countries downgrade the threat posed

024by sars kobe 2. sweden and switzerland joined denmark norway finland ireland the netherlands italy lithuania france and the uk is announcing that they will also lift restrictions and open up their countries top israel officials also announced this week that they are abolishing the country's green pass at a meeting in helsinki to discuss the pace of removing restrictions the government decided to lift all limits on gatherings and these restrictions on restaurants and bars cultural venues events and sports will be free from restriction france on wednesday ended mandatory work from home rules and eliminated requirements on face masks outdoors and lifted attendance restrictions at stadiums and theaters the lithuanian government is dropping its requirements to present a vaccine certificate in public areas such as restaurants and sporting events and the unvaccinated workers will no longer be required

025to undergo weekly testing norway has also followed suit lifting restrictions on private gatherings bars and restaurants and will no longer require border testing england has lifted coveted restrictions and base coverings are no longer required by law anywhere in england and the legal requirements for covid passes to enter large venues and clubs have been scrapped the government also dropped guidance for face coverings in classrooms advice for people working from home and restrictions for nursing home visitors on january 26 netherlands reopened restaurants bars museums and theaters as part of a broader ease of restriction few studies if any have been carried out to determine whether vaccine passports and coveted restrictions actually lower covid cases hospitalizations and death however a recent analysis published by the recent as sorry researchers at john hopkins found that covered lockdown measures implemented

026in the u.s and europe had almost no effect on public health quote we find little to no evidence that mandated lockdowns in europe and the united states had a noticeable effect on covid19 mortality rates the researchers wrote if you haven't traveled outside of this local area in a while it doesn't take long to enter an area where there are no restrictions no masks in sight and no more fear it's time to follow the science and get this that area back to normal living conditions just like so many others have locally nationwide and worldwide thank you thank you miss mealy um [Music] uh let's see miss bethany lee i think is currently trying to join so if if you don't see her on yet mr shofield if we could proceed to miss uh gretchen's oh yep

027there she is welcome miss lee hearing yes uh-huh thank you okay so to begin with sorry um i do have strep throat i'm gonna try as fast as i can and as best as i can hopefully you can understand what i'm saying um but to start out with i kept wondering for months why you keep putting these masks on our kids and quite honestly i just don't under at first i thought it was just you doubling down on stupid quite honestly and now i'm just wondering if you just don't know the facts so let's go over the facts real quick because i've got quite a few of them january 18th 2022 cdc upload updates guidelines to make clear cloth masks that say clear cloth masks offer the least protection against coven we've got um pamela

028geller january 19 2022 cdc finally admits cloth masks don't work quote yet the same cdc quietly admitted on friday that the thin cloth mask this agency and its corporate media allies spent the last two years cheering actually provide the protection unquote january 20 22 dr goblin former fda commissioner turned member of board of directors for pfizer this gentleman said that what we've known all along that cloth masks do not protect against cobot denmark has come out a denmark newspaper has come out and apologized for not giving the mandates the necessary um the necessary um i can't even think of the word that it deserves anyway we'll go on proof of mass don't work donna garner 12 30 21 she wrote this with numerous studies listed that show that these masks do not work and there

029are numerous ones you can go on and take a look michigan supreme court has removed all mass mandates as well as wisconsin pennsylvania south carolina or supreme court throughout mass mandates for schools on december 10 2021 we have continued and continued and continued the unmasking of our kids except in our county and i just do not understand what is going on that is keeping y'all from doing this i will not bow down to these irrational fears any longer and parents shouldn't and neither should these kids i feel like you're sitting on self-righteous thrones and trying to tell us peons what we should and should not do with our children and i'm sick of it healthy students should not have to have their faces covered with these masks we have educational um social we're just behind

030every which way you can possibly look at and we need to stop it get them off our kids your time is up thank you so much miss lee um our next speaker is uh miss gretchen schmidt hello yup hello yep welcome your time is starting now oh can you can you restart that because there um i think there's some confusion and i just wanted to point it out on um with your guys's advertising we're gonna go ahead let's start it right now mr shofield this is your three minutes go ahead okay well the the website said uh 6 30 on friday and then six o'clock on saturday so it's kind of all over the place confusing everybody with time um last monday the public comment which was advertised being available to go until 8 am

031tuesday morning was not accepting comments as early as 9 00 pm on monday evening also per the board uh written comments are to be submitted and included in the minutes for that meeting this has not been happening since january 10th at least we've had around 75 people from the community cc moms for liberty with their comments sent into the board and none of these have appeared in the minutes so far this was suggested by a community member following some of the tactics by this board which have created a lack of trust and unity in the orange county school district one of the biggest being the gross mix characterization of a student-led protest in september prior to a football game where spectators were limited to two per athlete following this protest it was made known to

032us by a student in african-american studies class that the superintendent along with three other board members came into the class and told the story to the class of what happened at the protest the glitch was that none of these board members the superintendent nor any other students besides the one were at the protest being alarmed by the story that was being told which he helped plan he spoke up to others following the class right there in the class he did not feel it was a safe space to speak up and call out the leaders of education in the orange county schools in service to children for the lie that was being portrayed and then the compelled speech which was elicited based on a fabricated story this cherry picking for activist causes was seen again during

033the meeting last monday evening at least over 25 comments were sent in from community members concerned over the material inappropriate to minors from all walks of life being displayed and available in the school libraries none of these views were shared we surveyed students to see if there was a general query for students opinions on the books but no one ever heard anything about it in a narrow-minded play of censorship the board curated a single view to support their cause from a basic far from a basic education now to the recent decision by all board members to waive policy for forever and beyond those who are in the midst today of fighting the largest slave trade which has ever existed have posed a question which has been posed by countless over proceeding decades what would you

034or i have fought to free slaves during the 19th century along with the efforts in play at that time the answer is easier than we might think they oppose the question of those going into the deepest darkest places on earth to rescue any of the two million children who are being brought over bought over and over again by mostly americans who have no long who are no longer getting their fix off of looking at porn is are you standing up for and speaking out contributing to the cause and generally being an abolitionist today at least in their official public role all seven of the board members voted for pornographic depictions to be available to minors there is such a thing as change though you could become an abolitionist today thank you ms schmidt our next

035speaker is ms sarah snipes this is a sound check can you hear me yep your time starts now great i'm speaking tonight on some frustrations with board inconsistencies and the marginalization of students citizens and parents in this community first of all frustration with board inconsistencies the board meeting minutes are not published the most current minutes are not available it's very uh unclear as to where we can find the minutes is there a special place on the website we can be directed to view them i've submitted written comments to the board for the last several board meetings and i do not see where they've been included with the minutes nor have i ever received a response back on any of my concerns or questions the ability to submit written comments for last monday's specially called meeting

036on the sexually obscene books was not allowed after the meeting started even though the published process on the website stated that comments would be allowed and accepted up until tuesday morning of the next day at 8am this did not happen i checked it myself and heard from other several community members who attempted to submit comments and were not allowed they received the following message the form written comment form procedures there's no longer accepting responses can you please tell us who's in charge of these procedures and can you please have somebody convey accurate and understandable procedures going forward the website states for virtual speakers during meetings like the board meeting tonight that a link will be sent to them when it's their time to speak however during the january 24th board meeting i signed up to

037speak but was never sent a link during the meeting i was watching the meeting over the youtube channel therefore was not allowed to speak so again very unclear and uninconsistent processes tonight i'm only speaking because i learned from others to join the zoom meeting and then i would be unmuted secondly marginalization of students parents and citizens i would like to respectfully remind the board that you were elected to represent all people of this community even those who may have opposing views of yours however it's so unfortunate that this board seems to do nothing but marginalize and criticize students citizens and parents that don't agree with your views i'm extremely offended after last week's meeting from miss miley and her comments and others where you implied because we oppose pornography and library books that we are

038homophobic and racist i'm not homophobic or racist i oppose the material because it's porn i would like to protect students from porn and unhealthy sexual activity especially activity that leads to std aids and unwanted early teen pregnancies irresponsible sexual behavior can have immense psychological physiological lifelong impacts and not to mention contribute to the slave trade how about we work to protect students from unhealthy sexual relationships how about we promote the value and sanctity of marriage strong family foundations but none of these books did that i don't care if it was lgbtq mistakes aliens it's not okay to show illustration of a student giving an anointing talking now thank you our last speaker for the evening is miss kim runkel um do we know she's on the call i just unmuted someone named kim but i

039don't know if it's kim runkle okay that's me can you hear me yep thank you miss uncle go ahead well thanks to the superintendent and the school board for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is kim runkel and my husband i have four kids who are in the orange county school system as we approached the second anniversary of the public schools taking 15 days to slow the spread of covet 19 i wanted to reflect on how much has changed and how much we have learned about the virus since march of 2020 i've observed the way the coveted mitigation strategies impact our kids and their peers in different ways i've watched the news and witnessed the way this virus and public health crisis have been politicized and the polarization that continues nationwide locally the polarization

040has looked like parents getting on social media and assuming the best about themselves while also assuming the worst about others who take the opposite side once sides are taken lines are drawn individuals form retorts to make the other side look look less virtuous than they are and on the board meetings i see this huge undertaking to try to manage this public health crisis and it's distracted from the ultimate goal that we all have of educating our children um we waited for all teachers who desired the vaccine shot or i guess it's now called a shot to receive it we waited for all the kids k-12 who wanted to receive the shot to have it we followed the most recent surge in drop in cases with the omicron variant we are now at a crossroads where

041it is time to begin the journey to return to pre-pandemic school routines i've watched numerous zoom call presentations with dr benjamin an infectious disease doctor who emphasizes that our school system is among the most risk averse of all of the over 65 school districts he advises and also one of the most highly vaccinated which is great when i read through the agenda this morning i was excited to see that the goal is to normalize the education experience in orange county schools over the next six to eight weeks i agree with the proposed recommendations and the end of the mandates for outdoor masking i agree with allowing students to talk during lunch and stop mandating outdoor physical distancing and i agree to allow unlimited spectators to sporting events and other activities to the capacity of those

042venues i support the vaccine and booster clinics the school system proposes to continue the offering of the higher filtration mask for staff and students who do desire to wear them and i am reassured that our vaccine rate is high and our percent positive rate is low compared to all the surrounding counties i want to learn more about the rationale behind the opt-in code 19 testing and the stata test program in light of the recent omicron variant in the last month asymptomatic testing has been overwhelming the system and has not been significantly helpful in reducing secondary spread i think the goal of eventually returning to testing only kids who have symptoms of covenanting makes sense i think it would be ideal to set that as a goal again now that we know more about the virus

043many hospitals in our area including the one where i work have recently discontinued asymmetrical time is that could you thanks so much for your time thank you okay um that concludes our public comment and so at this time i'd like to invite board members to comment and is there someone who would like to start tonight go ahead miss smiley okay i'll go um so one of the things i've done since the last board meeting is attend the student achievement committee um we had a really great deeper dive discussion of the literacy audit and understanding the direction the district's going to take with that information i am really really grateful for everything that came out of that um and then also a discussion of um the district's options for understanding some uh for some better way

044to measure student growth and actual progress as uh in addition to the other metrics that exist in the strategic plan so i'm grateful to staff for all of their work and to the board for their discussion um and just wanted to say thank you to our bus drivers and school counselors and hope that you get lots of celebration in the next couple of weeks great thanks sierra bonnie do you have any comments this evening i think you're muted no no comments thanks for asking okay will no i'm going to save my comments for when we go into the content of the material tonight okay dr moore no no climates thank you okay um i just want to say i had the opportunity to go to the um national girls and women's and sports day the

045theme was lead her forward and dr felder said quite a lot about it but it was just really neat to see um there were young women athletes from nccu um there for our high school athletes to kind of see the next step and then all the um women and athletes with their different roles was just a great example of showcasing for our seniors opportunities that they could have as they stay in their sport and continue in other fields and so just a big shout out to mr foster for bringing that to our district for the first time and i look forward to it continuing in years to come i think vice chair stevens had dropped off the call right now am i correct about that so we are going to continue um on our consent

046agenda there were quite a few uh items and i'm just gonna go through them quickly i know there are a couple that we're pulling so there's approving our january 24th minutes um and also our personnel report which we've modified in closed session so we would be [Music] approving our modified personnel report um item c um bonnie i believe you wanted to pull the assessment recommendation about ocs online academy yes okay and so that i would like to move to right after our um our original discussion action item was the covid um recommendations and so if we can move that item c there and then keep uh d the cte course pathways uh the bus transportation i don't think anyone had any issues with those sarah you wanted to pull um for brief discussion the academic

047calendars we could move that after yeah okay um and we're keeping g the budget amendments uh h caps um i the river park elementary school phase two renovation project um jay bonnie is it okay if we pull um the additional local revenue plan and do it after our work session item and come back with that one discussion action item that'd be fine thank you okay and then will you mention wanting to pull the human capital reorganization if we can do that after the academic calendars would be fine okay and so that leaves us with overnight um athletic field trips as the final consent agenda so um okay any other items that board members would like to move to the regular agenda for further discussion dr felder yes um chair doyle a question about the academic

