001I won't tell Brenda good evening tonight is Monday January 10th 2022 and I calling this meeting to order the Orange County Schools Board of Education pledges to our families students staff and the Greater Community to conduct our business in a courteous and productive manner showing respect for fellow board members staff and citizens the board asks its citizens to conduct themselves with the same courtesy towards all staff members and each other as per board policy Robert's Rules of Order will be used to conduct meetings following the Pledge of Allegiance a moment of silence will be observed before we begin our business public comment will be held at after the board adopts tonight's agenda the board also ask that you check your cell phones and other electronic devices to be sure that they are turned off or
002on vibrate in order to avoid disruptions during the meeting if you would please stand and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance con the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation God indivisible andice for as we begin our work this evening I would like to recognize that Orange County Schools was established on land previously settled by the ancestors of the okichi banad the saponi nation this board has made a commitment to honor and respect the heritage of indigenous and all members of our Orange County Schools Community to work to undo Decades of racial harm and to build to the best of our ability a community that Fosters a sense of belonging for all of our students so that they may Thrive and succeed please join me now for
003a moment of silence if we can go to the next slide please orange penic school's Vision preparing every learner for lifelong service and success our mission engage challenge Inspire educating students in a safe inclusive environment where we engage Challenge and expire Inspire them to reach their maximum potential our belief statements we have nine value diversity put students first excellence in all we do prioritize Equity provide a safe environment serve the whole child inclusive culture and climate starts with us accountability and collaborate to do great work thank you thank you Vice Steven um Dr Felder believe um going to lead us in recognitions tonight indeed we do and so good evening chair Doyle Vice chair Stevens to the entire board our student staff and families this evening we have two very special recognitions we are starting
004this evening and new year off right with this state recognition and honor at this time I'd like to welcome Mr Xavier Adams known as Mr Xavier to his students to come forward to the podium at this time welcome Mr Xavier Mr Xavier is a finalist for the 2022 Prudential North Carolina beginning teacher of the year award on December 20th the North Carolina department of Public Instruction announced that 27 teachers from across North Carolina were selected as finalists for the North Carolina Center for the advancement of teaching 2022 Prudential North Carolina beginning Innovation and ability to inspire students to achieve tonight we want to recognize Mr Xavier who uh was also in February 2021 just as a reminder was recognized as an equity Warrior uh for Orange County Schools Mr Xavier continues to ex excel in
005the classroom uh for the betterment of his Orange High School students uh the winner of this year's beginning teacher award uh and the runup for this Statewide honor will be announced on February 17th and I have a good feeling in we will be inviting Mr Xavier back because he is certainly worthy of this Statewide recognition so at this time please join me in congratulating Mr Xavier Mr Xavier do you have any remarks you'd like to share with us I do thank you good evening everyone I am both honored and grateful to be recognized by Dr Felder in the entirety of our school board as a beginning teacher of the year for both our school district and our region in North Carolina as a teacher I find it incredibly important to create a classroom environment that
006allows for all of my students to thrive to do so I constantly ask my students for feedback so they can participate in the creation of our community in line with that practice earlier today I asked my students to complete an anonymous and free response survey about Orange County Schools so we as a district can reflect on what our students want and need the question that generated the most response to it was quote if you could decide what students learn about in Orange County Schools what would you want them to learn end quote some of the responses importantly emphasize an education that is practical and helps students feel prepared to pay bills manage money and how to take care of their mental health however the students overwhelmingly focused on one Topic in fact 17 of 35
007students that chose to respond mentioned the importance of creating or preserving classes in curriculum that teach the quote true history of the United States end quote in a way that welcomes the voices of marginalized people that are queer or people of color in particular one student said quote I would want them to learn more about other other cultures and different people they might encounter in life education and learning is one of the key factors to a more inclusive community and World in conjunction with this quote another student said that learning about parts of different people's identities is important because quote words have consequences and can affect someone for their whole life end quote so as I stand here before you and as I represent the students of Orange County schools in particular the students of
008Orange High School I would like to thank the school board as well as Dr Felder and the amazing teachers that I get to work alongside at Orange High School that have kind of already enacted this vision of creating a more welcoming School community at Orange County schools and I would like to encourage us to further and deep in the work that we've already started thank you thank you okay so our next recognition board is for you someone once said we often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude the month of January is designated as school board recognition month initiated by the national school boards Association in 1995 2022 marks the 27th anniversary of school board recognition month so for tonight we want to to express our sincere gratitude to all of
009you the Orange County School Board of Education as citizens who serve students and represent their communi Schoolboard members face complex and demanding challenges these last two years have been a testament to not just the students and staff's abilities to adapt to their constantly changing environment but also to our Arch County school board members who work diligently behind the scenes to make the educational experience the best it can be for our students in a time when normaly isn't always accessible they are extraordinary people who voluntarily tackle the enormous job of governing the school district and do so in a manner that illustrates what it means to be resilient ready and Relentless for all those that they represent so board on behalf of the entire Orange County School District District our students staff families and community members
010I'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge you you who make uh the time to share your leadership and voice about the future of Orange County students you have been presented with cards and a a small token of appreciation from our students and now members of cabinet that's your cue have a sweet treat in a paper lantern uh to present to you as well so thank you for leading and lighting the way in Orange County Schools thank you so much I can't that's so lovely okay chair McKenzie that concludes our recognitions for this evening okay it was it was a little slip but it was appropriately done so because I have the privilege of recognizing Mrs Hillary Ken's leadership in chairing the Orange County Schools Board of Education from July 2020 through December 2021 right
011in the heart of the covid 199 pandemic which were very demanding times and schools Hillary thank you for your service an example to us all and I have the privilege of GI that Dr Felder and for you oh it's on behalf of the district on behalf of the district can you open it okay I guess I'll open open it no pressure a very cool it is a gavel that will be very fun I'm sure my children will also enjoy having their own meetings with this thank you guys so much it has been an honor of a lifetime to serve on this board particularly as chair and um this is something that really means a lot to me that I will look back mostly fondly on that period of time so thank you so much thank
012you um Dr Felder in board um I believe we need to change the sequence of the agenda to accommodate Dr Danny B of the ABC science collaborative who is on right now and he's also on call um and so or and so before public comment um I will need a motion to adopt the revised agenda um that has um Dr Benjamin speaking before public comment but we'd still have Miss Stewart and um the whole presentation on their covid-19 changes as as anticipated um later on in the agenda yes Miss Hower yes and I'd also like to pull before we adopt the agenda I'd like to pull item 6E of the first reading of policies it was posted at four o'clock today which is didn't give me enough time to look at them so in respect
013for the work that went into them I'd like to defer them to our next meeting so again I'd like to pull item 6E so that and your change would be the okay so in so in your motion are you are you also including um letting Dr Danny okay so that's a motion for those two things together do we have a second on that okay all in favor I anyone opposed great H so that was uh Miss Houser's motion and it was Mr Aon second correct so with that um I believe I saw Dr Benjamin up a moments ago minutes off the meeting hey uh can you all hear me see yes you can okay great and do you need for me to share screen or um do you all have um my uh my slides
014and um I I apologize for my slides coming in um at 10 minutes to six as um the chair mentioned I was um I've been in I'm the attending of record for the Pediatric infectious disease service and it's um uh not a it's not a slow week so uh the uh do you need me to share slides because I did give them at the last second okay let me let me share oh no I can't participant screen sharing is disabled oh great thank you um so next slide please as you all know um we um provide the information to policy makers and we provide the research to policy makers and we um uh are not a decision making body or giving uh the details of uh what school districts should or should not do go
015ahead next slide please the um all right so since uh we last met uh I think which August or September um we've gotten up off the ground the national cohort study this includes decision support um we meet uh with participating districts on the regular and we have individual phone calls to review and interpret a District's own data and just as a reminder to everyone so we all are talking about the same vocabulary the primary endpoint of relevance is within School transmission um that is at the level of the individual you'll see lots of Publications um regarding um Co as it relates to Total cases cases in the community total cases in schools but just as a reminder the relevant um end point is I come to school uh I'm infected uh Dr Felder and I
016are uh classmates in uh third grade together um I sit next to Dr Felder I uh infect her that is within School transmission and that's what is the uh key item for the uh schools to prevent um as it relates to covid-19 uh it's not about um absences or total cases or uh cases uh in the community now this will eventually uh this endpoint uh will become less and less important as um we move to a more and more vaccinated slash previously infected uh Community but uh it is at the moment um and probably for the next few weeks uh an important endpoint just given the stress on the hospital system uh so that end point where we need to correct for district size Community transmission variant so obviously the uh number cases in Orange
017County schools are way up this week uh they're considerably higher than they were uh uh back in December the within School Transmission in Orange County Public Schools uh remains low this is based on your own data for the time that you've had Omicron in front of you and the idea would be to directly calculate secondary attack rates uh this is what we've done in test to stay and I'll review some of those data for you but because this um the data that I'm getting ready to present to you are from a national study uh with um over 60 school districts um and who use different quarantine policies we need to uh approximate the secondary attack rate because those different quarantine policies uh give different denominators uh under the secondary attack rate so you need to
018do what we have done is a primary a ratio of primary cases uh those are required outside of school to secondary cases uh acquired in school we also uh looked at various um exposures so what were lunch policies I'll cut to the chase on that it seemed important to in this study uh which I'll go get into some of the details here in a minute having a lunch policy was important eating outside uh was helpful but there was no optimal uh strategy at lunch that was Superior so just having a policy and obviously adhering to it as best you can as a district um that includes some eating outside um appears to be um have Merit quarantine policies did not predict transmission this is one of the re one of the reasons why uh DHHS
019um and uh the CDC we've reviewed these data with both parties uh this is um one of uh one of the many reasons why some of those policies have been changed um we compared the DHHS policy that was uh a little more uh a little less restrictive to uh the CDC policy back in uh September uh those two policies have now come closer together uh once the CDC has become more comfortable with the North Carolina data and the ABC science collaborative data and then uh this uh this cohort study provided the preliminary data for test to stay and I'll also review um test to say go ahead next slide please so the impact of masking Universal masking on schools so again the primary endpoints within School transmission uh we have uh we approached 13,800 school
020districts throughout the United States we're working with over 100 districts UH 60 districts from eight states um provided both primary and secondary cases not all the school districts were able to do the contact tracing necessary to do uh secondary cases uh there were over 2,000 schools and over 1.3 million students uh and they gave weekly reporting of cases in Fall um during uh uh fall of 22 and periodic uh policy surveys and updates uh ma uh lunch policy and quarantine policy I've already uh talked to you about masing was the main intervention there were uh 40 school districts uh that had full masking these school districts uh had all weeks of the period of observation with universal masking uh partial masking uh these school districts had several weeks without masking and then went to uh
021uh masking or they had several weeks with masking early in the semester and went to without masking and they as a district made those decisions based on their own metrics and then uh no masking these school districts and other approximately 10 school districts uh went uh no masking for the entire period of time the difference between uh full masking and no masking was an 80% reduction uh in the transmission of covid-19 and uh the partial masking District interestingly had significantly fewer uh cases of within School transmission than the no masking so there were clearly some districts that would look at their own data um they'd say okay we're ready to try this no masking or voluntary masking um you know we supported them in that decision uh and then they um would go for a
022few weeks and then perhaps either that's how they enter the uh semester or they could switch back and it was entirely um uh up to the school district typically when um a policy tended to if you will go sideways on a school district it's something that the district could see in um just a couple of weeks um you can see here along the uh along the uh X and Y AIS uh The observed primary cases and um the secondary uh cases and uh it takes much fewer primary cases to get an equal number of secondary cases if you are doing um voluntary masking um you know I don't think this is a surprise to um most of the um most of the folks listening it is a substantial uh uh it is a substantial uh
023size study um that's got both uh universally masking and unmasked uh uh students um go ahead next slide please uh so this is cluster data from ncdhhs these data should be um interpreted I think with a little more caution we've cautioned you guys about interpreting data like this uh before because it relates policies to reported clusters and it's more much more difficult to link individual risk to uh to the intervention in this type of analysis but um you did see um increas in clusters in mask optional districts compared to Universal masking again um I wanted to just make the board aware of this this is something that uh ncdhhs has released and um we view it as um consistent with um our national study but again um uh these are the kind of data we
024encourage folks to interpret um with some caution go ahead next slide please so as a conceptional model we are working with school districts that um tend to be risk averse and so they're doing things like um masking um Outdoors uh a substant that's a a small fraction of districts uh we are working with a large number of districts obviously that have a mass mandate indoors and then we are working with a considerable number of districts that are now moving to uh uh voluntary masking and given that um children uh you know have access to the vaccine um we've been supporting them in the decisions that they've been making um moving between um risk averse and risk tolerance and have moved away from uh uh moved away from trying to guide them or outline a plan
025for them uh simply our goal is to help them understand their own data when they make their own decisions about whether or not uh and and how masking is right for them or quarantine or test to stay or um meals or vaccines or testing or ventilation go ahead next slide please now test to stay was done in the Universal masking environment we proposed this to DHHS we our goal was to do this both in the um universally masked environment and uh the unmasked or voluntary masking environment um we um uh we had this approved by Duke's um IRB this is an NIH funded study and uh at the kind of a joint decision was made to uh do the universal masking districts first and if uh we had success there uh moveed to voluntary masking
026uh districts so uh during the first six weeks um we enrolled students from approximately 400 students from five North Carolina School Districts in a charter school they all had Universal masking in place uh now what would happened is if you were um vaccinated you did not have to quarantine if you were mask on mask exposure you did not have to quarantine but if you had a brief period of being unmasked uh for example at lunch uh for 10 or 15 minutes uh normally you would have to if you were not a vaccinated student you would have to quarantine those students who had that brief period of being unmasked in a universal masking District uh had um we were very pleased with these results had a very low within School uh transmission rate and there was
027no tertiary transmission so that's defined as if I come to school uh I'm infected I infect Dr Felder she then goes on to infect the board chair that when she infects the board chair that is tertiary transmission for me as the primary case U most of these again were Indo indoors and brief unmasked exposure periods uh most of the exposures occurred in the context of uh lunch that's the most common place um Athletics occurred for a small fraction of exposures but included accounting for a substantial fraction of positive tests and the most important thing about this is that it substantially reduces absences from school of healthy children uh simply because they are potentially Expos simply because they're exposed to covid-19 it's a over 90% reduction compared to what the CDC study showed in uh in
028December uh and uh results in much less testing of uh children and therefore we are we um sought approval from the IRB the Safety Committee and DHHS to at this interim analysis uh we felt like we could open the study up to the unmasked districts we asked for permission to do that and we were able to launch uh part two of the study uh in the voluntary masking uh districts where we will have ongoing data collection in masking districts and also data collection in voluntary masking districts so we'll have two arms uh enrolling here in in h January Universal masking districts and voluntary mask districts and we'll do test to stay My Hope Is by the end of February um we will be able to uh provide answers here and if successful uh my hope
029is that this is um a path forward for some of our more risk averse districts to move toward um no masking um uh so uh next slide please uh remember um uh one of the reasons why we felt comfortable to open up to the unmasked districts or the voluntary masking districts and we felt comfortable uh supporting them in some of their decisions to do that is that the uh mortality uh while it is considerable in unvaccinated adults uh when uh uh humans are vaccinated that reduces mortality uh cons ably and if you have a child who is uh covid uh who is vaccinated fully vaccinated for covid their risk of morbidity mortality is less for covid than it is for influenza so let me just um interpret these charts here these are uh the red
030columns are mortality for covid um these uh red bars will fluctuate uh a little bit depending on the variant depending on what um month or year you look at covid but for the purposes of our discussion um these are these are pretty reasonable estimates for mortality um unvaccinated the far top right again greater than 65 years of age considerable mortality considerably more higher than flu uh for covid uh greater than 50 years of age again less mortality considerably less than greater than 65 but still much more than flu now remember now once you get vaccinated you reduce that very very close to uh influenza mortality or perhaps better than influenza mortality because of the powerful efficacy of uh the vaccines in five to 17 year olds the data are really impressive Co is U much
031less of um mortality or morbidity risk than it is for old older patient populations and again uh vaccination uh really uh makes it so that uh we've got a situation where the morbidity and mortality are quite low to typical everyday experiences for children and it is based on that based on the fact that families have the option to unilaterally protect their own children that we have um opened up um we believe ethically uh studies of um a pathway forward um in the voluntary uh masking environment and it's why we're doing decision support with those um districts and helping them navigate that course um go ahead next slide please now um the the vaccines have brought us to the point where we've got uh substantial protection for the kids in December uh and the morbidity mortality
032weekly report 9915 children from uh six uh hospitals sometimes children are um picked up uh just on screening tests uh and of these 915 children who were admitted approximately 22% of them just happen to be picked up on screening test but 78% for were hospitalized for um covid uh so uh of these uh 217 272 of them uh could be vaccinated they were aged uh 12 to uh 17 um of the 7133 only one of the child CH children who was admitted was a vaccinated child so so remember you couldn't get vaccinated if you were um under age 12 only 272 could um but regardless of who could or could not get vaccinated uh only one of the 713 children admitted for covid uh had was a fully vaccinated child and that's consistent with my
033own personal experience with uh not only the Delta variant but the Omicron variant um and throughout the pandemic um you know just um you just don't I just have not taken care I've taken care of plenty of children with Co in the hospital none of them have been vaccinated um so when we think about the vaccine that's free safe and effective for um all Americans age five and older there's covid at the end level of the individual and essentially uh every school attendee can be protected from severe disease regardless of whatever the school policies are on covid mitigation uh then there's Co at the public public level we happen to be going through somewhat of a unique time in the period of the pandemic with cases uh uh as high as they are uh it's
034thought that as many as perhaps uh a million or two million Americans are getting um infected every day and during that time uh in these couple of weeks that we're in the midst of even though Omicron is is probably less virulent than Delta even though um much fewer people are getting uh hospitalized uh when they get infected uh with Omicron if uh Omicron is only 25% of the severity of Delta but they're 10 times as many infections uh the hospital systems are going to be uh stressed so the primary gains of any mitigation member measures in school with when we have a vaccine the way we do is to ensure staff into the schools and to Res reduce hospitalization of the people who have not taken the vaccine and to protect other members of the
035community and this is why you know for the more risk averse districts um especially here in mid January with cases as high as we are we are supporting them in their decisions to uh keep uh Universal masking uh in place uh just because of the um stress that's on the hospital system uh this month go ahead next slide please so I've been asked about I typically been getting asked about a few things Universal masking um you know why I do it well there's strong data from schools um it's popular at the moment because um it works we know that it's not for all communities it's not for every school district but we do know that if school districts want to limit or reduce uh their within School transmission it is a a primary way to
036do so uh test to stay in universally masking school districts this is again strong data now two studies from two different research groups uh keeps children in school safely and reduces quarantine uh the only caution I would have here is that those data are from primarily from Del Delta we've got some uh of our initial data now coming in a couple of weeks worth of data from Omicron um but um we continuing to look at it both in the Universal masking and in the voluntary masking uh under uh Omicron and a two arm study uh and that's uh includes the voluntary masking it's under evaluation their school districts in North Carolina participating in that lunch outside there's some modest data from both um uh largely outside of school districts kind of in the hospital setting
037that's uh quite helpful um in in uh uh Medical Care settings and Clinics some data from school um it very likely Works uh very likely helpful um shortened um uh isolation period after infection uh those data are modest uh it's popular at the moment as it relates to Staffing uh it has the potential to have some covid exposure because of the prolonged uh shedding that some uh folks have but it is uh this is this is a big reason why the CDC has gone this way I get asked about double masking um here the data are U because of the concern about Omicron and here the data are really pretty weak it's based largely on laboratory data and I caution schools around um uh uh making uh more robust double masking a policy just just
038because you can sometimes uh have so much uh mitigation Mees that they can um Can backfire on you a little bit um with as it relates to compliance um we do have a study that just started uh this morning on um types of mask and um double masking and is there a difference in transmission um but I'll refer you to your own data where thus far you've um had success with um uh the masking policy you currently have masking Outdoors is very um weak data with prior variance it's unknown with Omicron but U one of the things that made the CDC so concerned about Omicron was a transmission that was documented um Outdoors um you know you can again sometimes you can um maybe have a little um uh um it's a balancing act for
039school districts around um masking Outdoors it's clear that Ma that transmission can occur outdoors with this particular variant uh weekly screening test for students Um this can sometimes be even um counterproductive un L really focused uh well and then um I get asked about Athletics uh these the data here are really really modest and are um primarily derived from outside of uh school um and I will tell you that we you know during the um ancestral variant which was uh summer of 2020 the alpha variant uh which came early 21 the Delta variant which uh you all will remember from the summer and fall we were seeing virtually no within Hospital transmission we're starting to see a little bit of transmission at the hospital but what tends to happen is that um visitors will come
040into the hospital with their mask on they'll go into the patient rooms um and then once inside the patient room take their mask off and expose the patient to uh to uh to co we um uh most uh clinics and most hospitals are uh having their staff used the procedural mask the sometimes folks call them the surgical mask um for walking around we're not using kn95 or n95s routinely around asymptomatic patients or visitors and our visitors are depending on what institution you are they are using either those uh types of masks the procedural or surgical mask or they're using um cloth mask not in 95 or uh kn95 uh routinely go ahead uh next slide please please um so with that um you know again uh thank you for um uh uh letting me um
041uh to go here early um and out of order if you have questions I'm happy to um uh address them thank you so much Dr Benjamin um can you give us a sense of how many minutes you have before you have to dash so we can control our questioning a little bit it would be great if I you know could I I I'll stay for as long as I can and and and I would say 20 20 minutes um would be would be awesome but uh you know if we needed to is at at 20 minutes the Beeper turns back on so at that point if I get called uh even in the middle of a question I'll I'll need to go I have to dash okay thank you so much okay so board members
042if we can be um thoughtful in keeping our questions um tight who would like to start go ahead Mr Aon um thank you Dr Benjamin for all the [Music] information I think mine yeah mine's on let's T you have the light on testing is yours on the lights on but on uh so Dr mman thank you so much for all the updates and information um I did have a couple of questions uh I have several but I'll limit it so others can ask my first is um on the outdoor eating um I know you said there's limited data but one of the questions I have is one of the proposals that we have is no talking during the eating when it's outside and I'd like to get your perspective on that inside I I get
043it but outside could you give any thoughts you have around that yes I think you know the no talking thing uh you know when we when we devised these in 2020 they were really to get to help schools get open and fundamentally um it's exceedingly difficult to talk to protect your own Airway and to eat all at the same time and so the original um idea for it especially indoors um was uh to get not so much to prevent children from talking but to make sure that the children were having a very limited amount of time with mask off so um different school districts have handled this different ways some have said um no talking others have said um will um you can you can spend as much light time doing what you like but
044the amount of time that you have with your mask off is limited to X number of minutes um other school districts have said uh we just want you to um have just to ensure that you're eating Outdoors um of the three school districts uh that had a tremendous success with um uh limiting within School transmission they were uh three of our best districts out of the 60 they um did not limit talking when they went Outdoors but they were always outdoors and they were um very very consistent with that uh so I would say there is more than one way to um reasonably achieve the goal of minimizing spread uh around lunchtime all right thank you so much I'll I'll step back and let someone else ask questions Miss Smiley um is is my Micon
045just checking everybody can hear that okay great um thank you Dr Benjamin um I have a question about um the um shortened isolation period and the 5 days and and folks returning after the 5 days um I have some concern my understanding as it is right now is that the way that functions um uh is that students or staff could come could come back to school after the five days and not necessarily have yet you know have a there's no sort of testing requirement to come back at that point um and in this season when it is um the chances of it being cold outside and then students needing to eat inside after that five 5 to 10 day point um you know the CDC says really strict masking um not removing masks indoors around
046other people in that days 5 through 10 um and uh I guess I I have some concerns about that um and just wonder if you have any insights uh about that period of time you know given that CDC guidance and yeah yeah I I think you know that's um just like Mr aon's question I really like that question thank you um I like it for different ways uh with Mr aon's I think I have a good answer and a good feel for where the Puck's going as far as focus on eating outside and different ways to do this here I um and not super um enthusiastic um about it's not a great choice one way or the other okay if you prevent those children from coming back to school uh you um prolong their um
047time isolated in a way that um no other aspect of the community is subjected to um the probability that they are infectious um goes down um considerably especially for vaccinated children um you know their their time that they are infectious uh goes down and uh it's not um but it's not zero and um I I don't know what's the right answer there thanks thank you Dr Benjamin I had a question just kind of big picture from what I heard you saying um was that uh while there are there's um modest data of some of the outside masking um it makes sense giving the strained Health System we have right now with the High cases um but hopefully this Peak that we're in is short and you mentioned that you started with a universal masking test
048test to stay program but that you're also have underway a voluntary masking test to stay program and I believe you said you're that study is underway and you're Gathering that data and I was just wondering what time frame you foresaw um for that uh data coming out yeah I think that that that those data would be coming out in February so in the absolute best case um scenario we have um a peak that occurs here in uh in January we start to take the hospital pressure off in um a couple of weeks after the peak uh the test to stay data come in in early to mid February in the unmasked environments and then school districts could maybe be prepared to um take uh a step forward there if everything falls into place you know
049beautifully um I um that is that is a that would be a very very optimistic um uh pathway forward I would I would um you know I I see uh a pathway forward for voluntary masking it's simply the speed the appropriate speed at which that is uh is done okay thank you other board members with questions for Dr Benjamin Bonnie yes thank you Dr Benjamin for coming tonight um I was wondering if you could tell us what the status is research is on the severity around Omicron because there was some indication that it was more of an upper respiratory infection less lung and then in the spirit of the severity how does that influence your view on outdoor masking risks risks of being outdoored without masks especially with uh vaccinations readily available to everybody yeah
050all right so um if we were um so number one Omicron it looks um consistent now that it is um you know it is considerably less varent than uh Delta the you know there's talk of 30% uh uh or uh or greater difference in uh severity with decreased severity with um Omicron um the um but it is the um it is the overwhel you know if we were at 50 or a 100,000 cases in the US per day like we were in December uh and we were dealing with Omicron uh I be like this is awesome the problem is we're at you know uh seven or 800,000 um a day and so it is the risk to the individual child in Orange County Schools is exceedingly exceedingly low uh it is you know less than
051influenza it is on the order of um commuting to and from school okay the problem becomes uh if there's a lot of cases in the school from a public health standpoint and I want to clarify um so that my my comment about um Community to and from school the risk of death from acquiring Omicron in an Orange County school for a child who's attending Orange County school is less than the risk of Transportation given the current policies of Orange County Schools given the vaccination rate of Orange County schools and giving the varal lens of five to 17 year olds in Orange uh uh as what we know about Omicron okay so for the individual this is what's so tough for communities right here in the month of January 2022 for the individual the risk is
052exceedingly low but when those children come together they then take that into their own um household and then expose um adults who are either more vulnerable or have not taken the vaccine or um to uh siblings who are under five or um uh just the sheer numbers of those infected um can cause um hospitals to be overwhelmed and you're starting to see um despite us not yet being at the peak yet with Omicron you're starting to see hospitals um start to struggle with offering elective procedures which is um which which is a fine that that starts to make things cons concerning for them okay um one one quick point of clarification Dr Benjamin you had mentioned um that the I believe you said roughly 50% of exposures happened at lunch whereas 13 during athletic however
053um that was exposures but not positive tests and so you're still seeing most positive tests come from Athletics did I understand that correctly the most common place of exposure was lunch but there was low transmission now this was predominantly with the Delta variant there was low transmission at lunch uh the um with for it was much less common for exposures to be there but of the people who were exposed it was more common for transmission secondary transmission to occur there and this is consistent with the rest of the data around Athletics where it is a um higher risk time for um acquisition of infection than uh uh than other parts of the school day okay thank you so much that all of our questions will well I'll I'll ask um the other question I had
054is one of one of the recommendations that we have or we've looked at was testing athletes twice a week that are not vaccinated and a lot of the recommendations that I've read and researched on really was under the once a week testing and I just wanted to get your perspective on the once a week versus twice a week testing right so the once a week testing most of the research is done there primarily because that's when um states that were participating in the dollars that were allocated to those types of tests to move through a system at that amount of testing that's how often they could test so was not a design like we did with the test to State study with the test to State study we said okay what's in the best interest
055of these kids what's in the best interest of these districts what's in the best interest of the community we're going to test on these days and we're gonna buy the tests and we're going to show whether or not that works with the data that you're seeing with the Athletics it's much more of hey we've got access to test once a week this is what we are observing okay much much different um how thorough one can be in the stud time the problem with once a week testing for um Athletics is if they are competing twice a week and especially if they have any periods where they're unmasked or unsupervised for example the back of the bus or the locker room or on the wrestling match or in the field of of play um there's Omicron
056moves Omicron in part Delta in itself moves fast enough that what you know you should be testing on on uh on day of competition for those kids but Omicron moves so quickly that it's um it's it's even more so for given that you have such a given that there's a real limit number of tests right now and given that vaccination although it is very imperfect with respect to acquisition of in given the vaccination does provide some protection um allowing those vaccinated kids to opt out of testing to conserve testing um is is a is a common strategy okay thank you thank you so much Dr Benjamin looks like Bonnie has one more is that our last comment or question okay Bonnie if you can um the the surprise in your presentation was around uh single