048calendars where will that move only because we have a couple of teachers with us tonight and i didn't know where that would be shifted to in the agenda uh in an effort to not have them hanging on too long if at all possible would would you rather move it ahead of our adopt our covid yeah okay we can do that we can put that ahead of our um cobit protocol thank you so much sure okay uh do i have a motion to adopt tonight's revised consent um agenda and deborah did we adequately um adjust the language regarding the personnel report did we get it right this time yes i think that's fine okay so moved okay i have a motion from miss smiley second second from ms hauser will yes okay i vote yes bonnie

049yes dr moore yes sarah yes and i think um brenda are you with us she was having internet issues okay so we have five who voted for that okay so our first item is actually going to be our academic calendars so i will pass back to you dr felder thank you so much and i understand joining us tonight is julia workman from hillsborough elementary school and lindsay hudskins from gravley hill middle school and joining them will be dr kathleen dawson deputy superintendent um and so if we can ensure that they are all unmuted and then we can proceed um chair doyle should i just go ahead with the with the questions that i have which are why i pulled it that's fine with me thank you awesome okay because i do think it'll be quick

050um first i just wanted to say i thought it was really this is a huge production every year creating the calendar um i thought it was really clear in that attachment how you laid out each of the state requirements for the calendar and sort of how we address those so i wanted to say thank you for that um and one other comment before the questions i think this calendar is fine as a staff facing document but i would just ask that we create a much simpler version for families that's easier to read fewer colors as a parent i would have no idea what avl was um like just the simple version so parents can see when school is closed that would be great um the two questions one was what feedback did we receive on

051the calendars through that feedback process and were there any shifts as a result of that thank you miss smiley and i'm just going to give a brief um overview and um good evening jared doyle vice chair stevens board members dr felder and i do want to um just start out by acknowledging that there was a committee representative of all of our schools and some of our central service um departments that came together to help put together this um calendar and yes it is always a monumentous feat to do uh just because of all of the logistics and requirements and then trying to meet all the needs so just um to give an overview before we have ms workman and this um huskies just provide a little bit more detail we did put out the google

052form in an effort to receive more um feedback from a broader scope of of our stakeholders and we had 75 responses come in majority of them were our staff from our schools and departments but we did have a number of our families respond as well and so um it was really good and most of the um feedback was positive and um but i'm going to ask ms huskins and this workman to kind of share some of the things that they also noticed as far as feedback and then how we did adjust the calendar to um take that feedback and um to respond to the feedback so mrs huskins and mrs workman please feel free lindsay would you like me to start or do you want to start um go ahead ms workman so we really

053appreciated all the feedback from everyone all the stakehold holders and we looked at each thing that people had put into the feedback sheet some of the things we were able to make little modifications to and changes to um some of the things we it was sort of you could do one thing or the other thing so we talked about um what the what generally we heard from people and what they preferred um and made some choices that way um and then a lot of the questions were things that um that were just things that you couldn't change or things that um that we could um just that you that you couldn't change because of the way the calendar requirements are set up and then finally there were some things that people suggested that we um

054suggested that would could be taken back to the cabinet for example the hours of the school things that were kind of out of our um control and things that would need to be really more of a school of a of a cabinet kind of um of uh decision sort of their philosophy for example the length of the school day or deciding which schools start first if it's a high school or middle school or the elementary schools so we did look very carefully at all of the all of the feedback does that answer that question pretty well it sure does work men thank you you're welcome and thank you so much dr felder by the way for um asking us to be placed a little bit earlier in the agenda i really appreciate that and also

055school board members thank you very much for giving us an opportunity to respond to your questions about this we also listen to your to the feedback of um just like i said the cabinet as well thank you and if i may just um smiley just give some specific um changes that mrs workman is referencing that we did make as a response to the feedback there was um because we were trying to kind of code the responses saying where were there some commonalities and one of them that came in with that was some concerns about a you know section of the calendar where because we tried to have like breaks and pretty consistent with for students and staff for teacher work days to give teachers additional planning time but there was a time period especially between

056april and may where there wasn't necessarily a break and it was two full months right it seemed like without a break so then we did make some adjustments and moved a teacher work day to um the first friday of may to break up those two months so that was that's an example of where we took some feedback another one that we weren't able to do unfortunately was the january 3rd there was a a few requests that came in for to make that a teacher work day because january 2nd that first monday was the last holiday and then you know so there was some conversation around um a request for january 3rd but after further discussion they felt that to do that would break up that week for your instruction time as far as like what

057the teacher's experience would be and then also it is giving them that monday off and then trying to if we get put a teacher work day there that would mean a teacher work they would have to come from somewhere else and then when we looked at the different options and then being that it was first semester like there were lots of things but we did take into consideration and that one unfortunately we just couldn't make it work so that was one where we couldn't meet a feedback request and then absolutely what ms workman said uh we are as a district continuing to take a look at the other biggest concern that came in was the late dismissal for high school so we're definitely continuing to look at that great just to follow up very quickly

058on what dr felder said just for specific things one thing about that january 3rd it was not going to make it very user-friendly for parents and families and there were the the work days that were in at the end right before the christmas break so while it would be nice to have a work day then there are the other work days in december so it sort of was a a balance for those two things and for some other things that some people said for example that november is kind of disjointed and it really is but that's because of the way we have veterans day and thanksgiving so there's some things that you try your best to make the weeks is not as sort of as smooth and not choppy as possible um there was for

059example election day talking about whether that should be a student day or a work day there's kind of two sides to that some people want it to be a work day some people would prefer it to be a student day one thing that we heard was that it's really challenging for schools that have their school is a voting site and so um as it turns out we decided the best the best recommendation would be to have that as a student day we looked at having it as a remote day but that's really not necessarily the best choice but in order to address those concerns about safety we talked about the possibility of beefing up security and having some more people there just to help direct traffic so it's just a security issue but as well

060it's a traffic issue with car rider so while we couldn't make everyone happy with that day we did look at other things that could be done for that the holiday on good friday we tend to we are following sort of the state holidays um we also did talk about um if there was a way for us to end the first semester before christmas that would definitely be something that we would do but because of the way this requirements are we can't start later or sorry we can't start earlier in august which would allow us to end the first semester by christmas we have talked about getting a waiver about our start date but we don't really have anything that the state would accept as a reason for a waiver so we can't really do that

061um we there were some conversations about not having enough student teacher work days and having too many teacher work days so we were looking at kind of the balance of all of that we looked at having early release days and we also looked at having delayed openings as a way to get more of that professional development time in but we felt that that was not the best choice for families and for children and also really for teachers um it doesn't feel like you can really get a lot done when you have a like a two-hour early um like if there's a there's an early release and you have a little extra time in the afternoon or in the morning and it's just not very good for families so we really did look at everything and

062tried to consider everything and just to try to find sort of the best way to manage the time thank you all so much for just giving us some of those insights into it really it comes out as sort of a simple document but there are all of these little careful decisions in there that i know you all have thought so weighed so carefully so yeah thank you for um helping with this in the midst of everything else that you're doing for children right now um and uh dr dawson that was that was going to be my other question was about the uh the bell schedules especially at the high schools because i know that's been a real pain points and i had asked um dr belder you earlier about that over email and so um

063my understanding is it looks like we are going hopefully moving back to an earlier end time for high schools next year is that right that's correct okay that's that's wonderful um thank you all so much and i do just real quick i can't give enough kudos and appreciation to ms huskins and miss workman while all of our committee members of course they were invaluable in their you know stock partnership and helping but these two uh professionals i i i wish there was like something we could give them because they're really experts in this type of thinking and working and we couldn't have done it without these two um teachers and their helps i just want to on behalf of everyone mrs huskins and with workman we just want to thank you so much for your

064expertise and your advocacy for both our students first and foremost and our staff and it made a huge difference in coming up with i think based on feedback um a calendar that really you know works well for both our students and our staff so i just want to say thank you publicly thank you very much dr dawson but i think you guys really have given us a gift by giving us an opportunity to give our feedback and to participate in this process would you agree miss huskins i do agree thank you miss workman thank you dr dawson that's wonderful um sarah it sounds like do you have your questions answered do any other board members have questions for mrs huskins miss workmen or dawson motion to approve second motion for mr atherton and the second

065from his smile um i vote yes miss houser yes um dr moore yes and miss smiley yes and i think i think miss stevens is offline and mr atherton yes okay thank you so much so that is approved and thank you again for joining us mrs heskin and miss workman really appreciate it all right and so um at this time i believe dr felder we're going to go to our original discussion action item on coveted safety and health updates is that correct yes you are absolutely correct chair doyle all right and so before i turn things over to uh mr abele i just want to state that keeping students and staff safe and our schools open for learning five days a week continues to be a top priority in the district the last covet 19

066health and safety updates were presented to the board at your january 10th board meeting at that time the omicron variant was surging and while transmissions remain high in the community they are now decreasing so as a result last week we were able to scale back some of our mitigation strategies with regards to fans and performance uh event limitations and so with the omicron variant uh slowing down and minimal secondary transmissions in our schools as of january 28th and in consultation with our medical experts at the orange county health department and abc science collaborative tonight we are recommending that we further scale back our covet 19 mitigation strategies which will be shared tonight by mr patrick abele deputy superintendent of operations so mr abele take it away all right thank you dr felder good evening board

067members i also have with me tonight dwane foster i'm our director of athletics school health and operations and sylvia compton our director of our school nursing program who's our lead nurse for the district level so we're going to step through information for you we have updated a couple items here but as dr felder said um the omicron surge is receding that was a major concern with the number of cases that were being reported starting on january 5th and we had additional recommendations that were put in place on january 10th as a result of that and then but we are seeing the numbers go down as far as the community-wide transmission which is still high at this time but the omnichrome surge does seem to be receding there is certainly concerns as far as that variant

068with the transmissibility um and especially in individuals who also may be asymptomatic who are who are vaccinated with um breakthrough cases and so that's what's made it i'm a little more difficult um with that variant is just the the transmissibility of it we have had minimal secondary transmission in schools as of january 28th i did update our slide deck with information for february 4th when we submitted our slides uh we did not have last week's end we did have a couple clusters last week so you will see the increase for those secondary cases as well we want to focus on following strategies moving forward we did put out the opportunity for high filtration mass that's a three-ply procedure type surgical type mass for students non-medical grade 375 families requested those for students and then staff

069our current count is 415 of our over 1200 staff members requested an n95 mask and so those have been distributed as well and so those are our high filtration masks that we're fielding at this point in time we do as was mentioned earlier this evening do watch and monitor recommendations for masking and the types of masks and there was information that was shared by the cdc and other health professionals in regard to upgraded high filtration mask and we thank the board for making this opportunity quickly available for our families once that information was published and we will continue if there are families who are listening tonight who are still interested in requesting the high filtration mask they can do that there's not a time limit on when families need to request or send that request

070in we update our rosters weekly and so you know if someone registers we'll we'll get the rosters updated to the schools and get those distributed and once families sign up they do not need to go back and sign up every week for this it's this sign up for high filtration mass lasts through the end of the school year which includes up to june 30th so as we start summer school programs those students would receive their high filtration mask immediately the test to stay option we had enrolled 314 families with the old process we did move away from and were not able to move forward with the vendor that was offering the cheat swab as an analysis for [Music] covid 19 testing on school campuses there were just several things we could not work through logistically

071and with the clio waivers and so we have moved away from that we are using mako mako which is our state vendor that's available for our district and surrounding districts for our region we have worked with them our covet administration team that we presented last month consisting of our school nurses a coveted captain athletic directors athletic trainers and school district leads have all been trained with mako we have received information on the processes and we have a letter that's in translation right now to go out to families so all families that are interested in the test to stay option will need to re-enroll we'll also reach out directly to the 314 families that had signed up under the old process just to make them aware but then any new families that wish to sign up

072and any individuals that want to also opt in for the weekly surveillance testing we're able to launch that immediately as well and that's one sign up for both programs whether it's the test to stay or the weekly surveillance testing and that also includes staff members as well mako has sent out the lock boxes those were all installed at the schools and then we hope to begin with our sign ups this week that we should be able to have on site testing starting monday the 14th the additional efforts for the tests to stay in the weekly surveillance option are certainly critical as we continue to monitor the spread of covet 19 at this point in time and especially as we lead up to and including um prior to spring break and just past our break that's

073coming up in about six weeks we do feel it's important that all of our testing be up and running prior to those pointed times and then we'll certainly revisit testing strategies and the results of that that'll give us a good estimate of the effectiveness of it is we'll have it up and running over 30 days by that point in time and then certainly we'll want to continue our efforts to increase the vaccination rates sylvia is going to give you just an update in a few minutes we weren't able to get it in the slide deck but an update on our student vaccination rates which does include boosters and so we are still continuing to stand up and hold vaccination events and we'll continue to do that although we are limited on having multiple sites earlier

074we were in the previous month we were able to have sites um consecutively happening on multiple school campuses on the same day we're not able logistically to be able to do that but we still will be having sites that are be available on school campuses with follow-up sites three weeks later for additional boosters that may be needed for individuals who are coming into the booster window so our focus will continue to be on on boosters what we're what we're going to back away from is covet 19 testing for the community we had two testing events this past weekend they were rescheduled certainly due to inclement weather but our site at al stanback middle school there were only two individuals who came out for testing last weekend and i think just over 20 individuals at gravley