057layer masking you could ask Dr Felder we've all been pestering her about doing more intense um doing um K KN 95s or um multi-layer masking not not double masking necessarily but upgrading the masking in our schools and it sounds like you are not you know believe that that's important let me unwine to make sure we have a common Precision in our vocabulary there is um double masking versus single masking and then there are uh layers of um you know the density of the weave or whether it's thick cotton mask versus a Fen cotton mask okay if we're talking about a very thin not a very dense weave but a very thin weave sing what people sometimes call single layer a gator a bandana a very thin Mass that's almost seethrough okay with Omicron those are
058are are not that's not a good plan if you have a if you have a thick cotton mask the kind of mask the thicker mask or denser weave mask for example like the state provided back when the state originally was providing masks to school those are close in the laboratory setting to the surgical procedural mask um which is what you know we use in healthare um we're we're not using kn95 masks to walk around and see patients we're not double masking we're not using n95s um I don't I I I'm skeptical that um a um that one would see a difference in transmission between those types of mass uh in uh the as an independent risk factor I think you're much more likely to see transmission when the kids take off their masks at lunch
059and when they um take off their masks for athletics and when you have trouble with um compliance rather than um gosh um a thick cloth mask now I'm openminded to it so much so that we immediately propped up a study in in a week to get that question answered and the first um data collection started this morning um so I'm definitely open-minded to that the drawbacks to the kn95 and to the n95 are multifold old and um keep in mind that the data around differential um virus in the air is from the lab it's the predominant place where those data are coming from not so much real world evidence from schools themselves or transmission or differences in transmission and all of your options there are imperfect the cloth mask you get good compliance on you
060can drive compliance easily over 90% your own data say that data from multiple different school districts in North Carolina say that we've studied that we've shown that we've published that um with KN 95s they first of all oftentimes don't fit well especially for smaller faces uh because of supply chain problems you can often have um fraudulent Mas that you buy especially if you're um searching on price number three because of the discomfort people will often pull them down to make their face more comfortable when you pull them down to make your face more comfortable all of the benefit that you thought you had from having a k95 obviously goes away and gets much worse um and so those have drawbacks n95s have their own set of drawbacks uh primarily you need to get fit tested
061for them they often can be very difficult for medical students um to go eight or 10 hours a day for let alone um eight-year olds uh so I would be very cautious about mandating that as policy and then all of those items of course are disposable so once you mandate them now you're purchasing them for a group of 6,000 people multiple times a week um and the number of times that you can reuse them depend on if you're going to reuse them a lot you need to use you know UV light and aerosolized hydrogen peroxide and you know those those are typically not available so you know you need to rely on them not getting soiled you need to rely on them not getting um uh lost so it can be you know for 30
062seconds on CNN it's a great quote right when you start thinking through it it's like okay what am I getting into here [Music] yeah great ending thank thank you so much Dr Benjamin we really appreciate your time good thank you again for your guidance and whether or not uh you know if we see a difference in mass type I will be back in front of your school board and I will be eating crow and uh I will let you know make you a lovely Crow pie thank you so much all right I think it's time for us to proceed to public comment um okay now is the time for public comment and be and before um I read this little opening statement I think we had a couple people who were confused we had two
063um places to sign up on our website we had a place to sign up to like submit a written piece of public comment but we also had a place to sign up to speak in person and I believe we have one or two people here who emailed in um maybe use the wrong form but are actually here and would like to speak and I think we have enough time because we don't have many inperson speakers am I correct with that Miss St where did Miss okay great so now is the time for public comment after each speaker has been recognized they will have three minutes to speak the board will not have a discussion with any speaker no profane or vulgar language will be permitted nor personal abuse against any person any speaker that uses
064threatening language will not be permitted to continue public comment should not address any specific confidential student or Personnel matter complaints concerning any specific employee or student are not permissible during public comment comment speakers must conclude their remarks at the end of their 3 minutes I'll let you introduce the speakers Miss though that's okay do you have the list of speakers okay great she can that speaker lorer hello everyone can I take this off no no no you can hear me yeah we can hear you we can okay okay I was brought it was brought to my attention that some pornographic and obscene books are currently located in the Orange County Schools I'm sure you've already heard about these books because they've been in the news across the country country I have reviewed excerpts printed from
065two books gender queer a graphic novel and Lawn booy a novel I have a copy of the excerpts here uh I have them printed that I want to submit and I have extra copies with me if anyone sitting in this room wants to take a look it made me sick to my stomach to even look at the images let alone read the material gender quer is pornographic explicitly illustrates sex acts including oral sex and masturbation it is located in the adult section in the public library so why would it be available for students in the school library images of sex acts is completely inappropriate and serves no purpose in a school or a classroom hypersexualized media is targeting Our Youth and now I find that the elected School Board allows it to take place in
066our schools I did some research of the effects of porn pornography and I encourage you to research the to topic and you will find how the effects um if find this is a powerful drug that this can be on our kids wouldn't you rather have these kids read and think about what is true just honorable right pure and admirable parents are fighting hard to raise their kids in this way and it would help tremendously if the schools were their Champion supporting their efforts lawn booy contains countless obscenities graphic descriptions of sex between men and children since this is um in the schools can I assume that this is uh sexual child abuse is encourage for students to read no child or teenager should be exposed to pedophilia obscenities and or pornography in any school setting
067Common Sense alone should tell you that these these books should be removed from all School libraries School boards and administrators should be held accountable for the materials that the students within the school are exposed to these kids need to understand the Clear Choice between good and evil right and wrong what is lifegiving and life destroying they need to find a path into a secure and good future and not a dead end Street the danger of sexually grooming and induct rating our kids is going to be on your hands if you choose not to remove these types of books it is also criminal activity according to the North Carolina General statutes I encourage you to read them you are currently doing a disservice to these kids the minds of children need and deserve the protection of
068every member of the public and we won't give up fighting for the kids in Orange County Schools thank you Miss heer can [Applause] I Mark [Music] Dutton hi I'm Mark Dutton I'm my daughter mine Dutton happy New Year uh 2022 is here I hope you enjoyed your holidays uh with families and friends um as we look ahead to 2025 in public education I want to take this time to publicly share some pure gyms we have in our district um there are more but but I highlighted five our principal at Orange Middle School fantastic hard worker dedicated a true professional I recommend a salary increase uh for retention my kids have had more principles than they have years in your schools she leads the Chargers and seamless transition to the new name uh from my perspective
069the orange Middle School soccer program uh these two uh coaches set the standard bonuses and awards the orange middle school music program uh specifically Miss Murphy retention incentive recommendation from myself a Hillsboro Elementary School uh I got my two dolphins a tremendous staff all staff should be recognized it's the parent engagement it's that partnership that makes hillsb School stand up to me I had a wonderful experience and a wonderful journey and my kids uh are now moved on and then my last close to my heart uh a dolphin for Life charger for Life uh my daughter meline she's a panther in ninth grade um she's a merit scholar has been like that since she was in kindergarten she sets the standard of the district all her eogs any testing uh and she's loved and I
070feel safe when I go to work with her in the schools but I have two concerns that I wanted wanted to share with you and they surround the vaccine and inconsistency if you see the soccer picture that I got back from middle school today where it was yesterday my son brought at home no mask I watched from the bleachers it's inconsistent when we went to play Chapel Hill schools which I thought they'd be doubled up with mask they had no mask when Person County came down they didn't wear any mask on our Fields so it's hard to tell my son when a teacher or an education or institution says that vaccination is 500% effective and when I try to get a two-way or cross talk I don't get anything for weeks months I I've got
071the documents that I sent to the school system so I started and I'm coordinating with the health department on how CDC and syns happen I I sit with Roy Cooper uh you know I serve uh in that area so I see him coming in and out of the building so I know the CDC and how the sinks happen because I I sit on a different set but I I see uh how the system works I've worked with Mike uh thio um I reached out to him to get my answers but anyway we're looking to Novak the Novak vaccine in 2022 so if you guys can consider that uh for my children uh that's the vaccine that we're looking at and I've done some extensive reading on it um but please consider that V vaccine as
072it comes available uh and I get alerts from that company uh and the second one is the books the books are in violation of policy 3210 sorry we're at we're at your three minutes y I appreciate it and I just wanted to bring up those two was the books and the vaccination um I thank you thank you for your comments tonight oh I have some documents to leave uh with Miss St okay they're are they're the statutes in violation the chef department and then they've got some wonderful articles on your students scientists that have graduated what they saw in the district when they thank you Mr Dutton the final speaker Gretchen Schmid good evening everybody um all members of the board have in their inbox a message containing attachments of an unexhausted list of excerts
073from an adult romantic novel titled Like Water for Chocolate used as a literature assignment in a sophomore English classes semester or intire this novel which has been banned from schools in a number of states was chosen to teach magical realism and is the teacher's favorite book the main character creates recipes which have the effect of an aphrodesiac over anyone eating her food The Story Goes from one orgasm or orgy to another sexual fantasy is the experience throughout the whole book I've read it the teacher assigned this as a classroom read allowed with all of her students and her taking turns going around reading the whole book my son as well as other classmates came home reporting feeling very uncomfortable in English with this content being read and discussed with the English teacher direct quote mom
074this book is not something you would want me to read to help me have a clean good thoughts that is when I attained uh my own and red reading exerts from the book out loud here would go against the stated board policy around Public public comment that was mentioned aside from the blatant irreverent illegitimate and elicc sex scenes described in this novel the message to A perspective or even an adult is that one has no power over their passion or desires and that a woman should be lusted over as a sexual object let your physical passions Drive You from One irresponsible disaster to another as long as those desires are satisfied all is well because truly that is more important than honesty Integrity one's commitment to another family bonds or anything else so now the
075sophomores of this class are receiving an affirmation by an educational Authority that these degraded actions and ideas are worth their thought space space time reading discussing thinking about and testing on and all of the tax dollars to support purchasing such literature aduu kin said never underestimate the power of thought it is the greatest path to Discovery exactly what thoughts does this teacher want these 14 and 15 year olds to discover with his choice of reading there are a plethora of appropriate choices within the magical realism genre Norman Vincent Peele said our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate this class spent approximately 5 weeks under the guidance of their teacher cultivating sexual fantasy in their mind let's actually put students first by saying no to the support of porn of the porn industry
076and the distribution of materials to impressionable youth pornography and ex obscene exhibitions of sexual behaviors have been demonstrated by millions and brought now to the academic research level to negatively impact love and in intimacy porn fuels sex trafficking can become an escalating behavior Can Hurt Partners gives billions and profits to the porn industry corn actually changes the brain it can affect the brain like a drug promote sexual violence it normalizes sexual objectification when distributed from an educational or parental Authority it increases the likelihood of Youth to seek additional and increasing activity to addiction thank you Miss Schmid we're at the end of your three minutes that awesome is that our last speaker B okay thank you and now we will proceed with board comments than Stevens do you have any comments you'd like to make
077tonight well yes I'll my mic works I'd like to say the um thank you to Dr Felder because um we have a handsome new logo uh it's it's very attractive there's so much that you can see in it uh but I'm bringing this up because if we haven't already Dr Felder I'd like for us to make certain that it is protected protected in that we don't want to see it on other people's signs or on vehicles or on whatever uh it's just important to protect our uh logo because it's ours thank you very much thank you m Sten [Music] Miss McKenzie do you have any comments tonight no comments this evening thank you okay smiley sure um uh first I just want to thank all of our staff who are working so so hard through
078the hardest of times um just wave after wave of this pandemic everybody's going above and beyond right now and I just want to say thank you um I am asking that the district make high filtration n95s or k 95s or f94 masks readily available to all staff members and families who want them um I am not suggesting that we make that a requirement of policy that people wear them but I would like us to make them more readily available to people um well I'm sorry what did you say the the high the high filtration now so the n95 k95 KF 94s okay um so in the last updated to the board we heard about how um the OSHA um respiratory Protection Program requires fit testing um and a medical clearance um and proper instruction which
079makes it sound like we're not taking advantage of OSHA's mini respiratory Protection Program and so I'd like to us to look into that um that program is um a response to this pandemic and it's intended to make it easier for employers to provide these um types of masks to staff members outside of the situations where they're required to wear them as part of their job just to make it a bit easier so so in that program the mini program it doesn't require a fit test it doesn't require the medical clearance um to me this is really um an equity issue for students as well um you know the the Orange County Health Department website says use the best quality and best fitting mask you can get especially in higher risk situations um scenarios that call
080for better protection include being close and prolonged contact with people whose vaccination status is unknown being in crowded indoor settings riding on public transportation if etc etc use the best mask you can um and the fact that some of our families can afford to buy better quality masks for their children and others have no access to that I find um challenging um I know the state is giving out the n95s for free and I know we've requested those and that's great but I just want us to make sure we're using the least restrictive approach to making these things available for families not as a requirement but as a uh increasing access to higher quality masks thank you Miss Smiley Mr Aton so I I originally didn't have any comments but I just wanted to follow
081up on the n95 I know when the pandemic originally started the question we asked was would these be available to anybody that requests them and we were told yes so I'm confused at is this an issue that people are requesting and they're not getting it or is this we just want to preemptively acknowledge that they're available and people have access so that I'm just a little confused because I thought they were already available to anybody that would has requested them they are available okay okay good I just anyway thank you Miss Hower yeah I I have nothing I'll just support the request okay um and with that um it is time trying to discuss our consent agenda I know there are a couple items that um we discuss polling uh Mr Aton mentioned pulling C
082because it's kind of looped into our covid updates um and we're also pulling D and G and moving them um after our let's see after uh our next item our work session with the co health and safety updates we have a guest do we not with our um yes we do have a guest for our literacy audit I'm sorry for the literacy audit yes we do okay so I was thinking if we move D and G2 after those two uh information items d& require um you totally pulled e but um we could we can uh move those after A and B into the beginning of discussion and action if that's all right right with everybody you did say pull e correct I didn't say pull e well I thought Bonnie no no what did you
083say no we already pulled that was the policy okay y okay in a different section it was another eent we're pulling C all together because it's redundant and then we're moving D and G to after our first information session so do I have a um a motion to adopt tonight revised consent agenda moved second um motion from Miss McKenzie and a second from Miss Stevens I'm sorry it should be approv right not what the wording you said sounded odd oh yeah okay it's to approve to adop just to approve it approve the revised consent agenda right okay that was a motion and that was a second that's exactly what I going for yes yes okay and I vote Yes and Miss Hower yep Miss Mor's not here because we're all together in person we're together