075hill middle school and so we're not seeing a big need in the community for additional cover 19 testing and again i think that goes back to the first bullet on the slide deck with the omicron surge receding and so we'll continue to focus on our in-school testing programs whether that's diagnostic or surveillance but not have or host outside vaccination clinics for the general public and then as dr felder mentioned um you know our goal is to normalize the educational experience we are moving into the 24th month of the pandemic i remember meeting with my first operations team meeting was in february of 2020 as we were watching the rising surge of cases coming from the west coast and other areas based on events that had happened in the united states at that point in time

076and so um you know our goal is to continue to roll back and to continue to put our efforts into the items that you see under the focus strategies at this point in time next slide our weekly totals for january 28th these are these were our totals um again just primary cases or confirmed cases secondary cases those in quarantine presumpt to positive and i'll ask sylvia at this point in time if she'll just walk through again what um for those who may be listening what is a primary case versus the secondary case versus someone in quarantine and versus someone that's presumptive positive thank you patrick uh good evening board members so presumptive case i'm sorry uh primary case is somebody that we know tested positive for covid that we could not link to another positive

077case within the school setting so therefore a secondary case is somebody that was identified as a close contact to a primary case so that person did have linkage to another individual within the school setting that was identified as a close contact the definition for a close contact has not changed although we do have some exemptions to exclusion uh due to maintain in-person learning so a close contact is identified as any person that was within six feet for more than 15 minutes cumulative within that 24 hour period that the positive person was identified to be contagious so it would be throughout their contagious period and if they were on campus if they were in school quarantine then applies to the person that did have that close contact but did not fall under the exemption to exclusion

078the exemptions to exclusions are both parties fully masked at all times vaccination status so are they fully vaccinated booster we did have quite a few changes with strong schools um from january i'm sorry from december 30th through january 10th and the final outcome for boosters we're now only looking for boosters for those that are eligible that are 18 and over eligibility also coincides with the last date of their vaccination and which vaccine that they get so for example modern and pfizer you have to be five full months from your second vaccination in order to be eligible for your booster johnson and johnson's is two full months so we're only looking for the ages of 18 and over at this time um and that was a change to strong schools as of january 7th and then

079we moved forward presumptive positives are the cases that we're still finding within the school setting um anybody could be staff or student that come to us with symptoms of covet there is a little a nice list that we have to go by still that has not changed so that's where we go into the presumptive positives we do ask for those folks to go ahead and get tested if you're able to test and you do test negative with a pcr you will be allowed to come back into school or their school setting within those five days of the isolation period antigen testing at this moment is only for those that may have tested positive with a pcr 90 days prior if they become symptomatic again then we would ask for a negative antigen test and this

080is on a case-by-case basis and we do review this with our local health department as well and i think that's one of the important pieces thank you sylvia of parents registering signing up for the free testing that's available within the school so as there may be some testing that's required they're not needing to go find or sign up in the community for that we can do both on that diagnostic antigen and pcr testing within the school setting next slide and so these are the updated numbers sylvia if you'll stay on as well so this is um thank you ms smiley for um i think you had a couple questions that we were able to um make some changes to um but just wanted to go ahead and provide the updated information as of february 4th

081um so this is a comparison and there was there certainly was some secondary cases based on some clusters reported last week at the elementary level and then high schools secondary cases i believe those were as a result of two athletic programs um sylvia do you want to talk about the elementary cases of what would yes publicly absolutely um so as you can imagine this is a very large task when we're doing contact tracing as and a large number that you see there um and the reason for that is it's over several days um and even over a week that we are able to connect cases to others um and that's what we did along with the school nurse and our local health department we interview the positive cases as well as the supervising adults with

082the teachers the bus drivers administrators and that's how that number came into count there so primary case with one positive person we were able to connect several areas of overlapping either through grade levels siblings that might live in the same home but tent go to different classes as well as riding the bus or attending after school care as well and again that was a decision that was made by our local health department with input from all these areas same thing with the athletic department once even even if we're identified you know clusters you have to have a secondary case of transmission um and you have to connect at least five to each other even though that's a large number they still consider that one cluster because the linkage can be made within a 28-day window

083and so even though the secondary cases have increased that they're still just a small number of actual clusters that have been reported and so because those result in numbers greater than five um you're seeing the secondary cases we would expect that to go down i'm as the community transmission is reduced and that we are completing the contact tracing of the primary cases from previously next slide uh we did want to provide a comparison for the seven day metrics and this uh should have said percent uh positivity for the positivity rates i think the we still need to update the abstract and assembly but these are the seven day metrics um as of february 1st for orange county and then the percent populations with five plus that are fully vaccinated we wanted to just show where

084we um stand as a county but as a region as well um you know where where we're at with our efforts in today's number for the percent positive for orange county is 15.96 so you can see from february 1st we've dropped from 19.09 to 15.96 and i think that further indicates um you know the omicron surge is is going down um our percent positive again leads the region right now and as silvia said we're making every efforts to not only get individuals vaccinated but also the booster shots and that's you know again for the younger age students we're still um within that window of a fairly recent addition of having vaccinations available next slide um and so we do have uh if you'll back up one slide i'm sorry before we get the recommendations i

085did want sylvia to give as we're talking about the um case counts and and numbers um sylvia if you could give an update on the vaccination rates for um the student populations um at the school levels and then i'll give an update on our athletic vaccination rates absolutely thank you um and i also just wanted to let the board know we do have a pediatric vaccine covered vaccine cleanup clinic set up this week at new hope elementary february 9th from 3 30 to 7 30 pm so this this information i'm going to give you was just obtained this following week we worked very diligently to collect all of this information good news is the numbers have gone up for vaccination status uh virtual academy fully vaccinated we have 29.7 percent partially vaccinated 1.7 unvaccinated is

08670.9 path um partnership academy fully vaccinated we have 34.4 partially is 18.8 unvaccinated is 49 i'm sorry 46.9 percent orange high school fully vaccinated we have 59.5 partially vaccinated 7.9 percent unvaccinated 37.3 cedar ridge high school fully vaccinated we have 69.3 partially vaccinated 5.4 unvaccinated 31.6 gravly hill middle school fully vaccinated 42.9 partially vaccinated 7.7 unvaccinated is 49.4 percent orange middle school fully vaccinated 41.8 partially vaccinated 6.2 percent unvaccinated is 52 percent ale sambac middle school fully vaccinated 54.5 percent partially backed vaccinated 7.5 unvaccinated is 38 percent hillsborough elementary fully vaccinated 59.3 percent partially vaccinated 6.7 unvaccinated is 39 new hope elementary fully vaccinated 34.5 partially vaccinated is 9.7 unvaccinated is 55.8 percent river park elementary fully vaccinated is 52.8 percent partially vaccinated is 10.6 percent unvaccinated is 36.6 percent effluent shakes global fully vaccinated

08716.2 percent partially vaccinated is 8.6 unvaccinated is 75.2 percent pathways elementary fully vaccinated 23.9 percent partially vaccinated is 8.1 unvaccinated is 68 central elementary fully vaccinated is 25.3 percent partially vaccinated is 9.1 unvaccinated is 56.6 grady brown elementary fully vaccinated is 32.8 partially vaccinated 8.5 unvaccinated is 58.7 percent so our district wide student population for orange county hillsboro fully vaccinated would be percent partially vaccinated is 7.69 un vaccinated would be 54.29 thank you for that update sylvia i know that was quite a bit of numbers by school breakdowns we'll make sure that report is available um to you and we can add that back to the public document as well for student athletic vaccination rates we have moved into our winter sports season um dwayne foster's here as well duane i i'm not sure if

088you have the numbers but i'll i'll go ahead and give the um update here and then if you want to add anything to it cedar ridge high school our athletic vaccination rate is 78.9 percent of 128 athletes orange high school is 72 percent for 186 athletes a.l standback is 31 for 103 athletes gravely hill is 55 for 70 athletes and orange middle school is 69 for 128 athletes mr foster if you have anything you want to add uh no this is absolutely correct thank you for for sharing those numbers so with that we wanted to we gave you a snapshot of where we are as a district again certainly still high community transmission positivity rate is dropping we do have uh continued monitoring of cases and wanted to just make sure you had all the

089updated information related to vaccine vaccination statuses as we move in the recommendations you can go to the next slide please so our recommendations for this evening mass this is in compliance with uh senate bill 654 regard requiring the monthly mask update and vote by the board at this time we are recommending that we go back to optional masking outdoors and indoors masking continue to be required several times on slides this evening we want to clarify that as sylvia mentioned there there are different individuals whether it's staff or students who have been cleared to come back to a campus but may be required to have additional masking for an additional period of time such as five days and so if an individual falls under that category then these recommendations would not apply they would be required

090to be masked um both indoors and outdoor students do not eat in isolation they would be allowed to take their mask off for a limited period time to eat and then staff members would be required to eat um in an area not exposed to other individuals so that's our mask update for meals 40 degrees and above the meals outdoors talking would be allowed with no time limits outdoors we do have our tents that have been installed on all the elementary campuses middle school campuses and high school campuses were delivered and the teams are working on that so we do have additional coverage outdoors as we are consuming meals outside indoors we would limit to 15 minutes without the mask off and they could talk indoors when the mask were off and again just as a

091reminder the 15 minutes is not when i'm on my way to the cafeteria it's not what i'm standing in line going through the line it's not when i'm walking to the table it's actually when i get down to sit with my meal and i take the mask off to start consuming that's when the 15 minutes begins and ends for the meal time next slide recess there would be no time limitations um and masks would be optional outdoors required indoors you know inclement weather days they do recess insides and again we've got the mandated for individuals that are required to wear a mask indoors and outdoors physical distancing um three feet to the extent possible indoors and classrooms or other group settings we recognize that you know it's impossible um just wanted to clarify when students

092are in hallways for instance it's impossible to maintain three feet of physical distancing at that point in time um but to the extent possible we would still maintain the three feet of distancing however you might start to see the floor stickers and other things being removed in schools very soon here next slide sports uh for visitors and guests again this is for non-students there would be no fan limitations at events concessions would be allowed for indoors and outdoors and then mass required indoors and optional outdoors so there would be no no limitations on visitors and guests to sporting events in events and performances for visitors and guests there would be no spectator or guest limitations we simply would just follow what we did prior to the pandemic if you have 600 seats then you fill

093your capacity at 600 seats it's 200 seats you fill your capacity to 200 seats the venue really dictates based on the fire code and what this space is rated for is what we would be using for our capacities concessions would be allowed indoors and outdoors and then mass required indoors and optionals and optional outdoors next slide i think that was it so um those should be also listed um in simply for you if you want to discuss or talk through each one or vote on them as a group questions or comments okay um board members i want to ask you for questions and comments i i do want to ask for one clarification um mr abilene thank you for this presentation um could there or or maybe miss compton um if if you could just

094state one more time for the general public and to make sure everyone's on the same page on the value of tests to stay um and and who that who that benefit so you know i believe that that serves our unvaccinated students who may have had um maybe an exposure during lunch or something can you explain exactly how it works and at this point what is the frequency of testing for people who opt in to test to stay absolutely thank you um so test to say the benefit for that is is as i discussed earlier we have primary secondary presumptive positives and those under quarantine so if if under the exception that strong schools and our local health department has adopted with the state this person does not have to quarantine do an exposure this would

095not fall for that person this is for the staff or student that it would have had an exposure within the school setting they would then need to not attend school for a minimum of five days after this exposure if that person opts in what would happen is the following morning after the exposure we identified them as an exposure they would get tested the first day after the exposure and then the fifth day if that fifth day fell on a weekend so in other words if it felt let's say on saturday we would test them on the fourth day which would be the friday if the fifth day fell on the sunday then they would get tested on that monday which would be the sixth day so it would be testing twice immediately after being aware

096of the exposure and then just before they come off of that five-day quarantine period that they would have had to have stayed home for that they're now being allowed to be in school if they test positive with any one those two tests then they would have to go home and they would be on isolation on that then it would turn into a secondary case two of our biggest areas where students fall into a required quarantine categories when the masks are off for eating or out for recess and so as we start to roll back requirements and make more masking optional that test to stay becomes more valuable because of the number of individuals who would be required possibly to quarantine based on not having a mask on and being exposed great thank you so much

097okay um board members with questions i see will's hand up yeah i just like to ask carrie that we just go one by one through these and just have the discussion vote and just move through these okay that's fine with me bonnie do you have any general questions before we start doing that do people have general questions or comments before we start doing that yes i have a couple of general questions first i'm getting a question about the testing or we're testing vaccinated and non-vaccinated kids at this point are we only testing a vaccinates for the athletic programs it is strictly unvaccinated for the opt-in testing the test to stay or their surveillance testing that the opt-in would include vaccinated or unvaccinated and a parent has to give permission that is correct all all student

098testing including athletic testing it's part of the eligibility requirement the parents still would need to sign up in order for us to conduct the test okay i'm getting questions from the covet captains who said are saying they're having trouble getting actually getting the three fly masks the high filtration mask that they've asked for them they're not getting them to the schools or the families i wonder if there's a problem or if there's a date you know if there's a supply problem or anything else no i would just uh we're in direct contact with our coveted captains so um they need to reach out to me or our office and we can get that corrected okay so they should reach out to you directly okay that'd be great um the vaccination numbers i missed what was