084okay so now we are on to our work session with our um covid-19 health and safety updates with Mr a so uh before Mr ABY comes forward um we are going to shift to miss uh Quintana Stewart director of Orange County Health Department and as she is uh beamed in I just want to share some remarks um and so keeping students and staff safe and schools open for in-person learning 5 days a week through the 2021 20202 school year and Beyond continues to be the district's top priority uh Guided by our medical experts who are well-versed in infectious diseases uh the district implemented a number of strategies to effectively mitigate transmission and drive down the spread of covid-19 in our schools and offices including Universal masking uh requiring uh staff and strongly encouraging student vaccinations
085and standardizing outdoor and indoor meal protocols just to name a few as a result of our staff and students strong implementation of these mitigation strategies we have not had any major spread of covid-19 in our schools and Facilities um and our schools have remained open uh and this success uh continued even when we dialed back some of these mitigation strategies but that success was with the Delta variant and as you all know there's a new variant in town the Omicron variant while I understand there's still a lot we don't know about the Omicron what we do know is that it is moving at break next speed and um as it has surpassed Delta as the main source of new cases it is also the most contagious variant yet additionally we know that Omicron possesses the
086greatest risk to people who are not vaccinated against covid-19 and we know that while people who are fully vaccinated and those who uh also receive the booler are less likely to be infected and experien serious illness even the vaccinated and boosted can uh contract and transmit the virus so with the Delta variant uh we were able to dial back some of our mitigation strategies with the Omicron uh we need to ramp up our mitigation strategies until we can get through this current surge as uh mentioned by uh Dr Dany in order to keep students and staff safe and schools open while we're prepared for remote learning should we need to close classrooms or schools or the whole District temporarily uh we know that despite our teachers best efforts it's important to remember the extraordinary challenges
087many students face during remote learning last school year next slide please there's a data slide those are Miss doart slide if you go back there we go uh so our data show that uh the pandemic led to a mocked decline in academic achievement not for some students but for all student groups as noted on this slide uh it magnified inequities uh and uh we know that our students became more disengaged and for far too many students remote learning chipped away at our students mental health therefore we must remain diligent and strengthen our guard against the Omicron variant I know we are all exhausted from and simply stated sick and tired of dealing with this Relentless virus we all want normaly we all want consistency yet change has been the only constant in the fight against
088uh this evolving pandemic temporarily ramping up our mitigation strategies is not at all what we want to do however it is what we must do to keep our students and staff safe and all of our classrooms and schools open for in-person learning five days a week throughout the 2021 2022 school year and Beyond thank you all for your continued support and understanding during what continues to be very challenging times so we've had an opportunity to hear from Dr Danny uh Benjamin uh next we'll hear from Miss Quintana Stewart director of the Orange County Health Department and she will be followed by Mr oby uh Deputy superintendent of operations who will present the most recent uh covid-19 safety and health updates welcome Miss Stewart good evening thank you for having me so I have no new
089news um this evening I think you all are very much aware of the current current status of Co here in the Orange County Community but I have just a few slides and I will share some of that um data with you at this time next slide please so this was the data as of Friday um I do have updated numbers that were posted um today for Orange County on the DHHS website so no surprise um we are in a high transmission rate All Counties across the state are in this status at the time um and so for Orange County our current case rate as of today was 1,160 cases per 100,000 individuals over the last seven days um our case count for the last seven days um just straight case counts we are sitting at
0901,722 new cases over the last 14 days um as of today we had 2,888 new cases our percent positive um far exceeds the goal of 5% or less um it has gone up since Friday on Friday when I pulled the um data for these slides we were at 15.6 as of today we are now at 19.4% and the state sits at 31.1% um so this is a clear indicator that we have lots of covid circulating in our community at this time however our death um count is now at 113 and so over the last month since December 8th we've seen three additional deaths here in Orange County and I have to say I think this can be attributed to our high vaccination rate um as Dr Felder was just sharing um while the vaccine does
091not protect you 100% from Contracting the virus the vaccines are shown to work against severe illness hospitalizations and death um so we have been very fortunate here in Orange County to not have a really really High um death rate as a result of this pandemic County currently has two outbreaks um two nursing homes one at our shelter and one um that we're still going through at the detention center next slide please so just a little bit of Hospital information and again this was the report at the end of last week um so we are seeing an increase in the emergency department visits for covid light illnesses that increased um from the previous this week and this is from our surveillance report um for week ending January 1 Co hospitalization and Emissions have increased covid-19 ICU
092emissions increased and all of this again was due um January 1 since July 1 and I think I have specific numbers on a later slide um again the majority of our covid positive emissions um ICU covid excuse me related deaths have occurred mostly in the unvaccinated individuals so our hospitals continue to experience Staffing challenges um one due to vacancies and then the other due to covid related absences um in addition to the hospitals we're seeing this in our community at some of our testing sites I'm sure you all are well aware of the challenges um to get a covid test right now in the county um actually this is across the state but the vendors um that operate these testing sites are also short staffed and have lots of staff Call outs due to covid
093related absences next slide so this slide shows um the variants and the cases that have been detected in North Carolina and again this report comes out every Thursday um so we're due for a new one here in just a couple of days so the aroc crime variant was first detected in the state the week ending December 11th um of 2021 so for the week ending December 25th the most recent um data available shows that the Omicron variant represented about 40% of our sequenced viruses um we still have Delta um present in the community but arocon is slowly um taking presidence and we're seeing more of it next slide so things that you know Dr Benjamin has already mentioned about the armac variant it is highly contagious um increases in infections are most likely due to
094the combination of two factors again increased transmissibility and the ability of the variant to evade um immunity that's been conferred by past infection or a vaccine um unvaccinated people and here's where I have the actual numbers and this is from a recent UNC surveillance report but since July 1 79% of all new covid positive admissions 90% of the ICU covid Admissions and 90% of covid related deaths over at the hospital have occurred in unvaccinated individuals um postvaccination cases made up about 28% of our covid cases in North Carolina for the week ending December 25th um so as time goes on we are seeing an increase in some of the Breakthrough cases um so strongly encouraging folks to be vaccinated and get the booster whenever they are eligible um however aroc variant is highly transmissible so
095again it doesn't guarantee that you can't get the virus however um it has been shown to be effective against against um severe illness hospitalization and again death next [Music] slide so I thought I would just share some updates on our vaccination um rates here in Orange County we continue to be number one across the state with our vaccination rates and so um as of Friday and it didn't change much I looked at it today too 75% of our population is fully vaccinated and 78% of the population has re received at least one dose next slide I break it down by race um and also age following this so you can see here um the percentage of the population that is fully vaccinated um by Race So American Indian Alaskan natives 46% our Asian or Pacific
096Islanders 74% black African-American 55% and white 65% next slide um and then again here with ethn eth nity excuse me um we have 72% of our Hispanic residents that are vaccinated and then 67% of our non-hispanic community vaccinated next SL and here's the one where we break it down by age um and again this shows the percentage of that age group that is fully vaccinated so we see for the 5 to 11 year olds 53% 12 to 17 year old 75% and so forth um but I know you're probably most interested in the school Agee vaccination rates next slide and finally I feel nothing here has changed about our message as we talk about covid and the the various prevention strategies um so again vaccination still continues to be um a strong tool for us
097in slowing the spread of this virus and the three W's that we've been champion and talking about since the very beginning using the mask weight in the distance and washing your hands um so at this time I can just answer any questions that you all may have thank you so much Miss Stuart who has questions for Miss Stuart Miss Smiley um Miss Stuart thank you so much for everything you're doing uh for this community right now and have been for the past two years um my question you mentioned the difficulty in getting a test with some of the vendors and um at some point over the past week I went on and tried to make an appointment and there was nothing available all of January and so I I wasn't sure if that was like
098a glitch with the system or literally they're not able to operate in you know in Hillsboro right now or are they all booked up do do you happen to understand sort of the general status of testing availability and so we have yeah we have multiple things going on with our hillsbor site um the system that that vendor uses is unlike the system that the vendor in Chapel Hill uses um so they just have a registration platform and not a way to truly make an appointment um again they've been extremely short staffed um and I know their site administrator was out um related to some covid issues and so what happens is they will open it up for a couple of hours and then they fill up so quick with the registrations that they worry that
099they don't they can't meet well they don't worry it's true they're unable to meet the demand and so if you know that parking lot um the DSs building is there and several other local businesses and so the parking lot then becomes extremely full impact and we start to back up traffic in town um so they've had several instances where they've had to ask people to leave and maybe come back and try again later I will say I have a call set up with the administrators from this vendor and with our state liaison that actually manages their contract first thing tomorrow morning thank you so much Mr Aon uh Mr St thank you so much for your time tonight and continuously giving us the data uh I just had one question you know we've been talking
100a lot about Omron and how contagious it is and the concerns around it and I'm just curious what is the county doing different based on the Omron in terms of masking Gatherings etc for right so at this time and I have some more meetings scheduled with our elected officials um as you may know who actually sign off and and make those local mandates um right now we've not changed anything about our approach um I know there's some desire to shut down and you know Implement some other you know uh restrictions however it's hard to do and truly be effective when you do it as one single County um earlier in the pandemic when the governor issued some of the stay at- home orders it was more effective because it it was across the entire State
101um but to Simply Implement such restrictions for one County I'm not sure how effective that would be and so I would say elected officials are looking at that and thinking through it um but what I fear would happen is one we would impact our local businesses and and their ability to still earn income and take care of their households and we would just push a lot of our um economic opportunities outside the county as folks would just leave and drive over to give for the alance or wake thank you other board members questions okay thank you so much Miss Stuart thank you all right good evening uh chair members of the the board and community and individuals that are uh listening this evening we have quite a few updates I just want to mention um
102there's a few data points that are in the abstract that are located online I'm not going to have the opportunity or time to go through all of those this evening we're going to give summaries and some snapshots for the background information you have I did want to mention to the comment in reference to testing and and testing site availability the Orange County Schools have been partnering with the health department and other agencies to provide not only booster clinics or popup clinics for shots and vaccinations we also have done testing events as well we have two we're going to announce here this evening and we'll be sending Flyers out to our schools this coming Saturday at Al standback middle school and at gradley Hill Middle School from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. we will have drive-through
103covid-19 testing not vaccination testing that will be available um on the weekend and so we did want to ensure that we're providing assistance and support and help by having the space and most of our our staff will be um providing assistance with that with our nurses and other folks from operations so I did want to mention that we do have for the community and our schools we know it's a long weekend we know as schools open back back up on January 3rd there was a rush to get testing and we're trying to help as much as we can by partnering and providing additional testing opportunities again that's Al standback graly Hill Middle School 10: a.m. to 4m this coming Saturday a few things I uh wanted to uh start out with one is the Senate
104Bill 654 monthly mask face covering mandate for review as you heard this evening we've continued to have our Universal masking indoors we certainly have exposure points and risk Outdoors as well when students um may be outside obviously when they're eating they're going to have the mask off for a limited period of time but we did feel like with the case counts that we'll talk about um and the possible risk for exposure that we did need to look at an outdoor um mask mandate as well and so we are recommending that we have the universal masking indoors and Outdoors the second reason for that is with the new updated guidance December 30th there was an update to the strong schools tool kit you know we use those recommendations and guidance there was an update on December
10530th there was an update to the strong schools tool kid on January 7th which was last Friday and there was an update today to the strong schools tool kid we are still in the middle of a pandemic that is ever changing and we're adapting and reviewing the guidance as soon as it's made available part of the guidance with students that are under quarantine with what was mentioned earlier about if they quarantine for 5 days and they come back there is an additional requirement in some cases to have Universal masking for those individuals for an additional 5 days well when you have outdoor masking that is not required now all of a sudden we're identifying the individuals who were under quarantine and are still under 5 days of having a mass requirement we do feel like
106that's going to cause an issue on campuses to try to Monitor and review who needs to have a mask on and who does not need to have a mask on for those additional five days so not only will we be helping to ensure we're limiting our risk but we're also not going to have students um worry about um being identified because they're required to wear that mask for those additional 5 days so a few data points we wanted to um discuss and go through you already heard about the uh transmission rates from the health director as you know these this data um as soon as we make it available it's already outdated um but we did want to also provide based on last week the number of staff that was out of work and the
107number of students that were out of school now keep in mind we were out of school two days last week due to uh unexpected inclement weather so we were only in school for three days for the week um the staff vaccination rates Miss uh Joyce Hatcher is going to just uh talk through and walk through the updated staff vaccination rates and then I'll uh talk some more about our student vaccinations good evening Madam chair Felder and board members um you have before you the staff vaccination information um and we did talk about this early on today I do want to add some clarity to this and I will be adding this in our Friday update so basically what you have before you and I'm having to stand back because I have readers to see things
108closely and other classes to see things far away but at any rate the overall total vaccination rate in this chart is correct it is 94% basically at this point we have all staff members who are in compliant with our vaccination mandate either um excuse me it is 94.3% we have all staff members that are in compliant with our vaccination rate for our vaccination protocol meaning um either they have received their vaccination and they have provided us documentation of the two V the two shots they have or if they have provided a religious exemption saying that for whatever reason religiously they cannot achieve do the vaccination and because of that that religious exemption they have complied to our testing which is a weekly mandate that they are doing um so basically that number of individuals who
109are or have a religious exemption is roughly about 70 people that data is not reflective in here but if you add that data to this data here we would be at 100% compliance and I will add that to the that information to the Friday update that we sent out to the board are there any questions if not I'm going to turn it back over to Mr oy thank so this so just the question so this is showing percent vaccinated but not showing percent compliant because that would be 100% great thank you so much Miss Hatcher M and again there's there's quite a few um pieces of information and discussion about what is fully vaccinated so we did include the current definition of being fully vaccinated and that's the individual who's passed at least the two
110doses for a two dose vaccine or the first dose of a one dose vaccine um the current definition that is outlined does not include B uh boosters at this time but when implemented for North Carolina State Employees we understand that the governor may be requiring that for state employees that when the requirements for the booster vaccine um are com in place that require that to be considered fully vaccinated that the Orange County Schools would recommend that our employees have that booster in order to be considered fully vaccinated as well and staff that are not fully vaccinated again must still continue to be part of the weekly testing protocol when we look at uh vaccination rates um for sports and and athletic uh programs um these are our current uh vaccination rates I do have with