099the effective date of the vaccination rates for the schools yes ma'am we started collecting data again last week tuesday and ended on friday so it's a it's current it's effective last week yes ma'am and then i have a general question about testing um because the world it's kind of this this overall shift to normalcy so i was surprised when i read that unc health has stopped testing people unless they were showing symptoms so for example if you went into the hospital and you had a broken arm in the old days they test you if you tested positive for covid you'd be counted on the positive covet cases now if you're not presenting covet symptoms they don't test you they don't care you could have coveted you may not they don't care so how do we

100how does that affect us you know how does that affect how we look at testing and and when we presume um when we have presumptive positives and stuff like that so how should we look at this because i'll just say it feels like everybody scott covet at this point and and how do how do we how do we deal with that and and no judgment trying to figure out how to understand it i can't speak for everyone but i don't have code um so i'm not sure what the unc hospital is doing and and what their protocols are we continue to follow the guidance and the strong schools toolkit um and from the local health professionals who both um you know state that you know the testing strategies um are the way we should be

101focusing our time and attention right now is getting the testing programs up and running and monitoring i am concerned as we move into the spring um next you know six week time period although we have um omicron that is reducing we don't know other strains that that may be cropping up but we do know what happens in the spring folks travel more we're going to have a break in our schedule we know there's more outdoor gatherings time at the park time in the neighborhoods etc and so i i don't think it's a wasted effort based on the research and the information that's presented in the strong schools toolkit for us to continue moving forward with the recommendations to get the testing programs up and running and like i said i believe um leading up to

102and coming back from spring break we really should have that as a as an option and a strategy for the school district certainly we need to review it at that point in time and then think about for the next period of time the fourth nine weeks what does that strategy look like and do we need to do it as often especially with surveillance testing or just move back to diagnostic only okay um sarah um thanks um one thing i'm wondering about i mean i am just really concerned about these vaccination rates um especially in the elementary schools especially in our title one schools and so i was hoping you could speak a little bit more to what you said we're putting efforts into that like what are we doing that is different that's going to

103shift this because my concern is um even right now but even as we roll things back the kids who are most likely to be impacted are our more disadvantaged students in our title one schools um and i'm really really concerned about um about that so what what are we doing about student vaccinations so i'll just go ahead dr felder it's sylvia i'm sorry i was just gonna uh so what has currently occurred within orange counties is that we had our state vendor that was approved through our local health department that we have been working with which is starmed is no longer in the county mako is now coming in um and they are now set up over by the social service building where star med was to do testing for covid so we are now

104uh have been put in touch with optum healthcare through our local health department optum is starting to take over to do vaccination sites for us they can only do one site per evening and they have to have a five day notice as well as they have to go inspect the site so they it takes them about two to three days to even approve a date and a location i am we are working with them we do have two planned uh sites coming up at local our local elementary schools but it's just a matter of them approving those dates so at this point we're still trying to set up vaccination clinics um at the elementary level as well and so there are there are specific targeted efforts and vaccinations that will be occurring on those campuses

105um certainly you know one of the items we need to look at is the date and time for those you know whether it's parents getting off work or coming back in the evening and how we might be able to address some of the barriers that parents may be having to getting the vaccinations but right now it certainly is having the clinics in those local communities where those schools are located i'm glad that you're looking at that and i would i mean i i do wonder about the education piece and and the ability to have questions answered about the vaccines for children and whether there's more we could be doing there either via the school well the school nurses are so busy but if there's any sort of public education piece that could be addressed i

106think i think that's a great suggestion i'm happy to hold a town hall or a zoom call or a virtual call or just you know however else we can outreach to families um to to help and assist with uh additional information i i just wanted to insert in that i think leveraging the ptas is a method to help get that information out whether it's static information or the meeting i think the ptas could greatly help in getting information out and answering a lot of the questions as well okay um and we probably have more questions but we do have um we do have to proceed through our agenda as as we can are there more questions people have before we consider um taking these um steps are we going to be discussing each of these

107items as well because i have yeah i have other questions but there may be specific too yeah okay you can do that so the first item on the list is making masks optional outdoors but required indoors sarah yeah so i'll just share what my questions are here and some of it i think it does come back to the broader but um i'll have a broader reaction i think first to the to these which is i was very proud this fall when we took a very stepwise and deliberate uh process to um roll back uh strategies aligned to community transmission rates and and considering those things in a very clear way so at certain points having that grid right of when we're in high this is what what it'll look like and when we're in moderate

108this is what it'll look like um that that made a lot of sense to me and it was very logical um i i have a lot more trouble understanding these recommendations and and sort of the why and how they work so last time we removed masks outdoors um in the november 8th meeting it was because we had gotten to moderate community transmission and that was sort of how it was framed and we have like 18 times as much community transmission as we did at that point um and we have a lot more secondary cases in school i'm counting 30 secondary cases off of 60 primary cases um and five or six clusters right now um and so i don't i am much more comfortable personally with a logic of rolling back mitigation that is associated

109with vaccination rates community transmission some of these metrics in a metric c way right i'm concerned about the um the goal to normalize the educational experience over six to eight weeks and putting a time frame on it as opposed to a community transmission and vaccination rates time frame with certain strategies so i just you know when we talked about the outdoor masking in january you know we talked about um concerns about um stigmatizing the kids who are required to wear them we talked about the additional effort it takes for staff to have to monitor which of those students those are we talked about the additional um sort of risks of quarantines and secondary cases and i don't know i understand that i mean obviously covet is dropping rapidly which is amazing um but i i

110just i i don't understand the logic of this right now when given the case rate um and given the things that we were talking about a month ago in terms of why we thought it was important to still have outdoors masking at this point yes uh great wonderings and questions mrs smiley i can tell you as i'm sure you know this continues to evolve and we had um as we typically have had um uh conversations with um the medical experts who are well-versed in covet 19 in infectious diseases and um this was a recommendation that um was made that we are in a place now to be able to um dial back masking outdoors while still maintaining mass compliance indoors as well as the other recommendations that are here so they were certainly made in

111a collaboration with the um medical experts that we continue to collaborate with who have been brought before the board numerous times um i know that the uh community metrics were taken into consideration as well as our um uh transmission rates within our schools was also taken into consideration um but again this was the recommendation from the medical experts and um um they're the met uh recommendations that we're bringing forward to the board tonight so um okay um i see your hand up well i see okay do you have a question will you want to make a motion well i just wanted to say that i i support this i'm glad to see it coming forward you know one of the big changes we have is the ability for our elementary students to have vaccinations this

112doesn't prevent somebody from wanting to wear a mask or concern to do that and so i i fully support it i'm not going to motion because if there's another question i want to definitely let somebody speak before that um i do support this as well um i do think doing the masks outdoors again in january was um an extra precaution um i'm glad we've gotten through that peak of the omicron um variant um so i'm supportive of this as well i do want to ask one more time mr abele because i know sometimes this has been some of the logistics of implementing have caused delays do we actually have an active test to stay program right now even though we're having to change vendors no the ones who are getting tested are used in the

113community um sites sites so they can has to stay they just can't test to stay on site yet correct because of the clia waiver and not having the uh sign off for us to be able to do that uh with switching over the vendors and so um you know we've had folks who test but they just test with one of the community sites so i um mr abella um you may want to speak to the fact that you know the staff who will be uh implementing the test estate program have all been trained as uh mr abele mentioned all the materials that we need are in place uh we are just waiting for um approval on that clia waiver and we can stand up our program the um yeah once we have folks registering which

114is important for folks to register with the links that will be going out in the communication to families that will let our vendor know exactly how much testing supplies to go ahead and start shipping us they won't they won't ship until they see the new registration start to populate so we'll be we'll be getting supplies in and that's both we'll have both available options the rapid antigen and the pcr testing okay thank you any other questions about the mask one or should we um vote on this piece i don't see any other questions motion to approve second emotion from will and the second bonnie sarah now uh jennifer yes okay i vote yes and will yes and bonnie yes and i i'm pretty sure um vice chair stevens is still unable to be here right

115now so i think that's that's what we have we're for five people okay so the um the outdoor uh mask optional passes keeping the indoor mess and this part is about meals and so this is um basically allowing talking during meal time when it's indoors it's still limited time 15 minutes no time limits outside is there anything else that you want to say about that dr felder before we mention her on that okay any board members with questions about meals sarah's got her hand up sarah sorry go ahead thanks i'd just like to understand what's changed about this one because this has been really consistent from the beginning of the pandemic um and particularly now that we have students coming back after five days who've tested positive who might still if i'm understanding correctly might

116still be in the infectious window i i would just love to know what has changed um in this recommendation to cause this recommendation so if i may insert here that again mrs smiley we met with the medical experts again the abc science collaborative the orange county health department and um they were in full support of uh this uh particular recommendation with regards to students eating indoors it's still it's a limitation of 15 minutes but students would have the option um to to speak during those 15 minutes um again as i stated at the top of this you know the um this the whole pandemic and what we know about the pandemic continues to evolve um the omicron as you know variant uh is not where it was previously and while our vaccination rates are not

117where we would like them to be in all of our schools the vaccine is certainly available and um as a as a community the rates are going down so there were a number of factors that were shared but overall this was a recommendation when we when we meet with and have discussions with these medical experts we go through each of these items that we typically bring to the board we talk about masking we talk about universal masking indoors outdoors where are we with omicron and what would the recommendation be from the experts who live and breathe infectious diseases every day and um these were the recommendations that we they brought forth again their recommendations uh we do not have to accept the recommendations but uh in this case and we haven't always accepted the recommendations

118but we do believe that these are the right recommendations um for uh such a time as this thank you and i i appreciate that and i am very grateful that you consult with experts in public health and medicine um i just the very often when we're making these decisions we've had um them on the call with studies that sort of back up the choices we're making we have again 30 secondary cases off of 60 primary cases and like five or six clusters right now and so for me personally i can't vote to support these things without that additional level of information um as as a board member well and i appreciate that unfortunately um uh our medical experts were not available to join us tonight hopefully they can attend the next meeting but that invitation

119was extended well yeah i i just want to say i'm in support of this as well um we've had these discussions with uh dr benjamin uh where he showed the chart and showed us at the very end of risk-averse i'm glad to see we are looking at the science war and engaging them on what the possibilities are uh especially knowing that there's no science behind the outdoor um eating outside uh and transmissions so i gladly support this okay um i think the other factor for myself um is you know in january there was the the risk to students at some point there is some personal family choice and um you know getting vaccinated having your child mask we also were really i was really concerned about staff capacity we did we were short nursing staff

120um and you know all the people who had to do the um the case tracking were just exhausted and overwhelmed and we've been able to to hire people we have code captains at every school and as um as the stress system you know as as was mentioned we hosted a testing event and hardly anyone came because tests are available again when we came back from christmas people were waiting like a week to get tested and so everything was over stressed and it just doesn't seem like we're there anymore and um you know dr felder's recommending that her staff can can handle um this this degree of uncertainty and so i also support this any other board members with comments or questions okay motion to approve second okay emotion from will and a second from bonnie

121sarah no okay jennifer yes okay i vote yes and will yes and bonnie yes okay and also passes so that was meals and then the third one is recess with um no time limitations uh masks optional outdoors required indoors except when someone is under the special rules of needing to be masked because they've been for five days or whatever it is according to the health department when they come back comments or questions about recess go ahead sarah a quick question on this one how one of the concerns i thought we had before about this was compromising individuals medical information by singling them out as needing to request as being required to wear a mask how are we solving for that concern one of the things we noticed um when we had optional masking previously was

122that there were a number of students and staff who still chose to wear across every tier mask outdoors and so we will likely experience that again uh but again this recommendation is brought tonight um in full conf consultation with the medical experts that we have been uh engaging with since the onset of this pandemic nothing has changed with regards to that so um again it's with uh their recommendation and and approval that these recommendations are being brought forth okay motion to approve okay emotion from will any further discussion okay bonnie second bonnie okay motion from will second from bonnie sarah no jennifer yes okay i vote yes will yes bonnie yes okay um physical distancing three feet to the extent possible indoors and classrooms or other group settings no physical distancing requirements outdoors comments or

123questions on this one i have a question is this not what we're doing already this is what i thought we were doing it is but it does further clarify that it's indoors in the classrooms or other group settings um what the way it was referenced before was indoors to the extent possible and just clarifying that that would be the classroom or other group settings there there are um areas within school buildings that we're just not able to continue uh physical distancing and then especially with the groups or individuals coming into events and venues we would not be having physical distancing indoors anymore for those as well so it is a slight a slight change from the students perspective it may not change that much but we felt like it was substantial enough just to clarify

124as a as a topic tonight thank you any other questions or comments motion to approve okay motion from will jennifer go ahead jennifer second from jennifer bonnie yes sarah no okay i vote yes will yes and jennifer yes okay great that's number four so now we're on to sports visitors and guests no fan limitations concessions allowed indoors and outdoors mass required indoors optional outdoors comments or questions go ahead will so this is where i'll say my board comments i've raised concerns about this for several weeks uh since it was implemented originally um you know there's no science behind the spectators i'm very concerned with the impact of the family so i'm very pleased to see this i know that i've seen um some pictures from families that had to wait out in the parking lot