111us this evening uh Mr Dwayne Foster our director for athletics school health and operations um if you have any questions regarding the current vaccination rates um for our Sports programs or the number of of cases that we're currently tracking um before I get to the in school testing program I did want to just back up and talk a little bit about our in school um rates and data which is in assembly um in the information because I think this is relevant to the conversations both by Dr Benjamin and U from Miss stort as well when we look at the total number of cases we're breaking those down by primary cases by secondary cases the number of individuals under quarantine and another the other individuals that are presumptive positive they haven't tested um but they due
112to close contacts Etc um they're they're in isolation or quarantine um and so those presumptive positives that we track as well for those that could become positive cases um in the future when we came before uh you on December um 13th at the meeting we had 183 elementary students that were presumed positive were currently at 97 that we're tracking from last week we um had 36 students in quarantine we currently have 64 at the elementary level we had 12 primary cases on December 13th we now have 63 student primary cases for our middle schools um we had uh seven uh primary cases um on December 13th we now have 38 we were tracking one secondary case uh we do not have any at this time at the middle school level we had nine students in
113quarantine we now have 22 and in December we had 51 uh presumptive Poes and we're at 57 at this point in time at the high school for the students uh rates when we came in December we had nine um positive cases that were being tracked we now have 67 for secondary cases we have we had zero in December we now have one for quarantines um we had 13 in December we now have 35 and our presumptive positives have gone down slightly um we had 41 in December we now have 33 and our staff numbers I won't go through all of those are very similar what we're tracking and monitoring is every 5 Days 7 Days 10 days 14 days Etc is how many of these cases would result in in school transmission which is what
114you heard Dr Benjamin talk about we're not able to track that because students have been out of school for a couple weeks and then they had two extra days that they were out so all of these cases being tracked and reported as of January 7th um we really just don't know yet we don't know if those are going to turn in either presumptive positives to positives or positive cases secondary transmission which is why it's important for us to make additional recommendations so that we can do everything we can for mitigation strategies the next two to three weeks to in order to ensure that we're keeping our schools open to inperson learning um so again uh the next data slide is about the in school testing program that's another critical component to um as a mitigation
115strategy for the pandemic we do have several testing protocols and programs that are being implemented and we wanted to break down I won't have time to go through each and every one but I'll just hit the highlights for the the different programs extra curcular in athletic programs for nonvaccinated participants those of individuals that are competing extracurricular off campus or in competitions um we do we will have the twice per week testing uh vaccinate or testing requirement for nonvaccinated individuals and if we look at the latest update to strong schools tool kit which came out today for communities of high-risk transmission and for high-risk Sports and activities they still are recommending twice per week testing there is a gradual reduction of that um in so we would have to look at that as we move forward
116you heard what Dr Benjamin said about the availability of test of now but we are still recommending the twice per week testing employees that are nonvaccinated again you you know about that um we are still requiring those employees to test weekly employees upon initial entry or hiring within the district as part of the certification process the medical providers have to sign off they don't have t they don't have contagious diseases Etc covid-19 is part of that the test to stay program for Mass districts we are uh going to be participating in this um and this will provide an opt-in opportunity for our parents if their students um have been identified as needing um to be excluded because they don't have symptoms they're not show they haven't tested positive but they would be excluded because of
117a close contact UM case then they're allowed to stay they're allowed to remain in school so long as we do testing on them and this is again as opin testing from the parents um allowing their students to participate um in the testing program we do have a a company a vendor that uh has a a unique um different approach and so for this testing program we'll be using cheek swabs um and that technology allows us to implement testing in a little less invasive manner we have our trained adults and individuals who are will be guiding the testing program can actually watch and monitor especially for our secondary students for our younger students um we can have the parents do that while they're picking up the child or bringing the child back and so it just
118makes uh the administration much easier to implement and then one of the items they'll also be looking for as part of that PCR test will be um looking for flu as well which is an advantage of doing this type of test and so that test to stay program there is additional testing requirements again we'll do it at the initial um time that they normally would have been excluded and then we'll test um over the the course of that time period through day 10 in order for them to remain in school again if if they would come up positive or they would start to show symptoms then they're no longer in the test to stay and they would be required to be an isolation or quarantine the next uh program is our diagnostic testing now this
119is a little different you know at the beginning of the year we talked about testing and said we would not be doing diagnostic testing but you heard tonight about the difficulties in the community and finding appointments to do testing you either have symptoms or you believe um you're you're been exposed and you're you now have covid-19 and so being able to provide diagnostic testing on our campus will help and assist out our families so if a child is being excluded because they have symptoms now the process would be the school nurse would advise the parent and advise them to go get tested and then the parent has to take them to a community site healthc care provider or other place to get the testing and then wait for the results we could now actually administer
120with the parents permission in the opin the diagnostic test right at the school level and save them some steps in the process of knowing whether or not their child really does have covid-19 and then our campus wide screening which was talked about we do not have a project or anticipated timeline for any other opt-in screening across the board this is what we call the curious to be curious group um you just think you don't know you haven't been exposed there hasn't been a uh a reason you know to suspect covid but we just want to test to test um and so that's a program we would have to look at for implementation and uh really what we're faced with the challenges is the staff in order to do the testing originally when the test to
121stay programs and the vendor programs were announced by the state there was a plan that there would be additional staff coming from the vendors to assist us um and that's just not the case when we met with our provider um last week for some of the pulled testing um where again if you know all of you would do um a nasal swab and we put it in a a tube and we get that tube evaluated and it'll come back positive or negative um we don't get individual results for for all of you so when you do the pulled testing they will send individuals to help assist with the pulled testing because again in the administration but as far as doing individual PCR nasal uh testing the vendors are not providing the staff and so um
122part of our proposal this evening um is about how we Implement that and I'll I'll share some more data and information um so what we're looking at is putting together a comprehensive uh covid administrative teams at the school campus level for our secondary schools that would involve the school nurse it would involve a district uh staff member to help oversee and monitor the testing program on the school campus it would also involve the athletic director or the athletic trainer and then there would be a CO Captain identified on the campus as well so it could be four or five individuals at the campus level at the elementary schools it would be the school nurse the covid captain that's identified at the school level and a district support person as well who can help again oversee
123the program or followup um as a backup if if needed to conduct some of the testing and the reason that's important is because for us to do the lift to get the testing programs up and running we have to have the individuals who are trained both companies um part of what you saw as far as the testing programs would be the state vendor for our athletes and for our um employees that are unvaccinated um so you know we would we would have that testing program and then with our other vendor um the cheek swab type testing those four individuals or three individuals would receive training from both companies and then we would have very strict protocol to ensure the testing is completed in compliance with each of the the programs we also would be sharing
124results with the ABC science collaborative and both vendors automatically by requirements or U would be reporting any of the results to the state especially for those that need to be contacted because they have a positive result so again um you know one of the things we talked about on this slide was the 5 days um and the quarantine changes and the updates and that was the m major change to the December 30th strong schools toolkit Sylvia do you want to talk or mention um any information I know there's been questions about quarantine and so I'll let her kind of fill you in on the updates and how this is working one week back now from vacation hello good evening everyone um so we've had quite a few updates um with the biggest changes occurring literally
125uh the Friday before we came back so we were still all out on break and had to very quickly learn them and adjust to them since then like uh Mr aay mentioned we have had two new updates uh the biggest changes are that we are now doing a 5day isolation period following a 5-day full masking when you return to campus as he explained um one thing I do want to express and share with everybody cuz the confusion and the clarification has needed to be you are still considered contagious so even though you're home for 5 days and you come back for five days masking once you've been um positive that's the isolation period those five days you return to school you are still in your contagious period um that's why the masking is going to
126be really important the other thing is with quarantine we have new guidelines with quarantines right now the new updates um as of Friday and as well today are not we're no longer looking for boosted children under the age of 18 that was not the case last week so that's been a new update um now is only 18 and over that we're looking for the boosted population which is fantastic because as you know our population did not know they needed that boosted booster um and that definitely was something that we brought to the state's attention as well as our local Health Department because they didn't have time to do that weren't aware that they needed to um with that so it's 18 over if they are boosted fully vaccinated and they're boosted when they're eligible per
127strong School guidelines not CDC then we do not have to exclude them if they've had a close contact uh what would happen would be a 10day full masking process we still recommend everybody get tested for covid 5 days after the exposure it was 3 to 5 now it's 5 we're still recommending a PCR test um we do recognize that the Omicron variant um is not really is not detected in our antigen testing right now even if you are symptomatic we are receiving a lot of people that are doing the home test or the antigen test that are negative and then go get the PCR and they're coming up positive um so that's something we're encouraging people not to even bother with the antigen test if they are asymptomatic we still want us if you're symptomatic
128we say go ahead and do it the quicker we know you're positive the quicker we can get people home or isolate or quarantine if we need to with that said there is no clarification or anything that points in the guidance about household members this is something that we get from our local Health Department um that's been a big area of clarification as well as just making our public and our families aware when you are a household member close contact um which means you're exposed to somebody that's positive the first thing we look at is your vaccination status if you are fully vaccinated the guidelines right now said you do not have to stay home in quarantine but you would have to mask fully for 10 days when that is a household member that is 20
129days of full masking right now we with the new changes with our school system everybody's going to be mased at all times the reason for that is every day that that person is in that contagious period you are getting reinfected reexposed every single day so the positive person can come back to school after five days if you are somebody in the household that has the quarantine because of a vaccination status you will stay home for 15 days the reason is again you are getting reexposed every single day that that person is in their contagious period your contagious period is a full 10 days after their first day of symptoms onset if they were symptomatic when they tested positive or if they tested positive without symptoms then it's going to be 10 days after their test
130date so the person technically cannot start those five days of quarantine until after their last day of exposure I'm going to stop right there cuz that was a lot of information cuz I have more to say are there any questions on that part okay the yes ma'am so if if someone is uh test positive at home and they're isolated do do we consider that yes we do okay a positive is a positive right now we're not going to recommend for you to go ahead and go back on and get tested um with the high rate and you're talking about home testing is that correct I'm talking about home qu about quarantine you said I quarantine if I'm living with someone who has covid that I'm going to be quarantined for 15 days if you fall
131under the category where you need to quarantine so in other words if you don't fall under one of the exceptions to the guidelines if you're not fully vaccinated okay then the answer is yes got it but if you're fully vaccinated then I'm sorry and what if you're fully vaccinated then you do not have to stay home but then you would have to mask for a full 20 days okay thank you M for our staff that affects them in their classroom and their offices um so we did have a policy or do have a policy that they can take their mask off as long as the doors are closed and nobody's in there throughout this time frame that it's not apply the other thing that we've also been updated on if you test positive with a
132test and you are asymptomatic but you become symptomatic within the contagious period you will then restart your isolation period with that said that's going to be on the honor System cuz that's going to be nearly impossible for us to keep track we are getting very close to where we were when we first started school opening with the cases and numbers that are rolling in even with the assistance of contact tracers and thank goodness for them we are so grateful for them um we are still overwhelmed but we're getting through it any question questions no okay so this last slide that I went to here on the updated um quarantine and isolation guidance lines is what you heard over and over tonight and throughout the pandemic once we knew masking was an effective strategy we need
133to continue to mask and so when we look at um much of what Sylvia has just talked about and discussed and what's in the recommendations and then the toolkit and from the health department we are looking at that close contact and again whether or not they have masked um properly and consistently and that's going to be a key we have several recommendations what I'd like to do is just kind of walk through those recommendations and then obviously the data and information supports um those um and we have 10 uh recommendations for you I'll ask number 11 um your consent item on the indoor and outdoor masking I've moved that to number 11 um should be on the slide deck so one is students maintain three feet of physical distancing to the extent possible um when
134consuming meals and so even for meal times we want to make sure we're stressing the importance when those masks come off it's a high risk time period and that we increase and maintain as much physical distancing as we we can meal time is no more than 15 minutes for all students indoors and Outdoors recall back in November when things were heading in a better Direction before Omicron we had actually increased the meal times at the high school levels and slightly increased um at the other levels so we're we're moving that back to the 15 minutes students not talking while the mask are off during meal times and again other times Outdoors um students can certainly talk while they're masks but that's that critical piece of time when those masks are off health and safety requirements
135for students again may be more or less restrictive and we will look at the campuses um where we have student vaccination rates or cases and the key there is that secondary in school transmission five is the co Champions that administrators um that includes that team I mentioned earlier we are asking that they have a stien of $400 per month to assist with the testing responsibilities um whenever you're conducting testing and you're taking um either a nasal swab or a cheek swab from an individual we all know from our bloodborne pathogens training you know that's a that's a risk and exposure um staff members have to be trained they also have to make sure that they have proper record keeping and quite a few accountability things to go with the testing program and so we are
136asking to supplement those stiens for those individuals and then uh six when implemented um for North Carolina State Employees the requirement for a booster vaccine be completed in order to be considered fully vaccinated and then at that time we're asking that we would also require employees to have the booster vaccination in order to be considered fully vaccinated um we have a few additional recommendations that have been added U number seven visitors for Orange County Schools fans or adults attending student performances and again those are um our teams or our um schools performing um will'll be limited to two individuals per student athlete or student performing visiting teams from out of the county will not have fans um and this again regardless of indoors or outdoor activities when OCS teams play another OCS team and the
137both the home team and the visiting team would be limited to two fans per athlete or participant no concessions will be sold on campuses at any point again there's our risk in exposure as we have meals and eating taking place folks are taking their mask off number nine um authorization for the superintendent to enter in purchasing contracts up to $150,000 for additional air purification machines um we're adding those in in more in classroom rooms but also for offices or other designated spaces around the district um that currently do not have one when the board authorized air purification machines um earlier within the pandemic that was designated for classrooms all of our classrooms have the initial air purifier machines put in there what we are looking at is some of our um exceptional children's classrooms that
138have students um that are not masking or can't mask because an ex mtion we have medically fragile students that we double up our air purifiers in those locations we also have IM compromis students and throughout the buildings where those students might be we want to double up our air purification in those areas again we're also utilizing and supplementing with um Windows ventilation and other areas it's just difficult more difficult to do that in the winter months so we did want to increase the amount of air purification we're doing and then I have found um as I've been in the district a few months now we have uh offices general areas where we have staff working in Combined locations um and in some cases it's less than six feet from other individuals and we do not
139have air purifier machines in those locations and we need to make sure that we're adding those as well number 10 uh we would like to uh prohibit any new facility rental applications through February 28th it's very difficult right now to keep our schools open and keep the buildings clean with high Community transmission it's very difficult for us to monitor um nearly impossible to check vaccination status of individuals coming into buildings and ensuring that our buildings remain safe and open for students inperson learning and we would just ask that we pause graning new additional facility the um applications coming in and then number 11 which was your consent item I moved forward um the Orange County Schools will require Universal masking indoors and Outdoors for all student staff and visitors right now these recommendations and the
140implementation except for um a couple items that are noted like the stiens that go through June 30th these items would remain in place until at least your first board meeting in February so that would give us three weeks to monitor metrics and data and bring back additional information I do not believe we'd have enough information by your next meeting on January 24 because of the amount of cases last week to know whether or not we have secondary in school transmissions and if we should be reducing our recommendations at that point in time and that's why we're recommending the February meeting because it's going to take time for us to be able to um make it through all the contact tracing and the quarantines from last week's cases that have greatly increased I'll pause there questions
141and comments about the superintendent's recommendations questions for uh Mr oy or for uh nurse Compton I just have a I have a question about Universal masking or use of the terminology Universal masking indoor masking and outdoor masking so when Dr Benjamin talked about Universal masking he's clearly talking about indoor masking talked about outdoor masking separately when NC um when the North Carolina School schol kit talks about Universal masking are they talking about indoors or Outdoors or are we adding the outdoor requirement so we're adding the outdoor requirement to the recommendations okay thank you well so I just uh just a couple of questions so one of the attachments we had was the um percent vaccinated for the elementaries Central was not included do you have the numbers we we have uh Central Elementary School that
142was a a technical error and we tried to add it in the slides and apparently it didn't make it there either but we do have those numbers and I can email that report out to you okay um as well but yes we do have Central as well okay the other questions I had was on um the um fans and the no concessions one of the side effects that we found out from that was for example um the selling of stuff at the concession stand was how they normally funded Ultimate Frisbee do we know the side effects of that is there funding we need to set aside to help with the other programs do we do we know that at this point um I don't at this point um again these recommendations just coming with what
143we dealt with or dealing with with Omicron and The Surge that this last week would the board already previously approved additional supplemental funding for our athletic programs um I will say I'm not aware unless Dwayne has updated information which I'm not aware of um that we have exhausted that funding at that point in time and we said when we did that at the beginning of the year not knowing where this year was going to go we would bring you an update or ask for additional funds as needed so I would say um the intent of the board or the Administration has been not to penalize schools and if that's the case Mr a t and I think um Dr Felder would agree we would be bringing back a recommendation what we tried to do where
144we had a major issue in the fall because of our sudden shutdown of the concessions was the amount of of food that they had already pre purchased and had on hand and we had we worked with um one of the schools the booster club and um you know in reference to how we might do that and and creative ways that we could assist with that issue and then they also worked on that as well I think we would do the exact same thing in this case because I don't know the inventory in stock um that's on hand but that's something we'll certainly be reviewing and looking at if this recommendations pass this evening okay and the other question I had was on seven uh with the visitors I know that you know know there's grandparents
145uncles that won't be able to attend um are we streaming or allowing streaming or you know there's lots of people in our community that i' been that I know would be more than willing to come in and stream it for our families that can attend so they can see because I know that you know that's a big issue especially if you're a senior um so is there some method that we could Implement streaming or say that this company's going to come do it for us you know anyway so Mr after you're correct I mean that's a that's a great Point um in where we are I know this fall we had an assessment done and the High School athletic directors worked to secure quotes um from vendors for us if we needed to um add
146those additional pixelot cameras so that we can stream our events we will get you an update on where we are which Fields have or do not have those to the board um this week and then um we'll we can certainly address that as an Avenue of a way to ensure that there's greater access when we're limiting fans to the events yeah I would just request that we consider individuals as well because the basketball season you know the most the majority of it is going to be during this time so I know that a lot of parents love to watch it you know including me I love to watch it um so if we could consider you know not going the most expensive route because we don't have the time that we allow somebody in the
147community that would be willing to stream it to do that as well as an alternate thank you yeah that's a great point you know there are some low Tech Solutions sometimes so thank you I just want to remind everyone that we have less than two hours in this building and we have almost two full hours of content still to cover so if we can just keep our questions brief Sarah excellent okay um I have um thank you for all of this and for everything you're doing um I would just like to request that at the next meeting we get um an update on the student vaccination rates um by RAC and ethnicity and ideally buy free and reduced price lunch not I don't know how hard that is to cut the data but I'd like
148to get a sense the same way the county does sort of how that plays out for different is playing out for different student populations I think the free reduced student dat data breakdown by vaccination status may be an issue okay I don't allowable use of that data it's not all you could certainly show that by school we know that by school like this school is highl and this is low yep yep yep okay okay Miss Compton says and when they're looking up student vaccination rate data um it does not show demographics in that database it can't come out as a spreadsheet we certainly I mean we we we certainly could look at self-identifying maybe okay or maybe just the county has sort of county level if you take just that age R maybe they can
149cut it or something um yeah um I am really really glad to see that we're standing up the test to stay and the diagnostic testing um huge potential there for saving learning time especially with the testing weight and other things so thank you so much for all the work to do that um the visitor restriction um I know the the one thing I have trouble with there is I know that in some cases there like last time we did this like there are some families where like it's a single parent and they have three kids right and so they're going to see one child but they have like they have to find a babysitter or something in order to see their child play a game and I don't know if there's any way to do
150to allow schools to do some little workarounds for like really sort of oneoff family situations or something I know we get into trouble when we try to do exceptions but I just wanted to throw it out there is that being sort of a tough case um you don't need to react to it right now but if you could think about that um and then let's see okay so this this point I brought up about the um the students coming out of isolation and then the um additional 5 days of masking but then lunch right and lunch sometimes being inside because of the weather uh in the winter like when we say masking at all times for those five days do we really mean like at all times except when they're eating because we don't like
151have another way so even though they're still in that infectious period they will be removing masks hopefully mostly outside but sometimes inside lunch is the only exception so the answer to that is is yes ma'am There Will and we will not be segregating by six feet apart they'll still be with the rest of their classrooms they'll still be 3 feet apart they'll still be no talking just like the rest of their classmates so that way there's no chance of identifying um just by them sitting 6 feet apart or alone we're not going to do that for staff the rule the recommendation has always has been 6 ft apart for all staff and adults in the building so it's a little bit different for staff um they should always try to say 6 feet apart as
152well okay thank you yeah I mean I just this seems like a point of weakness I I don't know what the solution is I I don't I guess maybe there there isn't a solution that we've come up with but it seems like sort of in terms of secondary transmission it seems like a a PO I could just add that in our consultation with uh the ABC science collaborative they thought the plan that we are recommending tonight um was sufficient um for students in uh who will be coming back after 5 days the the key was uh again that it's a limited amount of time without the mask and they're not talking during eating thank you and also I think the peak of Omron is um the peak infectious period is earlier and so isn't anticipated
153that there infectiousness during those last five days could be lower than some of the other variants that is correct that's why they have also stipulated if you test positive while you're asymptomatic and you do become symptomatic to go ahead and restart your isolation period thank you okay yes buny yeah I I just have two two really quick questions the elementary vaccination rates are lower than the numbers I've seen what is the effective date of these numbers when would these yes ma'am so these numbers were collected over our holiday break by our contact tracers these numbers were actually looked up in the state system where the vaccinations are reported so it's December before Christmas or right after Christmas okay so the week just before we got back so it could be it could be higher if
154we could yes ma'am it could be the number I saw it's in the last week yes um I also um this some of the I was at gravity last week for door lunch and they took first of all they're very clearly spaced six feet apart I mean it's un pretty amazing what they're doing the kids are six feet apart um they have a 20 minute lunch and then they have a 20 minute uh recess um they were unmasked I well they were a lot of them were masking but I don't think we had the outdoor masking yet but if a school wants to do 20 minute lunch do they have the descrip discretion will we give them the no ma'am they will not have that discretion um it's it will be 15 minutes yeah even
155outside 6 feet apart yes M Stevens do you have a question no no okay at all I think we're approaching time of needing to make a decision and I know for myself it and for many um teens and uh parents of teens and probably parents of young young children too but um it's it's hard to want to go backwards and mask outside thankfully it's cold out which makes it less painful um but I do believe as um as as you all have said and also um with our uh other medical experts presenting tonight that this hopefully will be shortlived um that we can get past this peak and prevent overburdening our um Health Care system and our contact tracers and staff um and then hopefully by early February be able to to ease back possibly
156on the outdoor basking so um those are my thoughts and I know we're doing all this to protect our instructional spaces um do I have a mo a motion to approve the um covid-19 health and safety recommendation so I I don't have a motion yet but I do have a question so when we talked to Dr Benjamin about eating outside he indicated that's the least risky and so I'm just concerned with the 15 vers is 20 minutes especially outside I mean Inside Yes 15 minutes it's isolated but I I have concerns with that item so I don't know if we talk through each one of these or approve them or we do them as a group and they say all or none one one of the versions of the I don't remember if this was
157in SYM Dr Felder but one of them talked about buildings having the prerogative to make decisions based on case numbers and vaccination rates and distinctions are we still considering that that some building level decisions can be made yes so um number I think that was number four on here um you know there may be times when it's necessary to be more restrictive or less restrictive um based on those vaccination rates Andor cases of secondary in school transmission the problem is tonight we don't know from the 200 and some cases reported last week what in school transmission or secondary transmission will result from those which is why as Dr Felder said consistent and Universal recommendations not by campuses tonight um but we certainly recognize there may be times when it's necessary that individual campuses have more
158flexibility um and and if I could just clarify that the 15 minutes is the time span when the mask is off and one is actually consuming their food so the lunchtime could be 20 minutes it could be 25 minutes um but when the mask is off we want to go back to limiting that to 15 minutes and no talking so just for clarity so in the case that Bonnie was bringing up they could still do their recess part of it this is just lunch M out absolutely okay they do well I is important I mean given all the changes out quickly I I feel obligated to have to ask that level so I'm glad you did I'll motion to approve the whole package of recommendations second okay I have a motion for Miss filey and
159a a second from Miss McKenzie all in favor I I anyone opposed no okay great thank you so much thank you so much Mr ab and this okay [Applause] we have is this I'm passing the mic to you Dr Felder are you introducing our I am well I thought I was okay sorry all right here we go okay so in uh 2015 Orange County Schools unveiled um a 5-year strategic plan uh prioritizing greater access to literacy instruction was not 2015 uh but um recently we unveiled a a um 5year strategic plan prioritizing greater access to literacy instruction and resources and eliminating achievement gaps between different sub uh student subgroups as part of that plan Orange County Schools adopted new instructional materials in literacy as Orange County Schools began working on its 21 uh 25 5-year
160strategic plan we reached out to tntp to get their support with assessing the current state of literacy uh teaching and learning in the district to determine the impact of the old and new instructional materials on student achievement and to make recommendations for continuous Improvement in literacy instruction in the district founded in 1997 in New York City um tntp is a nonprofit organization that works at every level of the public school system to help their partners school districts to achieve the goals for their students the tntp approach is to focus on the three areas uh to ensure teachers succeed and students strive um rigorous academics talented people and supportive environments we are fortunate to have Mr Jared Gibson here with us tonight who will provide the context for the Orange County School's literacy audit and the
161results uh Mr Gibson is is the Project Director for tntp and he has been with them since 2013 I also think it's important to note that Mr Gibson is also uh a member of our local Hillsboro Community uh and so it is with great privilege H that I uh present to you Mr Jared Gibson welcome Mr Gibson thank you good evening board members and I want to make sure miss Wilson that you can hear us and that we can hear you yes I'm here I apologize that I'm not able to be there physically with you this evening um but I assume that you can hear me as well yeah we can thank you for joining us uh Mrs Wilson yes ma'am um and Miss Wilson please feel free to to jump in at any any
162point you want to add something to what I'm saying so thank you and good evening again um board members so I I wanted to share a little bit of the background and timeline for this literacy audit that we've talked about um for a couple of years now um share with you the the methodology um and the alignment of our process to the science of reading certainly share our key findings and some of our recommendations and then hear um your questions I know after this board meeting I believe Dr Dawson will share with you our larger report it's a very long report so I wanted to make sure to have an opportunity to share the the key findings with you all first before you um chove into that report and then later this month at the
163student achievement committee meeting I'll be there to answer any you know more questions about it um but as Dr Felder mentioned about two years ago uh we wanted to kick off this process of of looking at literacy instruction across the district just before covid the school board approved um the audit uh proposal and then a couple of weeks later many things change for us and so that was postponed until this past fall semester and we were able to collect our data in October completed the analysis in November and presented our findings to Dr Felder and other leaders in the district just before winter break um so I want to share a little bit about what what we collected how we did it and then we'll jump into the finding so we collected data at all
164of the 13 schools that offer in-person instruction um we did not collect data at the Virtual Academy they use a vendor created curriculum that isn't used um elsewhere in the district uh we we ended up collecting 155 uh unique assignments 339 pieces of student work conducted 62 classroom observations and reviewed survey responses from 60 teachers um our standard process is that in schools that have six or fewer um teachers of the subject area we're looking at in this case literacy all teachers in that school are then included in our sample of course if there's something unique happening like they're out um they just came back from a medical leave Etc they are excluded from the sample but in in schools that there's only a handful of ELA teachers uh we observed and collected assignments from
165all those teachers um in schools that have seven or more we randomly Sample about five to six um per building we also received classroom level demographic data from The District in order to compare and see if there were any differences by student subgroup so looking at classrooms that have more versus fewer students of color students who are English language Learners Etc so we were able let's do that analysis as well um from each sample teacher uh we conduct one classroom observation we ask them to submit three uh different blank assignments so that we see three different assignments that students had access to in that classroom and then for one of those assignments to provide us with six pieces of student work so that we can see the range of responses um to that assignment um