125because they had two kids and they couldn't go in when they're only 13 people in the gym you know the social emotional stress to our students uh whether it's the athletes or uh the student body you know not being able to cheer and show them spirit uh i know coaches administrators haven't explained why spectators can't come into the gym so i am fully in support of removing this and having our uh concessions back open again for our families okay anybody else sarah i'll just make a brief comment that i was um glad when the district decided to increase the number of spectators from two to four for each family and i would be supportive of something more like what was proposed this fall where there were levels of distancing and capacity and concessions according to

126our rates of community transmission and that's not what this is and so this is not something that i'm going to be able to support and i would love as we normalize the educational experience to pre-pandemic levels over the next however many weeks i do not think we should make a promise to people i would love to see that better tied to school vaccinations and community transmission rates mr abella do you mind joining us again to speak to any capacity issues or concern with stress if we have a full bunch of fans yeah we we went through when we moved from two to four several different scenarios and discussions especially at the middle school level our middle schools have bleachers on one side of the gyms and so whether you have a capacity restriction of 50

12770 when you go to four fans you pretty much are exceeding all of those levels and makes it very difficult to designate who is as mr atherson made comments who is getting in who is not even though we had the additional allowance you know if i brought two people with me when it was four and somebody else had a fifth you know they could make some accommodations in reality it just doesn't work and so trying to minimize the amount of stress to families but also support staff uh monitoring and and um really um you know handling the events um that the recommendation was not to have uh limitations now we also recognize certainly anyone coming out to these events understands um we don't provide or guarantee it's a coveted free experience i mean we're asking

128folks to put a mask on we're getting folks to understand you know we're still doing what we can to mitigate but um trying to be respectful to the individuals that are wanting to come out to the events and also having um the availability you know based on space in some cases like at our high schools we we wouldn't get to some of our winter sports close to 50 capacity but at our middle schools it would be more difficult and then when we switched the band or other performances you know there'd be a different standard based on the gym the auditorium and whether there was 50 people in a choir or 12 people in a play again one of the the items that the health director and i discussed and we we presented in a previous

129um board meeting was when we have different standards for every different area in events and different types of events and whether it's an athletic event or it's a band concert or choir concert or a play or a pta night whatever it is when we have different standards schools can't implement it when it's a different number and a different role in different physical distancing etc so we recognize there may be some more risk involved with this but it does allow for implementation and the fairest means possible considering we're 19 months into a pandemic in putting in you know the strategies that we do recognize and we still publicize and and state you know the cdc recommendation that anyone that finds themselves in a public place a crowded situation with other individuals should be vaccinated um and

130shouldn't wear a mask and so we'll we'll continue to emphasize that but um we do feel at this point in time you know this is um a better direction ahead um for both indoors and outdoors and provides consistency for implementation thank you so much that's that really helps understand uh helps me understand bonnie yeah i i appreciate those comments i just want to just make a comment that unlike school where we real where our kids really do need to show up every day and our teachers need to show up every day with these events it is strictly optional so visitors and guests can make their own decisions about their risk to themselves and their families and if they feel that it's too risky they don't have to come so i think it's really important to

131respect their choice or their ability to make a choice about risk for themselves and i will say you know we're still putting mitigation strategies in place when i attended a basketball game at one of our middle schools you know last week we had six air purifiers running the entire time in the gymnasium so you know it's not that we're not continuing with other mitigation strategies during these events thank you i didn't know that sarah do you have another question um i just wanted to say that i appreciate that last point and the points you're making mistrabably um a lot of what's informing all of my votes here are concerns um not just about people sort of opting into things and and getting covered from it but also the impact on student learning when students are

132identified as a close contact need to quarantine or get coveted as a result of any of this rolling back things in an environment where we have over 900 cases per hundred thousand in the past week according to the cdc okay emotions from will i couldn't hear the second second from jennifer bonnie yes sarah no okay i vote yes will yes jennifer yes okay and so we uh well they're on the slide together but do you want to have a separate vote were we doing sports and events together i would list in them as a separate item and the agenda i think you should continue as as you have done for the previous okay so if there aren't any further questions about how this applies to events um we could take a motion on to approve

133okay motion from will second second from bonnie jennifer yes serious no okay i vote yes will yes bonnie yes okay great um do we so we're voting on number seven as well health and safety requirements for students may be more restrictive or less restrictive by campus indoors based uh tonight's recommendation list because that was already previously approved by the board and there's no change to the recommendation that you approved previously great thank you so much okay so thank you everybody for your conversation discussing i realized there are differences of opinion and so i appreciate our um courteous and respectful meeting um and everyone weighing in and so i think at this time dr felder we're gonna hear first about um the online academy and then um the human capital reorganization and then we're gonna go

134to our information item and close with um the final discussion action about the additional local revenue is that your understanding that is my understanding okay great so i will pass it to you and i believe it was bonnie who had questions about the online academy piece okay so thank you i i just had so i i appreciate and understand the decision to terminate the online academy it is benefiting some of our students and i just wondered if we're exploring the option of our students being able to use the north carolina virtual public school to supplement their orange county school experience so that would be a way for them to keep up to keep them in our schools but give them at least a partial online experience yes so i am actually going to ask dr

135joyce uh dawson to join in but i can tell you that we have students now uh both in the ocs online academy as well as in our secondary schools who participate uh in the ncbp s did i get it right public schools i miss it close all right uh in terms of taking courses online through uh the state's virtual school so that is already underway um but what we've heard from our students particularly at the high school levels that they want even more options so that is something that we are going to explore and hope to be able to provide to them for next school year but yes students are already engaged both in the online academy and uh in the brick and mortar schools thank you sure go ahead will so one question i

136had dr felder uh around the online academy you know as i've read through a lot of the comments that families have submitted i wonder if it would be valuable to to also ensure that all the families of the online academy also know about partnership academy because there were several people that mentioned you know it being a much more focused environment and being more receptive you know to um smaller group settings and i just wonder i won't pre propose that that's the answer but i think it's worth at least mentioning it to other families about that option and to see if that could possibly be a fit as well thank you for that recommendation good idea so motion to approve superintendents i'm sorry i thought we're done no that's okay bonnie but i think i don't

137know if sarah had a question there was going to be commission i just had one additional suggestion which was i think as students um transition back to home schools or maybe even a different home campus than the one they left a couple of years ago um if we could have like our counseling teams and folks like do some thoughtful transition um of students back it seemed like the online option appealed to some students who had um you know maybe some more challenges socially and some of those things and and yeah just just helping those and it's it's not a lot of students helping them transition being really attentive to how their to their sense of belonging yes uh thank you for that and know that we are going to map out a transition plan fortunately

138we have uh the time to do that and um but yes thank you so motion to approve recommendation to terminate the online academy next year just continue okay so emotion from bonnie jennifer were you gonna make a motion or were you gonna say something else no it's fine i had a question but it's okay i don't know go ahead with the impression i didn't mean to jump i didn't i can't see jen i'm sorry um dr felder do you mind can you tell us some of the criteria that was used for this for the recommendation sure and again i will ask dr megan doyle and dr dawson to certainly fill in anything that i left out but we did look at data we looked at student achievement data we looked at attendance data um uh

139so those were among the data that we looked at we also surveyed families and um yeah there were some concerns with particularly at the elementary level with regards to student achievement in particular so again certainly want to applaud the efforts of of michelle the school's principal she did a phenomenal job and uh mr farrington who led the school uh at its inception also did an outstanding job um but those were some of the concerns and and our ability to um be able to uh address those things and to do it well um is of concern for next next school year so it was for those reasons that we decided that it would be in the best interest not to continue uh the online academy and then also when we think about why we stood the

140online academy up in wanting to provide a virtual option for families particularly families who had concerns about uh kovit and you know talk about evolving in terms of where we were uh at the beginning of or end of last year school year going into this school year there were a number of concerns and we could not provide an optional i mean a virtual option for families unless it was through a standalone school and so again in wanting to provide that choice we we did that but we don't think it's one that we should continue this year given what the data show okay thank you and one more comment i know bonnie you're ready to make a motion or you've already made it but there's a lot i i know dr phil we've talked about there's

141a lot of transitioning that happens in the spring and um i think as a board would be good for us to hear um when the time is right about all the different communication that we put out to families because there are lots of choices um as they're signing up for classes as they're moving from middle school to high school there are different options and it's just it's a lot of options i mean we offer a lot of great options which is a plus um and then just making sure that we're communicating all those options and this kind of ties into that too so um kudos to your staff for all the um efforts they're doing at increasing communication okay so bonnie made a motion anyone want to second the motion i'll second it okay so

142motion from bonnie in a second from sarah um will yes i vote yes bonnie yes uh jennifer yes and sarah yes hey great so that recommendation passes okay and so now we have um will had raised some questions about the human capital reorganization so i'm dr felder i'll pass that back to you okay thank you mr atherton yes um so i wanted to say that um i know we've got a lot going on in the district um you know we're in highly unusual times we've got you know some of our um students population has shrunk we've got um [Music] you know uh being held harmless this year uh next year we know we're not we're gonna have to figure out what we're gonna do and not do i i personally have real concerns with adding

143another hr park person in the district at this point given everything else that's going on we have our our salary study that we're about to talk about we're going to have to pay for that we were able to give the hr department uh raises earlier this year and so i just have real concerns with us not doing this holistically with the rate study and the overall plan for next year i do know from the feedback that we're going to use or the plan is to use lap salaries and then allocate a head count but again i still have concerns doing that given the district level versus school levels and everything else going on but that's just the concern i have with this well thank you mr abbott for sharing um so uh with regards to

144the raises uh just a reminder that those raisers were made possible uh using um funds within that department and um the finance department uh so new funding sources weren't tapped uh to create that and um the reason for the request is to help ensure that we're able to recruit and hire and retain staff especially given the current state across this country with the dirt to have someone who is laser-like focused on recruit recruiting hiring and retaining staff and so um the additional position is actually a coordinator position that's going to take some of the responsibilities that the person who's currently uh engaged in uh recruiting hiring and retaining and supporting uh new teachers take some of those uh duties um off of that person's plate so that the person uh coming in to lead the

145recruit recruiting hiring uh retaining and uh supporting new teachers work can do that um and and give that their all because that's exactly what's going to be needed we don't want to go into the next school year in the way that we found ourselves this year and that's with a number of vacancies and so we have an opportunity here and um it's going to be a heavy lift to fill that um the recruiting work that's going to be needed in the district so uh miss hatch i don't know if you have anything that you'd like to add but this would be an opportunity if you do good evening um madam chair doctor board members and dr felder dr phil thank you for that information um and yes you are correct um what we are asking

146is just to the the one position that would be funded would be the the licensure substitute coordinator position that would take some of the some of the licensure take the licensure piece as as the current position is currently posted we do have a director of staffing and licensure position that's currently posted to move some of those licensure duties from that position um as i stated in the abstract and allow us to have a deliberate and intentional focus on recruitment retention um also to new teachers support that is uh that is why we're asking for um the name change to the director of staffing and licensure the licensure piece the licensure substitute coordinator position would just help with some of those duties the licensure piece as i stated early on is a um in various meetings

147is a very heavy lift and does does need specific focus on licensure compliance in addition to we want to also shoot up our substitute recruitment efforts so that is really the only position that we are asking um for funding for and as dr felder said and i have consulted with miss raff we would be using lab salary for this year to cover that and then i'll cover it up until june 30th and then after june 30th we would have to reallocate the budget to do so and the fundamentals yeah thank you miss hatcher um thank you so much for that but if i could also just um really emphasize the need to provide greater support to our new teachers and so um this additional position will uh free up the uh position that will be

148focused on recruiting and and hiring but also retaining uh staff and part of that uh would be uh to provide support to uh new teachers both in year one two and three uh the research certainly supports a need for that and we've heard that from our teachers that um that is the kind of support that they need and uh we want to expand that to include uh teachers in their third third year but when you are focused on recruiting particularly the kind of recruiting that will need to take place this year this is this is a very different scenario uh given the 4.4 million jobs that were vacated in the united states including in the field of education and so um we really have to step up our efforts to recruit i i don't think

149we can rest on our laurels and what we've done in the past and think that's going to work now the game has changed and we have to be very clear about that and at the same time as we bring in new staff as we bring in new teachers in particular they are going to need to be supported because the research pre-cove it certainly showed that uh 50 of teachers resign uh within the first five years but the difference that uh mentoring and support and coaching uh made in order to scenario that we are approaching we are getting ready to step into one of the um most robust hiring seasons uh and that is spring and we know that the early word uh worm the early birth gets the worm and that's even um uh truer

150noun than ever before and so without the the uh uh enough staff to to do this work uh we are going to put ourselves in the deficit and that's not what i would recommend so dr fernando let me let me change the question i'm not questioning the value of the title and the person but when i look at the org chart there's an hr specialist grade 65 at seven percent supplement that's vacant that doesn't have any job description why wouldn't we just take that increase the supplement and the grade level and use that versus this other vacancy plus adding a new one on top of it that's that's where my concern is is it doesn't seem like there's um seems like there's an extra position here is what it seems like versus the coverage right

151because this just says it's a specialist and has no description of the tie of what their responsibilities are versus these other ones that may i speak to that please please do okay um so mr averton the h the hd specialist was the position that we changed the job title to initially several board meetings ago we had a we had a benefits specialist so we took the benefits specialist role when the leave coordinator position was vacated we took the benefit specialist role and we called it a benefits slash leave coordinator so that that canceled out the coordinator position that left me with the specialist position being vacant so we took the title and all we did was change the name on that so that hence we now have a hc specialist so that covered a position