166also each sampled teacher got a survey where they got to talk about their experience expences with the different curriculum resources and any ideas they had about improving literacy student achievement in the district um and terms of our process we use nationally vetted publicly available tools um the last couple of slides of this we have links to those tools if you want to see them also happy to answer any questions you have um and then we also work very hard to ensure that our ratings are accurate um so all of our Raiders have to go through a certification process each year we use multiple Raiders on each project to make sure that no one Raider would skew the data and then we also quality check a random sample of each rating to make sure that the
167data that the person collected matches with the rating that they gave um and then the last thing I I think many of you have seen uh something like this before in terms of just your your work with literacy but this is an image of scarber's reading rope um and our approach is really aligned with the practices around the science of reading so we we collect data both around reading and listening comprehension and then also separately around foundational skills and I'll share our findings and recommendations in those two categories here um so in terms of our key findings the the very first one um I think for those of you who've been out in schools recently this is no surprise but I think is really important to call out is that we saw that everyone at
168every level was working um really hard and I'll share some more specific data points with you about that in just a moment um the second category will go through is that the foundational skills instruction that we saw um was really strong and it seems like the new hegr materials I know many of you have gotten to see some of that as well um is also off to a strong start and we have a few recommendations for some fine-tuning around the foundational skills instruction um the last one uh is probably the the most consequential which is around the reading and listening comprehension component of reading um we did not see that students had consistent access to um great appropriate complex text and I'll share some examples with you when we get to that part um so
169the first part in terms of of everyone working really hard I think it's always important to to share that when we find it but especially given the the two years that we've just had um but the data behind that is we saw students were were completing what was expected of them during class and we saw a positive and purposeful climate in almost every classroom that we observed um and then when we looked at the teacher survey we asked teachers to identify what was the most helpful professional development they' received and we saw lots of comments about the work that they do with their literacy coaches and I wanted to point that out because as someone who has done these types of audits in multiple districts uh I don't I don't always see very positive comments
170about working with coaches and I think that's really important really important to point out um the teachers you know said that that working in their plc's working with their literacy coach was a really valuable part of their literacy development so let's talk about foundational skills next um overall it's going really well saw strong implementation of the new hegr materials and saw a couple of opportunities for improvement specifically with decodable text and additional supports for students Beyond second grade so in terms of some of the data behind this we saw that students do have consistent access to grade level appropriate foundational skills instruction on this slide here I've got a couple of assignments from Letterland that we saw during our time in classrooms um 83% of the assignments that we reviewed and 87% of the lessons
171that we saw um included content aligned to that grade standards for foundational skills instruction um which is really strong and we don't always see that in other districts um you might be wondering well why not 100% let's go for 100 um the reality is especially towards the beginning of the school year and I I think this school year in particular it's pretty common to see somewhere in the 80 to 90% range because students may need to have a few skills from the previous grade level at the very beginning we remember we were there in the first two weeks of October um and then some of your especially you think about our second graders this year have had a very different K in1 experience so it wasn't surprising to see a couple of those doing maybe
172a few first grade skills but overall students consistently had access to Great aligned um work in Foundation skills we ask teachers about their use of the materials um and also do they feel like those materials support student learning and 100% of teachers said that they use both hegerty and letter land most or all of the time um which is a really strong finding it says that they find that those materials are valuable similarly when we ask them you know does this help students with Mastery we saw a majority of teachers feel like um those materials support students Mastery of the standards we often pressure test um teacher sentiment about materials by asking them about other online resources um so Teachers Pay Teachers is one of the the options in this sort of grid where they're
173uh responding in the survey and only 38% of teachers said that they often use Teachers Pay Teachers resources for uh foundational skills instruction and you see that it's lower rated in terms of teacher perception of quality compared to the official adopted materials um we also saw several quotes about um how people felt about the hegr materials and the training very strong lots of people saying that it was a very strong training strong curriculum roll out and that they're really enjoying what they're seeing in the classroom and we saw that as well when we were're in classrooms in terms of um improving foundational skills instruction we we certainly look to see whether or not students are practicing grade level skills um if the teachers explicitly modeling students opportunities to practice and we saw all of that
174but we also look to see if students have opportunities to apply that skill to working with a decodable text um and or if they have opportunities to write so both decoding and encoding with the skill um that they're working on and that's an area where we didn't see as many opportunities um in our classrooms um but I know that Miss Wilson can certainly talk about this some more as well but I know recently the board has has approved the purchase of uh additional decodable text I know that's an area where the district is already moving forward yes and we do anticipate having those resources in the district um ready to be in in the classrooms that don't already have them as we did already purchase some of those decodable techs previously um but the additional
175decodable texts that were approved at the last board meeting um we are anticipating arrival of those materials hopefully before the end of January um the other thing in foundational skills and this was was not really something we can see during observations or even looking at student work but was a trend that came pretty loud and clear from the teacher survey was teachers asking for support Beyond second grade for students who are still having trouble um decoding uh text and be becoming fluent readers so several comments that you see on the slide here from teachers that in Upper Elementary and Beyond really wanting to extend the work that's happening in K2 to students who are still struggling with those skills in this area we do currently have um a pilot for um from phonics to reading
176that is something that we've implemented this year with our third and fourth graders um schools are using it a little bit differently depending on the needs of that building some of them have implemented it in core instruction um for all students in their school based on their data where we have one school um in particular that's using it more um as an intervention for students based on their needs as well um so we are continuing to look at that as well um so in terms of our recommendations based on the data that we collected around foundational skills we we think largely staying the course with Letterland Integrity for now while providing those additional opportunities with decodables that you all have already discussed um for next year considering expanding that from phonics to reading pilot that's
177you know currently in third grade to expand it to all classrooms so that all third graders have the opportunity to have one more year of um explicit systematic foundational skills instruction um and also a weekly fluency routine for students who are struggling with fluency we've we've given the district some um some links to you know publicly available protocols and resources for that but basically what this the research right now about um how do you support students Beyond second grade who are strug struggling with um decoding and fluency is um the power of a weekly fluency routine where basically the first day of the week a group of students gets a short text that they get to hear the teacher fluently read that text they practice that um with support for a couple of days and
178then by by the end of the week they can independently read that text out loud and fluently and then the next week starting with a slightly more challenging text and doing that week over week um and then finally um after adopting a new reading and listening comprehension curriculum which will we'll we'll talk about shortly why that's our recommendation um you might want to consider replacing letter land in a couple of years um you know for example some other um reading programs have foundational skills bundled with it or they might have one that they recommend that sort of align to the reading program um or if you've been getting success with from phonics to reading in third grade you could consider expanding that back down grade levels that curriculum um is published right now for grades
179K through three um I just think you might get to a place where if you're supplementing letter land with some decodable readers and pulling in a few other things it might make sense in the future to simplify that for everyone but um right now the instruction um is is very strong and I don't think that that's something that you know is urgent to to work on um the last uh finding and sort of the the the biggest area that we wanted to talk about is around the reading and listening comprehension part of literacy and that was that we did not see that students consistently had access to gr appropriate uh complex text um that's not to say never so here are a couple of examples of strong texts that we saw across the district um
180but only in 39% of the classes that we observed did we see a text that was on grade level and appropriately complex um some of these examples here are fourth grade Tiger Rising seventh grade The Outsiders and high school Bing Heights um but most of the classes and most of the assignments that we saw um did not have a appropriately complex text um and or did not ask students to really think deeply about that text so I've got um one text from third grade on this slide which you'd have to have superpowers to to read that but I will summarize for you what this is this is a third grade text that is technically quantitatively appropriate in terms of the Lexile level but it is um a very simple text about so that students because
181it's so simple can't be asked anything really consequential there's nothing really to discuss or write about this text so the questions are things like what's the name of the soccer team and why didn't she play on the next slide we have a a text from an eighth grade class um this one is both not qualitatively complex but also just the Lexile level is two grade levels below grade level so this was a text that's actually from the news Z resource and one of the great things about this resource is you can actually choose different Lexile levels for the same text um and um this actually was on a time that Miss Amber Wilson joined us for a couple of observations as well and we see that um sometimes in Middle School classrooms in particular we're
182seeing texts that are two three four grade levels below the Lexile level range um for that gray bubble so this is a text here where the Exile level is 8:30 but the range for sixth grade is 925 to 1070 um also it's a disconnected text it's not really connected to other things that they're learning so it's not building towards you know a greater body of knowledge so like with uh foundational skills we ask teachers about their use of the core resources for reading and listening comprehension and do they feel like those resources support students with mastering standards um and here the story is is quite different um than foundational skills only 62% of teachers said that they used units of study as a resource for their teaching most or all of the time um certainly
183that was more than other resources that we asked them about but still nowhere near the 100% of the foundational skills resources um teacher created reading a toz resources from Teachers Pay Teachers were also used um fairly frequently um in in reading comprehension but I think they're real interest in story is on the right side there which is when we ask teachers do you think this resource supports students with mastering grade level standards and supplemental resources that the district purchases like reading a toz or things that that teachers purchase themselves like Teachers Pay Teachers teachers felt like those supported students with mastering the standards at a higher level than the units of study official adopted curriculum for the district and when we ask teachers you know what do you think students need to um you know
184fully Master grade level standards what resources or support um we saw several comments around new materials particularly providing richer text for students more opportunities to build their vocabulary so you see a couple of the the quotes there so in terms of um recommendations around the the reading and listening comprehension obviously is like a a very temporary short-term measure making sure sure that students uh have access to those complex texts um during the mini lesson portion of the units of study um Arc um obviously the much of the way units of study is designed is that students are then pulling texts on their level that are interesting to them that's a lot harder to ensure that they're using more complex text but certainly during the mini lesson you can do that and then when teachers pull
185materials from supplemental resources making like like newella like when we saw a few minutes ago make Mak sure that teachers are using um resources that are at the appropriate level for that grade level um and and I can hear some folks wondering well you know my e8th grade students are are still struggling with decoding they're reading several grade levels below grade level I want to give them texts that they can really read what the the research around literacy shows is that it's actually more beneficial to students for them to struggle with just a couple of sentences of complex grade level text than is to read pages of easy text Tex for them um this is similar to you know if you were working on like you know weight training if you can easily curl 10
186pounds doing that over and over again doesn't make you any stronger but trying out 12 or 15 pounds and struggling with it builds the muscle the same is true with reading and then in terms of the longer term solution we would recommend especially given the credibility that literacy coaches seem to have in the buildings working with them to choose and Implement a new reading comprehension curriculum starting with um taking a look at some of the latest things out there around implementation science other districts have been imp implementing newer materials as well and learning from them and we've shared a number of those Resources with the district as well certainly as part of that plan as well having an opportunity to Pilot the new materials and work with all you know levels of stakeholders teachers family
187members community members to preview the materials see them them um provide feedback on them Etc this is an example of what um some stronger materials could look like just so you sort of get a glimpse of you know what is it that that we're talking about or recommending um this is a a an example from a fifth grade unit from some stronger materials where the topic of the unit is actually human rights um so students look at multiple documents including an excerpt from the United Declaration of Human Rights as long as well as the book espar rising and they use this as a study around what are human rights and how can we use writing to advance human rights so I think you can already get a glimpse and seeing how um the types of
188the ways that these newer materials can structure texts lead to a richer and deeper understanding for students to really build their body of knowledge about the world I did mention earlier that we collected classroom level data from the district we did not find any meaningful differences by student subgroups so when we looked at classrooms by you know English language Learners students of color IEPs Etc we did not find worse instruction in classrooms that have higher proportions of those students um and then our current plan right now uh Miss Wilson and I will share these Bings and facilitated discussion with school leaders later this week um and then I will also be at the student achievement committee meeting later this month uh to go over the report again and also answer any more questions um but
189with that I want to see Miss Wilson if you had anything else to add and then we can take questions from the board I think you did a very thorough job Jared um and definitely want to be uh cognizant of the time at the board so we would take any questions or or comments that you have at this time thank you so much Miss Wilson and Mr Gibson this is a really great presentation with very specific um findings so that's wonderful do we have questions that we need to um ask and answer tonight or can we save them for student achievement people have things they want to ask Mr I have one question that's really seems to me obvious if you didn't find any difference between the subgroup teaching how do we explain the actual
190results being so significant and if that isn't a question for now it's I've got I've got a good answer for you okay thank you yeah the I would I would posit that the answer for that is so curricula like units of study takes an approach of teaching students discreet comprehension skills and doesn't provide them access to texts that really expand their worldview but students often have access to resources and experiences outside of school students with with greater amounts of privilege get to go to museums and take vacations and have parents like mine who listened to NPR when he drove me to school every morning when I was in second grade and so you're constantly getting access to knowledge about the world and vocabulary outside of school that's leading you to have greater test scores on
191on reading comprehension tests in school and so our charge really is to choose materials that put in front of students those kinds of background knowledge vocabulary Etc that students may not have access to in other areas of their life and I would just add that there's like a level of intentionality that has to happen in that work um that is is part of what is missing here I'm definitely looking forward to those recommendations Miss Smiley um I just have a quick reaction which is um I I really wish that Co had not um pushed this out for so long because this work is so necessary um and I am so so grateful to get this report um uh you know some of these the the share of of assignments um with strong questions based on
192grade appropriate text is something that should uh it it demands action you know and so I'm I'm grateful for these suggestions for the actions that we can grateful for the actions Miss Wilson that you all are already taking um in terms of decodables and some of those things but um just very very grateful to have something that provides us with a path forward to do something about what you all found in our classrooms thank you thank you so much Mr Gibson um and Miss Wilson I'm excited to see the positive feedback about the PLC work and the and how much um the literacy coaches how much um value they bring to the building they just there's definitely some good positive feedback about hegerty um which we've talked about before so it's it's nice to have