152that we already had then that left then we had miss bremer's resignation she she's leaving so that had we have now had the director of staffing and licensure all you want to do there is just change the title there but we felt that because that licensure piece was so it's a huge piece and we wanted to really focus on um recruitment retention um as well as um also building our substitute pool that we greatly need we wanted to pull that licensure piece out remove that substitute piece from the current position that has already been that's currently being um utilized in the department and is being occupied by a staff member as a that title is a classified hiring a classified coordinator pulling that substitute piece off of that and putting that with that licensure piece

153so we're really only asking for one position on one extra position and i hope that makes sense yeah i also saw bonnie had her hand up did your question get answered bonnie no no but i appreciate the discussion and i you know and i i really do appreciate the challenges that are especially facing hr in this world um but if we had i you know we got 10 other groups including some of our schools around resources and adding tas or or giving paying the we're about to talk about this salary compression that's been going on for decade or two um so there's so many demands that we have you know and unfortunately each one of these other groups have not had a chance to present their case and that's the job of the budget process

154is for us to really balance all these high priority needs and say what can we afford to do now i would be completely receptive to bringing on contract labor to help hr get through this you know get you know go through this immediate transition and we have the funding to do that but to add another recurring position i'd really like to understand all the other positions that we're interested in adding and what we're interested in taking away so i think we have to have a bigger for me we have to have a bigger budget conversation to approve another position in the district sarah um just wanted to i am interested in bonnie's thought there about the potential for a short-term contract um work to cover the licensure piece and whether like how feasible that is

155but um i just wanted to state my support for um freeing up somebody to really focus on recruitment and and dr felder you talked about how we started the year with a lot of vegan positions and we did i don't want you to undersell that we had actually a lot fewer than other districts but this landscape when i think about what somebody heavy on recruitment early in the spring could do the principles that i've spoken to who are spending so much of their time trying to fill positions you know and like this this hopefully will cut that back and that's that is that's a huge huge impact i think if we can we can get to that place where principals aren't having to spend so much of their time trying to fill positions so i

156am i am really supportive of creating this lower level position to take some of the licensure work off to like have somebody be able to really focus on that um either creating the position now or potentially something shorter term to sort of resolve it in the budget process if that is a pathway that is that could sort of feasibly work i don't understand enough about this licensure work to know dr felder or mrs hatcher do you want to respond to sarah's question mr can you speak to the licensure work yes ma'am i can thank you dr felder the licensure work is very um i think i i alluded to this when we talked about um in closed sessions i think last board meeting the licensure work is very it's very one has to be high

157one would need to be highly skilled to do the licensure work um in looking for a licensure person i had my preference i would prefer to have a licensure person who already works for a current district because they're on they're going to understand the likes the north carolina licensure law that is very critical and it impacts our finance our finance department it impacts our finance liabilities from the standpoint that when that person is approving someone to work for us and approving and making a recommendation for a license if that is not done correctly we could end up with a huge financial liability from the standpoint that we have we may have employed someone who we cannot license and therefore we would have to pay them out of local funds um i do know um last

158discussion the question came up or the suggest the question came up around process procedure yes there are processes and procedure but someone really would need to have the skill set and understand north carolina licensure law to make sure that we are not in a situation where we're ending up um having to pay from local funds because we have not and we've hired someone who has signed a contract that we cannot license um that's that's helpful thank you that's i mean that that does make me more inclined to support the position now so that we can have the hire a director who will be more focused on recruitment now thank you so much and if i could just add that um um we have approximately 1500 staff and of those about 600 are have a certification

159each and every one of those staff person certifications has to be monitored um addressed uh it isn't a one and done and you just check it off and and keep moving and so it is a huge undertaking that alone is a huge undertaking and to think that one person can do that and recruit and hire um i i think we would be doing the uh district uh disservice um i just have to put that out there so dr feldman go ahead ms hutcher also i'd like to i like to address the comment around the contract work um early on when i first arrived we we we had contract and done some work with um kelly education who isn't who is an outside contractual service that supports schools um and we were trying to gain get

160them to support just from the clerical support school administration support and at that time they shared with us that they too were having difficulty just staffing their their staffing contractual workers to come in and to fulfill the contract that we had with them of helping us kind of you know fill those spaces where we needed someone so to dr felder's point early on every organization um across the united states is having issues with um staffing so um you know and again to my point around licensure it is such a specified area and you would have to know north carolina public school licensure law hiring someone contractually to do that work may very well be a disservice and a waste of money yeah and lastly i would just add thank you um uh miss hatcher uh

161and so in addition to the licensure work uh we also have to remember that this person would also have to administer the evaluation system uh so that would be another huge uh and very important piece of the work um and so we're just trying to be proactive as we can see um we don't always have a crystal ball but we have an opportunity because we can foresee what we're about to step into and want to ensure that we uh can shore up our staff and ensure that we have positions filled with high quality uh staff and it will take a laser-like focus someone who who that is their primary work uh given the um to use mrs smiley's term the landscape that we are currently in um so thank you for uh engaging with us

162on this topic okay um and i do want to remind everyone it's it's nine and we still need to talk about the fill study um and a follow-up from that i see your hand up will jennifer do you have anything you want to add on this topic um okay i'm supportive of this um request go ahead will so i just wanted to you know put an idea off of what bonnie had said which is um you know instead of contracting the licensure and you know substitutes i i don't think we should contract that uh why don't we take the hc specialist convert that to the licensure and substitutes and then contract out the hc specialist until we have a handle on the overall landscape and that way you do get your licensure and then you

163do get your specialist to cover that's open already and we have services available during that time is there a reason we couldn't do that well you know i think that's a little bit out of our lane it's my take but um dr felder or ms hatcher do you want to respond to that mr just feel like the and i understand i just feel like the human capital the human capital specialist position was already a position that we had and we had that as i stated earlier from when we lost the ben when we converted the benefits position over to the coordinator position and i just feel like that if we just thought that position that we had to take it and make it a contractual position i mean it's obviously i mean i i yeah

164i i don't think it will have this and i hear you uh mr abberton and i appreciate um your uh recommendation but it's not that simple and um and i just don't believe that that will be in the best interest of the district given the current state and and i know we're talking about retention and recruitment but i would like to the ability to have a sustainable human capital department um and just making that position that we already have a contractual position i mean that person could come today and go tomorrow i mean i would just i would love like to have to have some stability within the department okay is this is this something we need to approve yes this is done no if we're ready for emotion i'll motion to approve second okay

165a motion from sarah in a second from jennifer um will no okay i vote yes bonnie i'm sorry no and and please take it it's not about not one thousand percent support for our hr department or its needs it's just this you know i don't know what else we'll need funding in a month for that when we talk about the budget so um so i know i hear you bunny okay jennifer yes and sarah yes okay so that passes 3-2 um so it's time for our hill salary study there was a request for a short break dr felder do you feel like we should um just go straight in or do you want to take a three-minute break can we do that whatever works best for the board okay so if we can just do

166a quick three-minute break and then we'll continue with this work session item and then we have the final um discussion action on the um additional um local local spending thank you be on three minutes thank you okay we're all coming back together your audio sounds different carrie for some reason oh really oh there it goes now it's important okay thanks for checking though definitely can sound different sometimes all right well i've been thinking we have our policy first read that um limits our are meeting to three hours but we haven't approved that final final policy change yet so we can we can go on long without an official vote tonight so um okay so we have our classified salary study um conversation and um then we have one more item sort of in relation to

167that that we're going to vote on so dr felder i'll pass back to you thank you so much chair doyle and so boyd at the january 24th board meeting the consultant from the hill group shared three things right they shared the methodology used to conduct the classified salary study which also included the review of principals and cabinet level staff salaries secondly they shared the findings from their study and uh the third thing they did was to make two recommendations they recommended um a salary a classified salary or pay scale with years of experience also known as steps 0-29 incorporating a 1.5 increase for each year of service and they recommended an annual supplement for principals uh to be implemented so tonight we're going to revisit those two recommendations from the hill group consultants we will

168present uh the alternative scenarios requested by the board for addressing the findings from the study and we'll discuss next steps uh no action will be taken tonight by the board this is a presentation that's provided for information and discussion only uh and so while alternative scenarios to address the hill group consultants findings will be presented and realizing that the necessary funding will need to be identified in order to do so i just want to state up front that it is my strong recommendation to implement the hill group's two recommendations for addressing the salary study that was presented on january 24th and that will be presented again tonight so as with any school district his budget is a reflection of his priorities and values we know that uh my recommendation is founded on the belief and

169value of our staff uh to implement our strategic plans belief statements and to accomplish our strategic plan goals it will require all staff because every role counts and is needed uh the salary study brought to light for some and confirmed for others that for years many of our staff have not been uh appropriately compensated for all of their hard work i know we all agree it's time to fix this it is time we do right by them and show our appreciation for the dedication to our children in our district so i know we are all united in this commitment uh in showing our value of our staff i look forward to continued collaboration and strategically reviewing our budget priorities and the potential requests to county board of commissioners to support implementation of the recommendations so

170at this time i will turn the presentation over to rhonda rath our chief finance officer and joyce hatcher our chief of human capital and organizational development who will walk us through the hill group consultants recommendations the alternative scenarios for addressing the classified staff salary study and uh to share recommended next steps so miss says rap and mrs hatcher thank you dr felder again good evening board chair board members um i will begin the discussion and then i will hand it over to miss raft i'm not sure who's driving but next slide so in collaboration with finance the human capital office has worked very closely in the process of this and working with the heel group the process consists of reviewing uh review that conducted um compare compare or orange county schools classified and non-class of

171non i'm sorry classified and non-licensed licensed position to the market and the market consisted of neighboring school districts orange county government the triad which is durham and chapel hill and the findings were reported in on january 24th orange county schools salaries are below other districts at the midpoint and the maximum levels and salaries are complexed and employees have no advantages on the salary scales each year i'm sorry i have not advanced on the salary scales each year next slide the process consisted of the heel group they reviewed employed the following employee groups that you can see here there were classified employee groups reviewed that consist of administrative support staff bookkeepers custodians data managers family liaison finance and human capital maintenance trade and office support staff non-certified coordinators non-certified directors non-certified specialist operational technology support staff

172receptionists and secretaries teacher assistants and transportation support staff that are non-bus drivers now while this study is focused on classified staff there were non-classified employee groups reviewed and noted in the study and they were principals and chiefs and executive directors next slide the history the history of the classified sally versus the county government if you look here at this slide and you will see the years that range from 2008 2008 to 2012 and as you look here at this slide you can see our orange county schools employees as compared to orange county school government you can see in 2008 to 2009 no there were no new salary increases for orange county schools you actually can see that for several years on our orange county school side from 2008 2009 2009 2010 2010 2011 2011 and

17312 and then from 2012 to 13 we do see a 1.2 increase which as we note here on the side of the county orange county government employees they have received increases um and some of their increases were more frequently and also in higher amounts than what our employees have had received in the past we do see in 2014 there was a 500 pay increase for our staff a 1.5 percent for orange county school on orange county government and then in 2016 17 1.5 and then we did see a thousand dollar annual salary increase and along with three annual leave days in 2017-18 and then 2018 192 but this chart does show that our staff members did receive fewer raises and in some cases lower amounts than those of orange county government employees our next slide

174the study also looked at the k-12 market analysis in these particular job classes as you can see here technology district support and we have kind of outlined what jobs fall under each category maintenance school operations staff teacher assistants and custodians they also looked at the percentage below the k-12 cohort and our k-12 cohort consists of surrounding school districts which would be alamance county chatham county um durham chapel hill carrboro and wake county schools and you would see here where these particular positions are below the cohort we see that technology is 35.2 percent below our district support is 25.9 percent below and the list goes on as is indicated on this chart next slide at this time i will turn the presentation over to miss rare from chief finance officer and she will she will talk

175about the hill consultant recommendations and then some alternative um suggestions that some alternative avenues that we will discuss throughout the remainder of the presentation so at this time i'm going to turn things over to miss raff thank you miss hatcher good evening everyone so we're going to pick up where um the hill group left us at the january 24th board meeting they uh provided a recommendation based upon their findings of our compressed scales as well as where we were in our market and how we were looking against our cohorts so based upon um their recommendation it was a 29 step scale and steps um are synonymous in our world to equate to years of experience with a one and a half percent increase for each year of service or each step so when we applied

176that recommendation to our current active payroll and applied the benefits as well as our local supplement that was 255 classified staff that were reviewed and as a result that equated or will equate to 3.1 million dollars additional annual funding that will be needed to fund the recommendation from this study so uh benefits associated with this recommendation are that it eliminates the salary compression some of our scales are compressed um as much as up to uh years of service of equal to 22 years so what that means is someone who comes in with no experience versus someone who has 22 years of experience they're making the exact same pay it facilitates recruitment and retention of staff and it communicates the value of our workforce to us one of the challenges however is identifying a recurring funding

177source of 3.1 million dollars annually and sustaining it next slide please so uh it was requested that maybe we look at some alternative options and the associated cost due to the um price tag associated with the recommendation so if we took the recommended salary scales and instead of a one and a half percent increase for each year of experience i only applied a one percent increase for each year that would bring the total annual cost need to 1.9 million dollars and that includes our supplement as well as the required benefits again that is for 255 staff this would eliminate the salary compression and it would improve our ability to provide sustainable funding however it does not make us competitive with employers where we are losing staff next slide to take it even further we looked

178at an alternative of a half a percent increase between each step or each year of experience that would equate to a need of 900 000 annually including the supplement and the benefits for the same 255 classified staff again we're eliminating the salary compression we are again improving the sustainability of the funding it does not create market competitiveness and it unfortunately deters retention and recruitment of staff next slide another alternative that was requested is to look at a potential tier pay scale much like a lot of districts use for their local supplement so what that would equate to is a scale where you would only see an increase in your pay every three years in this example and the benefit with this is it eliminates some of the salary compression that we currently have but unfortunately

179it maintains that because we're still compressing salaries and it will um does improve the sustainability of the funding again a challenge is that it doesn't create market competitiveness and also another challenge is um the challenge with retention and recruitment of staff next slide so the cost to implement a tiered approach um of looking at these uh only giving pay increases every couple of years versus every year what you have before you now is an example showing what orange county is currently and then what a three percent for each tier would look like a one and a half percent and a one percent so as you can see uh we started at year zero with zero years of experience with a salary that is equivalent to at least fifteen dollars an hour because we know um

180it is in the biennium budget that the minimum salary for classified staff next fiscal year has to be 15 an hour also we are a certified living wage employer and in order to remain uh continue that certification we also need to maintain a 15 hour an hour minimum living wage for our staff so um the annual cost currently for this uh one pay scale it's a grade 56 pay scale and we just had time to do one scale of the 25 for the staff that we currently have on payroll that are on this pay scale it is uh four million dollars and that includes all of the um associated benefits as well as additional supplement that the board provides to do an increase of three percent for each tier it would be an additional 761

181000 in addition to the already current four million for one and a half percent increase for each tier that would be a 459 000 increase and then for the one percent that would equate to 363 000. again this is in addition to what um the current cost is for us this would be in addition to that and again this only reflects one classified pay scale next slide please so in summary of the scenarios that were prepared for this evening the recommendation from hill consultants was a one and a half percent increase between each year of experience from zero to 29 for 255 staff would equate to an additional need of 3.1 million dollars an alternative to that instead of a one and a half percent would be a one percent increase which would bring that

182um total need down to 1.9 million and further if we only implemented a half a percent increase between each year of experience that would bring the need down to nine hundred thousand dollars if we looked at um one pay scale and tiered it for every three years for the percentages that are provided here you can see the associated cost as a result of that annually next slide also as part of the study principal pay and principal supplement was something that was also reviewed and also a recommendation was provided the hill group hill consultants recommended that we adjust our supplement for our principles to be a percentage of their base pay versus a flat amount which is what we currently are and to also offer an additional supplement for years of experience as a principal this

183would help us to be more competitive with our surrounding districts and to be able to recruit so principal pay is based upon a state scale that is set based upon the size of the school to implement the recommendation from the hill consultants that would require an additional thirty two thousand dollars in annual funding to implement a tier supplement base of seventeen and a half percent for elementary for our middle and alternative and 35 percent for our high schools to add an additional supplement for years of experience of one to three years an additional 1 500 annually four years an additional three thousand dollars annually or five plus years an additional five thousand dollars annually again this would equate to a total need of thirty two thousand dollars annually the challenges that um face us is

184remaining competitive um the market has changed since this study and retention may continue to be a challenge next slide it was also requested that some further compensation adjustments be reviewed and provided to the board so as a result we took a look at that and again to implement the classified salary study as recommended from the consultants it would be 3.1 million dollars to implement the principal supplement as recommended would be an additional 32 thousand dollars annually and these um again would all be local funds because these would all be above and beyond what the state provides for these positions it was also asked that we take a look at the cost to recognize state years of service for our licensed staff versus years of service in orange county schools right now the supplement for those

185licensed certified staff is based upon their years of service in orange county schools to change that and base that on years of service with the state that would require an additional 650 000 of local funds and the final option um that was also requested that we take a look at was master's pay in the 2013 time frame the state of north carolina stopped recognizing master's pay for teachers they grandfathered those staff in at that time who had masters degrees and were on master pay scales they held them harmless and continued to provide funding for that however they stopped allowing school districts or they stopped providing funding to school districts to recognize masters pay except for a few limited positions um so as a result you there are a lot of our license certified staff that

186have a master's degree but they're not being compensated for that it is difficult for us to determine what the actual cost would be associated with this because many staff do not put this on their license anymore because the state does not recognize it and does not compensate for it therefore many of our licensed certified staff may not even list it on their license anymore so as a result we looked at the potential population that this could apply to and that would be all of the staff that we currently have that are on the bachelor's degree licensed certified scale if every one of these individuals had a master's degree to compensate them for that that would equate to an additional 1.2 million dollars of local funds that would be needed annually to support that so from

187here we'll go to our next slide which is basically our next steps so we have a budget committee meeting that is coming up at the end of february where we will discuss and review the feedback from this evening's meeting and discuss the funding priorities for the salary study implementation and funding options on march the 7th the superintendent's recommended budget will be presented to the board and the board directed priorities for the salary study implementation will be a component of this budget on march the 22nd there will be a budget public hearing where the public will have an opportunity to comment on the superintendent's recommended budget and we will receive final direction from the board on their desire for a final budget for presentation to the commissioners for funding on april the 11th our board will

188adopt a local operating budget that will be submitted to orange county commissioners for consideration for funding next slide and now we will take any questions thank you so much miss barath and ms hatcher um board members uh i see sarah's hand up and then will and then bonnie awesome thank you so much to both of you for that walk through um i i'm curious what happens um in one of these scales where the state gives a raise that year i understand it hasn't happened very often for our classified staff but i guess one of the things i'm one of the things i'm playing with in my head about that question is you know if occasionally they were to cover the one and a half percent or even give a two percent raise or something um

189could we sort of continue with our one and a half percent increase each year and sort of bank that to support this kind of increase in in other years where they don't give it if that makes sense sure i will try and start back and in as far as specifics to a salary scale i'm going to let ms hatcher chime in in regards to that but typically how this uh can work is let's say that we um as dr felder had stated when she opened um you know that we would be in support of the one and a half percent step increase that was recommended from the hill consultants we know next year our biennium budget is a two and a half percent increase an option would be if we have a scale that already

190has um one and a half percent in it and we know that the state budget has two and a half percent then we would increase the scales um one percent to get us to the two and a half percent if that makes sense so the state would be providing the funding for uh for those state positions in that scenario right okay so that i mean it sounds to me like essentially when we're recruiting staff or something the way we could explain it is like you will get at least one and a half percent increase each year and in years when the state actually provides more than that you would receive more than that exactly that might help us every eight years or something that the state you know does i something remember if i said

191bonnie and then will or will them bonnie i don't remember sorry i think will goes first that's fine um so i just wanted to first say uh to rhonda and hatcher dr felder thank you so much for you know deep diving in this i wanted to also just acknowledge the uh excellent education in our budget committee that took us through how the state funds us and also the averaging i mean it was very insightful especially as we think about all of the positions that we are locally funding and us fully having to you know if the state does a two percent raise we have to do a two percent raise to to keep it fair um so the question i had uh rhonda is for the for the clarification are you saying that y'all's recommendation

192is like alternate 3 1.5 or you're saying it's a 1.5 is what you're thinking but you haven't decided which of the scenarios y'all would come forward with at this point does that make sense um we um i'm not i'm looking for feedback from the board in regards to what your priority would be in regards to what we carry forward based upon what we hired hill consultants to do and based upon the recommendation that was provided considering how far we are off of the market in each of these categories um i would um you know i go back to how dr felder opened this presentation and that we um we would support what was recommended but we all know that we do not have 3.1 million annual and that the county will not be providing 3.1

193additional funds to us right that's just that i mean we know that's not realistic so it's a challenge right the reality would be we would have to take one of the scenarios and say to do this phased over time i'm going to make this up for just example we we may have to say we're gonna start off with the uh requested number three at one percent to break up the step levels to at least give that delineation and then the next year we want to see if we could slightly increase that and use additional funds to do it or something to that scenario where we're slowly breaking that down because it's i mean we have to we have to have some reality and at the same time you know i just want to highlight that

194a lot of people that follow these categories are people that are at the bottom end of our scales and the most most in need so i i definitely personally want to make sure we figure that out i think from my standpoint just my point of view would be you know if we're gonna do one of these uh you know requested three level three where we you know break it from zero to 22 to being every three years and doing a stepping level of one percent or five or one point five percent if i would like to know if that recommendation comes forward how many people does it help right is are we are we increasing the pay of the i mean obviously the first one says it's 364 000. so i assume and that's why

195i'm asking when it comes back does that essentially take everybody in these categories and bump them up or does this have some ill effect that we're not aware of like hey if you've been here 25 years this actually takes you down does that make sense it does um can we please go back to slide 40. so um this is the alternative three with the tiered approach but this is also uh that zero of twenty six thousand two hundred and sixty dollars is the starting salary in every scenario that is presented orange county schools is currently at twenty four 9 20. so everyone will be receiving some type of um increase and then based on that your years of experience will bump you up even further because if you're in the zero to 22 you've all

196of a sudden jumped up all the way up to in our case one two three four seven so you're at the seventh tier automatically by by just your experience if you're in the zero to 22. that is correct okay okay um so i i am i just want to say i'm very supportive of us figuring out this phased approach to implementing this because i know we're not going to be able to request the full amount i wish we could i wish we had the ability to do that and i know that we need the sustainability but i would love to approach personally approach it that way and figure out you know what would be the next phase and the next phase to get us to that but i'll stop there and let others comment okay

197bonnie yeah so i'm building that first you know rhonda i have to tell you this is really great work it's like breathtaking for me it's like a work of art so thank you for putting this this together um and you know as as one of the board members who was asking for the alternatives the the goal of that was to see how look at ways we can tier this i'm sorry to look at ways we can phase this because like will saying 3.1 million isn't going to happen and i will add it is really important to me to take care of the teachers supplements because a lot of those teachers aren't seeing raises either so we have we haven't studied it the hill center hasn't looked at it but we have 20-year teachers that are

198on the 12 percent supplement that is not competitive and they are looking and it'll be easy for them to get placed so we have a big problem there and i think we need to take care of that um i have a question first on and i'm just if you could just get um bear with me on on the once we create steps is there a process of just adjusting salaries to put people in the right place on their scale because we don't have that now so is there a process of putting them on the right place and would we just give everybody a raise by establishing the steps without committing to an increase and the reason i'm trying to unpack it is because everybody's getting two and a half percent this year and another two

199and a half percent next year so it gives us a little bit of time so miss hatcher i might let you join in here um to help also address this but miss houser so the steps equate to years of experience and everybody is everybody is placed on a step right now so um i could be a teacher assistant who is on a step 20 because i have 20 years of experience as a teacher assistant and i'm going to stop and i'm going to let human capital because they can speak to this much more eloquently than i can well you you said it quite eloquently yourself i mean it's it's i mean basically with the scales when we go to pay staff members when staff members come in and we're trying to make a job offer

200we're going to be looking at their years of experience and based on their years of experience that's that's what determines where they're being paid so that's that's the beauty of having the scale and then that's what we look at to determine where they go there's no magic formula we just look at their current years of experience that are on their applications and that's what we use and then we apply the skills to those user experience and also their uh their degree but mostly um many of our a great book of our classified positions teacher assistants maybe custodial positions um you know they are not many of them some of them have um have you know uh degrees or maybe uh associate associate degrees but the position may not necessarily warrant that but we're looking at

201more overly their years of experience and that's how we would apply them to the scales let me ask the question differently today in our zero if i if i understood the presentation from last week if i'm 0 to 20 and i'm a teaching assistant let's say is there a difference in base pay for a teaching assistant with zero with five years of experience or 15 years of experience yes ma'am there is today rhonda's shaking her head no i thought a current salary scale is compressed for this salary grade so you so what the scale looks like is it's gonna have a zero is twenty four nine twenty one year is twenty 24 9 20. two years is 24 9 20 right all the way up to 22 years so though you know the the steps

202are still there because to give to give staff the credit for the year of service however the pay scale is compressed so they are not getting a pay increase for that so i i answered from the standpoint that the scale not being compressed so i do apologize for that got it so my question the reason i'm asking the question is could we uncompress the salaries and give every give people salary adjustments at least for the next two years and not worry about step increases and that's going to cost money but i think you know funding excuse me that would depend on funding am i correct ms brown um yes it would but my question would be um how would you determine who gets what if it's not a a increase for each year of service

203um what i'm hearing is that am i am i um maybe i need to ask for a little more clarity about specifically um can you give me a more specific example well i think we we'd have to set a salary scale i'm looking at at the one you have and it could have one year increments or three-year increments but we would set the scale and then we would give people salary adjustments to put them on the scale for one time in in practice they would end up in if we did nothing else in five years they'd be compressed again but at least it gets us started and it's gonna increase the payroll but i just wonder if that would be a first step to at least give everybody raises and then they'll they'll be getting

204two and a half percent raises on an increased salary so i just don't know what those numbers look like i'm trying to give ourselves room to take baby steps or not baby steps but steps that we can afford because if that you know i just don't know what that would cost us to do that you know tonight and you know i just want i just want to uh state that we do know that we've got to start at least with a minimum of 15 an hour absolutely okay um i see your hands here but just real quick we also need to um figure out when we're going to start with um people who don't have the years of experience um whose years of experience are outside orange county schools and we're not counting that right

205we still haven't really touched on that am i correct that's the 650 000 right that's the teacher that's the 650 thousand dollars for teachers yes carrie it's really an important point okay if i may interject um there's okay so right now when joyce let me just stop talking and let you address this in regards to when staff are hired now if they don't have uh experience in another school district how how is experience given to them basically when we hire staff right now we look at the experience and how it equates to what the role what they are applying to and if that experience if if their experience aligns they receive credit for that and that makes sense is that one for one or three for one we're talking you're talking about classified staff now

206that is correct that's that's what the focus is am i am i correct i think carrie and the board i think we're all very interested in also addressing this issue we have with teacher supplements because of the way we penalize people who have a lot of experience but not with orange county schools and it is not competitive that that is correct the way our supplement scale is currently structured for our certified staff we only give you supplement based upon your years of service in orange county schools that is that does not apply to classified states and that was going to be the first piece of my comment was just strongly agreeing that we need to solve for that and make it so that it's years of service total um um getting back to what bonnie

207was asking about i am i am curious whether this may not be how any school district works but i figured i would throw it out there um is it possible to have a scale like this for determining someone's starting salary or our current staff's salary right and then year by year make decisions that we can afford about what the increases are from there so whether it is a state covered increase like in the next couple of years or in another year increasing so to her point about not promising increases so it's not is it possible to just sort of use the scale to set people in a place and then the way that it works in like businesses is depending on how the business is doing or inflation or whatever you might get an increase

208that's different that year if um i could just insert here uh thank you uh mrs smiley for sharing so the only thing that comes or one of the things i'll put it that way that comes to mind for me uh is that it it just we would still have the market issue um it doesn't solve for that and and that's a huge issue for us now more than ever before and so we are no longer competitive yeah and i i totally agree that we have to solve for that and and i um you know i think an example like like this here when you get to the upper end i can see how it wouldn't make us competitive if you're only doing some of these smaller amounts but i think my question is would just

209getting people to the right place on an adjusted scale the whole group's proposed scale would getting them there solve that and then what annual increases folks could expect after that um [Music] i mean it's a little bit more like our current state right like that would be sort of more how we do it now except that there's a stratification of salary based 20 years of experience so everybody doesn't have the same so sorry what did you say bonnie well it's it's not really what we do now because now 0 to 22 is the same no right i'm saying do the uncompression yes and then something more like we do now i agree so board members it's 10 o'clock um and i don't since this is a conversational time i don't know should we keep hashing

210this out and sharing thoughts now how much more are we going to be doing that similarly in budget committee um and then we we do have an item to vote on that that might not take too long but um go ahead will so i was just going to say from the budget committee standpoint our next meeting they'll be presenting this to us here's the so i just want to make sure any board member that has thoughts around this to give some direction to dr felder and staff will be very helpful because the next time we discuss this will really be here's the proposal um and i i just wanted to to share with sarah that one of the epiphanies that i had during all of his discussions and in the budget committee is how different

211public schools are done and their pay scales than in the open industry because i i said the same thing you did which made me smile because i said that's not how it works out in public sector you may not get a raise you may not get this you may not get that but you know this this to me is how districts can compare themselves so if you go from one district to the another you have you know what to expect so i know it's very important for our our staffs to have you know knowing where they're going to be and where it's headed um but again for me it's about trying to unravel this do it in phases get some relief to our uh employees and then figure out you know maybe to your point

212and bonnie's point we figure out year one and then figure out okay year two what adjustments can we make what's realistic we may not be able to make any but we're not in a position that we can't afford it right because that's my concern is we do something and then whoa out here at year 7 all of a sudden we can't pay for it because we've set a scale that we can't meet and now we're having to go back on our words our employees and i would never want to do that yeah i i also go ahead bonnie if i could first of all you know compression happens to people who love the district and are loyal to the district and i don't think they're running to a competitor and i'm still choking on the

213using chapel hill or wake county as a cohort for us because they're different um alamance our salaries i think are competitive compared to alamance um i think there and you know at least i'd love to see them against alamance and chatham um you know but i think the urban districts are different and we still have some work to do to answer the question about our supplement is high why don't we have more money for salary so we have some a look at ourselves that has to be dealt with but but um i think that to have a meaningful conversation for the budget we have to be talking about ways we can phase this and for me i would like to see the budget something for the classified something for the correction of the teacher salaries

214um and i'd also interested because i i saw the master's pay but i'm really very specifically interested in master's pay for social workers separately because it's a small number and and i think they're at more risk on the master pace stuff than our teachers the teachers do it okay hold on one second i was just gonna say um in terms of general feedback i also agree with the wanting to to phase it in to um address the compression issue i i hear you dr felder's that we need we need to we need to reach to be competitive but you know i don't know if that means making a request that then doesn't get funded but i definitely i'm really in line with what i feel like we're all kind of saying somewhat similar things but

215um go ahead will no the only thing i was going to say and i i want to be very prescriptive and that's that i am not looking at this as being competitive i'm looking at it when we looked at uh the slide that showed if you've been in the district from 2008 to now you've not had any cost of living right and you're on the pay scale of barely the cost of living so to me i i'm not looking at this as being competitive i'm looking at it as we need to give our people cost of living raises so they can afford to be here so that's that's where i sit right i i i don't disagree on the competitiveness of hey we should be competitive mine's really sitting on hey we have people that

216have been in the district 15 years 20 years whatever and when we look at what they've been getting it's really sad and i know it has nothing to do with us from the standpoint of the state but we have the ability to do something i definitely want to try to do it but i just wanted to say i'm less focused on the competitive but more on you know doing what's right so yeah and if i could i missed it let me get exactly what you said and um as i stated that from the outset i am as well um but we also in terms of being realistic have to consider being competitive we there is a market out there and there are limited uh staff and so we have to keep that in mind as

217well that's all go ahead bonnie you know you know one of the one of the things that's happening now is the county is also doing a salary study and they do them frequently they don't always act on them but they do them frequently and you know to to will's point you know we've got to take action on people who have been sitting for a long time who've stayed with us and we've got to tell them we value you not but actions be flatter than word um but maybe is there a way that we can join with the county and um possibly chapel hill schools um to say we'd like this is what our salary study says um you know what's good for the goose is good for the gander and maybe there's you know the

218current structural funding processes won't support this but maybe the county when they understand this competitive issue will open up a conversation about competitive about restructuring salaries for the two school districts and the county because they it's important for them they face the same challenges so maybe they'll you know but that won't happen for this year's budget that might happen you know [Music] just a thought um how are we doing in terms of giving you the feedback in your wrath clear is mud yes i'm hearing and and taking in um all of the all of the feedback that has been provided okay do people feel like there's more to talk about tonight the point to will's point that um okay well shaking you said so that's good okay um i feel like we've got our main

219um our main concerns expressed and um bonnie did you know the good for the goose is good for the ganders is like an equity um no oh is it who knows i'm working that who are finance talk um okay so um dr felder is there anything you'd like us to wrap up to this point before we go to our final item did you just raise your hand sarah i i just remembered something that i wanted to mention on the principal piece um if i could just briefly briefly touch on it which is um i understand what the hill group's recommendation was there but um the tiering of the supplement for the principles i'm thinking about how the principal's base salary is already higher in middle school and then higher again in high school and so

220when you take a percentage supplement on top of that and you also tier it so it's bigger at each level the distance between an elementary school and a high school i understand that a high school principal's job is different you go to games at night things like that but it does make me curious um i'm not sure that that full scale of differentiation is actually representative of the work and so i wondered about considering that as a flat uh supplement percentage supplement on those different bases i wondered how other districts do it and whether that would still make us competitive at each of those tiers you don't need to answer that right now but that's something i'd like us to think about because the base is already substantially higher for a high school principal and

221so if then their supplement is a percentage of that higher amount bigger it creates a lot of distances based upon the districts that we come that are our competitors the uh they have the additional supplement based upon the years of experience as well as the supplement that is a percentage and it is in line with the percentages that were recommended in this study okay i mean if that's how people are being compensated in other districts and we want to be competitive i guess that makes sense i personally i don't i don't know that that makes sense to me so so i'll use that sir to take it to the next item because one of the things that with our principles that i've noticed is even though we've had some turnover and some of it we've

222moved principles out or people out of principal jobs um we are getting good applicants where i thought we were getting lots of applicants for principalships and um and so and the mo many of them are new so i don't know if we have any particular principles that are compressed but i got the impression that principles were probably in a lot better shape than teachers for example if i appreciate what you said um and yes we we are fortunate at times that well i will say there are times when we we don't get the best applicants i've seen that but we want to keep the ones we have absolutely that's that's the goal because the churn is not good it's not good for school at all so um yeah and dr can i just reiterate or

223note here that principal salaries are not based on the school level they are based on the number of students that are in that's part of it and based on the number of students are in their schools so that that plays a role in it as well yes thank you miss hatcher that that is correct they are they are tiered on the state scale but it is based upon the size of the school not whether it's a high school or a middle school or elementary school oh interesting okay but is is is the supplement that hill proposed tiered on those things or is it also based on it's one of these earlier slides i'm not you know what i can look at the slide later don't answer that question it's late um thank you so much

224so i mean the again and i just want to reiterate that it would be really nice to see the masters pay for social workers i think that group is actually it's a small group it's at risk i think the teachers are have have reconciled to the not having master pay and if we fix the years of service i think they'll be that would be a really big step so but it doesn't work for the social workers um so there's that i so mike my concern on on the the um consent item i had two first of all it it i i didn't know why it was johnny let me get an interrupt for just a minute sorry i didn't know i thought you wanted to move to that sorry no no you're fine i just

225wanted to welcome back um vice chair stevens because um her internet has allowed us allowed her to rejoin so i just want that on the record and weird i can't hear miss stevens you're you're muted i just look technology is great when it works right well i just wanted to weigh in quickly and say clearly we can't do all of this in one fell swoop and i agree with all of you that we certainly need a phased in approach because we absolutely must do something because i know we're not going to get all that money not unless we hit the lottery thank you brendan okay so what we're going on to this final item and um bonnie raised the question and so um go ahead and ask your questions um go ahead i think our

226folks are already here yeah i thought we were talking about lottery numbers now anyway um so my question is is um just in the packet you know i think as a board we said you know it would be i would feel more comfortable if the packet just talked about using the money for salary increases without specifically highlighting principles and teaching assistants because i i just feel like you know salaries is where we want to be um also i thought that the commissioner resolution asked for metrics and i was wondering how we were gonna you know we haven't talked about how we're gonna hold ourselves accountable for this money so i just didn't so those were the two things that concerned me i can chime in in regards to the metrics and uh the thinking was

227our teacher or our turnover data as well as our vacancies and how long a position remains vacant opinion which is that i found it helpful that the abstract focused on um tas and and principals um specifically because the commissioners wanted to um they wanted to understand the line of how this funding would support mental health and student achievement gaps and those particular like staff populations there's very clear like good evidence about those connections and so personally i found it helpful to that they were targeting it there right thank you sarah that's helpful to me too not um everyone at the same time so if i don't call on you please go ahead but go ahead i just i just um didn't want to imply that it's teaching assistance and principles because i think those that

228won't constitute the 600 000 in our first phase so so that's all i just was but you know the the abstract the way it reads doesn't say it's going to be principals and tas it it says it's for salaries i just was concerned about the implication because the problem is including some of that money and rhonda keeps correcting me because with the 400 000 that we have um that has to go the 400 000 that the state had i'm sorry the 400 yeah the 400 000 that the state has provided for supplements for teaching supplements has to be limited to 406 or 500 something dollars per teacher so i don't know how that applies to the um that was in the board packet i don't know if you all saw that i went but but

229we have a limit so we have 400 and we have um about um what's about 400 000 right that we can use to teaching supplements but there's a there's a constraint of 400 of um about 500 dollars per teacher or 600 per teacher so i don't know how that works i know rhonda has some pretty crafty ways to make numbers work but i don't know how that works or if we can ask the state for a waiver i don't know if that's a possibility too anyway we have lots of salary problems that were that at least i'm hoping we'll try and fix in this budget so that that's um okay so so do you not have any concerns with this then bonnie you just wanted to talk about a little bit yeah i i prefer

230that when we go to the county we talk about salaries in general but i'm happy to leave it where it is i think rhonda's explanation of the metrics is fine so in that context i'll move the um i'll move the item okay okay there's a motion from bonnie in a second from sarah um will yes um okay sorry i'm moving slowly here um will um i vote yes bonnie jennifer yes sarah yes brenda yes great um okay dr felder are there any other topics we need to discuss or consider be aware of before um i entertain a move to close you can entertain the move to close all right don't move move to adjourn madam chair all right a motion from vice chair stevens and a second from miss smiley um bonnie yes will yes

231um i vote yes jennifer yes sarah yes brenda yes we are adjourned thank you so much thanks to all your staff for seeing leighton helping us um talk through all of this dr felder and everybody and have a great night thank you all have a great night as well you