193the positive findings as well so thank you so much okay are are we um going on to think Circa Dr Felder yes we are and uh Mrs Wilson um our executive director for uh literacy uh will continue with this part of the presentation so Mrs Wilson yes can you guys hear me again we can hear you and see you okay fantastic um so if whoever's controlling the slides if we can skip through the appendix slides that we added for the previous presentation um we'll be down to the science of reading information perfect um so I know that many of you have um had a brief overview with science of reading many of you are aware um of that phrase and some of you are very knowledgeable in what that research says and how it's being
194recommended um to impact instructional practices in schools but really quickly just so we all have some similar knowledge I'm going to go through um a couple things so next slide please so the science of reading is is a driver of our why right um ensuring that our students have a opportunity to become a proficient reader um has an impact on that student's future forever and so we hear in Orange County Schools often say that literacy is a civil right um and we really want to take that um to the to the maximum level and ensure that all of our students are getting an opportunity to learn how to be a proficient reader and that our children are going to ultimately be successful in life because they have that skill set and 70% of all of
195our incarcerated adults cannot read at um a fourth grade reading level current currently the um nape report that came out in 2018 says that only 35% of our students or 34% of our students in fourth grade are reading proficiently and 66% of them in fourth grade are not um and so that's really concerning um and it's not far off from kind of the data trends that we're seeing here in Orange County Schools so that is our why next slide please so the term science of reading refers to research um that reading experts especially cognitive scientists like um and those researchers include developmental psychologists cognitive psychologist Linguistics um Neuroscience um they all have been working together for decades to compile This research about how our brains work how our brains work in order to learn how
196to read and the awesome thing that they're finding is that 95% of our students have the ability to learn how to read um and so in this vast interdisciplinary uh body of scientifically based research about Reading Writing um and issues relating to reading our teachers can gain the knowledge that they need to be confident and creating instruction that is designed to meet the needs of our Learners that sit in the seats in Orange County School schools so we're very excited um to continue to make sure that our teachers our administrators um our leaders you as our Schoolboard members and our Greater Community have a chance to understand some of this knowledge of research that we call the science of reading and understand how we're using that research to drive what we're going to do in
197our classrooms to ensure the success of our students um next slide please the science of reading is not this ideology or full philosophy it's not the next thing that's going to come in and then leave this is not Dr felder's agenda um this is not anyone's agenda this is simply what is best for kids um it's not a curriculum that we're going to purchase nobody is going to come in the door and have the science of reading package that is going to make it all better and fix it overnight this is going to take time but we want to move as quickly as possible um and we want be intentional in this work and ensure that we're implementing practices that are always aligned to the science of reading that we're evaluating our practices and our
198resources to ensure that they are also aligned um to the science of reading it will take time but we're doing this work with urgency and so that's what I kind of want to reiterate for you next slide we'll see I think you're one slide ahead of me so it's okay um again the science no next slide you're good thank you um again the science of reading shows us that all young students brains learn how to read proficiently um in very consistent ways regardless of other factors that may be at play for them as a learner what we know about how the brain learns to read is very very consistent um and so if we can follow that research and apply that in the way that we design instruction for our students the way that we
199show up for them every day in the classroom 95% of our students should be successful in learning how to be a proficient reader um that is in ways that are systematic that are sequential that are explicit and cumulative over time so those are the pieces and the parts of instruction that we're going to focus on um back in 1980s um the simple view of reading came about um the ultimately just kind of um explains that reading comprehension is the product of decoding and language comprehension it can be depicted as a mathematical equation because if either decoding or language comprehension is weak it is Multiplied um so if reading comprehension is never going to be better than decoding or language comprehension skills and one is never going to be strong without the work in the other
200so we have to focus in both of these areas later on um scarber's uh reading rope kind of um further defined what had been done with the simple view of reading it's ultimately a metaphor where various elements of reading uh components are strands that are woven together to make a rope um skilled reading is our ultimate goal here and skilled readers are able to fluently decode and recognize words and comprehend what they are reading so in order to create skilled readers we must ensure that all of our students are able to successfully master all strands of the Rope um if you look at that rope you can see that it's comprised of two main sections there's word recognition and language comprehension our ultimate goal is for our students to be successful and weave all those
201strains together because this rope has to have the strength to hold the entire K12 curriculum and then beyond so the the weight and the work that we do as we develop each one of these strands independently is critical and that's why it's so important that we are intentional systematic explicit um with how we go about this work for every single strand as we develop these two areas um of reading so phonological awareness is one strand and that really focuses on the ability um to recognize and manipulate spoken parts of words or or sentences again we have implemented hegr to support um our phonological awareness uh just a second the the slides are way out of sync I mean you're okay I'm I'm moving and them to move I'm sorry okay it's not you we just
202need to get to slide 81 there we go thank you yes that is the same place that I am I will be more aware of that thank you Mr Atherton okay um so if we can go to the next slide yes decoding is the next strand um decoding happens in a progression so if children understand that words can be divided into individual phones and that phones can be blended into words they're able to use their letter sound knowledge to read and build other new words So currently we are use using letter land um to teach our phonics and decoding and then we also have from phonics to reading where we're working on those skills with our third and fourth graders next slide please site recognition um is when students are able to read a word
203without any need for sounding out the letters so when you're thinking about a younger student um in their site word recognition there's going to be certain uh words or groups of letters that they're going to recognize and immediately know but then when you're thinking about an um older reader it can also be students finding chunks within words that they recognize so they may still have to decode but they can do it with some chunking because they have site recognition of parts of those words so I want to zoom in and focus for a moment on the working memory thank you for flipping the slide um and automaticity so if you look at this um both of these Learners on the left hand side you see a less fluent reader on the right hand side we
204have a more fluent reader depicted the yellow portion um of the picture is showing the working memory that's what it represents and the red circle inside of the yellow um is representing the processing of a task so if you notice the student who is less fluent reader is using almost all of their working memory to process a task so if I'm sounding Out a word and I have to go let letter by letter by letter I'm having to hold all of that knowledge in my brain therefore I don't have working memory space left to focus on comprehension and what I'm reading about it took all that I had just to sound out the word if we look at our more fluent reader you can see they're still using and processing a task but they have
205so much space left for working memory and that's where we see students who are able to more um efficiently you know recognize words they understand the sounds they can put them together more quickly and it allows them to use part of their working memory to focus on comprehension um and other components of reading so now we're going to flip over to the language comprehension strand um and I'm going to move a little bit more quickly through the strands that make up this part of the Rope so background knowledge um as you know that is simply focusing on the facts the concept the academic vocabulary so one example of that would be would be knowledge building read alouds or knowledge building text which we have referenced earlier this evening um with Mr Gibson vocabulary that's the
206breadth of it Precision linking it to other learning um helping make sure that we're making those connections it's vocabulary and context um is one example of that language structure is another strand um so this is the Sy syntax the semantics um how the sentences are put together what types of sentences and how things are interpreted based on that interpreted yeah based on that um the next strand is verbal reasoning so this is our inferencing our metaphors um anytime we have figurative language in text um we often think of poetry a lot when we're thinking about verbal reasoning and then the last one is literacy knowledge so this is print concepts um various genres non-fiction text features would be a good example of this one as well so again um we have now built um and
207kind of gone through scarber's Reading rope and as described to be a skilled reader it requires both the development of the language comprehension and the word recognition you can't have one without the other so on our journey here in terms of science of reading in Orange County Schools um I've kind of used this road map to kind of map out this really small section of our road because this is a really a long road but we're moving down it very very quickly um so there are the components with phonics so we have continued letter land we've already begun to implement some decodable Texs we're expanding that work which you're going to see later down the road um pheic awareness we have implemented hegerty we have brought and bridge the gap um as an intervention component
208to go with hegerty that can be used in second grade and higher and then language comprehension we currently have the units of study we have worked to have more knowledge building read alouds and need to continue to do more work in that area and we've Al also implemented think Circa with our secondary schools to focus on um all of those skills through writing and that connection so looking at phonics again we have from phonic to reading uh reading and decodable text coming back into play that's been kind of new this year and then now we are getting close to our letters training um kickoff so we are super excited about that and I'm going to talk about that more in just a couple minutes um but letters will be Statewide um and we are in
209cohort 2 here in Orange County Schools um at first we were kind of disappointed we wanted to be in cohort one because I really wanted our teachers to get this knowledge it is going to be amazing um this is going to be a learning opportunity that will change lives not only of our students but also of our teachers um and I'm super excited to have talked to colleagues around our state that are in cohort one to hear about even though there have been hiccups and frustrations the teachers are valuing the content um and that's really a good place to be it's powerful and I'm excited to see how that's going to go even better here in Orange County Schools so I also want to be clear about the work that our teachers are going to
210put in um into this so letters is the equivalent of a grad school course um our K5 teachers are all required by the state and funded by the state um to do this work all EC resource teachers all ESL teachers and one of our instructional coaches per building were funded by the state in addition to that um our prek teachers that are within Orange County Schools as well as um Head Start programs that are that live in our buildings are included and then in the Greater Community any classroom that is funded through um NC prek is also included and gets this training and um here in Orange County Schools we have the opportunity to help support that work for the county boundaries so um Chapel Hill carboro is just focusing on their school system here
211in Orange County Schools we will be leading this work for our school system as well as the Greater Community prek that qualify for participation so we're excited about that opportunity to network with our community and build some um Community with those teachers who sometimes can feel very isolated so for the um if you'll go back to that previous slide I'm sorry there's a lot of content on this slide um for the K5 teachers EC ESL and literacy coaches they will be completing eight units over the course of two years ultimately they will do um two units per semester so for the rest of this school year we kick off on January the 20th that's our kickoff day and our first training day for our traditional schools and they will complete complete unit one and then
212they will jump right into unit two and it will finish at the end of um the school year it finishes mid June and they won't jump into unit three until August and they'll be done by December and then next January will be to unit four I'm sorry unit five and six in the um spring semester and we'll do seven and eight and conclude and conclude the course next the following December that sense so it's a two-year commitment eight units um it comes out to about 168 hours of coursework for our teachers over that two years um but if you break that down it's about two hours of additional work per week when I say additional work it means work that's directly connected to letters however please know that we are working with our uh principles
213and our literacy coaches to make sure that we are leveraging plc's um and staff meetings and other things within the building to try to trade out that time so it won't always be two additional hours but it'll be two hours of work devoted to letters this devoted to science of reading this devoted to increasing our knowledge base as Educators to do better work for kids um so I'm excited about that um the course uh work also involves an online module there's a synchronous session for every unit that they have to do that's a full day right now while we are virtual we're splitting that full day into two three I'm sorry to two three hour sessions um because what we know is that just like our students our teachers cannot engage in six straight hours
214of a zoom meeting um and US expect them to have gained all of the knowledge that we're putting out that day um and so while we are virtual which is the case at least through this school year um the teachers will have two learning days but it will be in three-hour sessions they are required to do um a bit of reading each unit and they also have to do a bridge to practice application in the classroom it's not with every student um most of the case studies with the bridge to practice are about six students that they'll be trying out some strategies with um or collecting data on that will drive some reflection for them as a teacher they will complete a 90minut preassessment prior to the beginning of letters so all of our teachers
215are going to do that on January the 20th um we have built time into their day that work day for that and there's a unit assessment as they go throughout each session for each unit um teach we want our teachers to get 80% proficiency that's what letters deems as certified in letters um and they'll get a certificate that says that however if teachers do not get 80% proficiency it they are not um penalized they're still allowed to go throughout the course um on track it doesn't prevent them from satisfying the requirements of the state but just as we ask our teachers to monitor the data of their students we want to monitor the data of our teachers so that we can support them so for example if we have a teacher you know who's scoring
21620 and 30% on all of the assess ments we know as leaders that we need to develop a way to support that teacher because we want them to get this content so that it can change instruction for our kids um so that's the only way that we will be using any of the assessment data here in Orange County Schools um but we will be like I said leveraging plc's to collaborate and do coursework there's teacher Choice plc's can create um how they want to get at the bridge to practice work um and we will be leveraging our literacy coaches um to support this very heavily along with the principal um and we're excited to see how that's going to play out as well our coaches I've had a couple of times to talk with them
217um I meet with them again later this week and they were already so excited to be champions in this and they're excited for how it's going to change um the way that we look at things the way that we um consider resources to use and ultimately what's happening in our classrooms for our kids so I'm excited they're excited I think it's you know I think it's going to be a great experience it is going to be a lot of work um for prek and um the teachers that are doing that course it's only four units over the course of one year it's still a lot of learning for them um it really focuses on those early literacy skills um they have online coursework synchronous sessions required readings and the bridge to practice practice just like
218um the larger um letters course for K5 it's about 37 hours of work for them as well next slide please the last group that will be uh required by the state to participate in a course are our administrators and it's only one administrator per se it's the principal um and they're being required to do four units um and it is not over the the course of the whole year um it looks like they will actually be able to complete their course by um June um so it's very quick paac there's only two learning days um those are already scheduled and we're excited for principles to get this content um it's more self-paced with online coursework like I said there's two days of synchronous learning um there are some assignments that they have to do um
219to try out strategies that are being suggested sometimes it's work around their leadership team team um data analysis resource analysis and they'll have bridge to practice where they actually have to go into classrooms as well here in Orange County Schools we also feel that um it is critical for our uh principles to not only get the leadership portion um of this work that's really fast-paced and focused more on how you create the structures to support letter of the science of reading and the content from letters but we also felt like how are our principles going to be the instructional leaders in their buildings that we need them to be every day if they don't have themselves have the content how are they going to be an instructional coach how are they going to maximize their
220observations and evaluation conversations with teachers if they don't have the content that we are now going to expect to be implemented in classrooms so we have purchased um a cohort um of letters training here in Orange County schools in add addition to what the state had provided and this will allow us 40 seats for all of our Elementary School principles to get the K5 training over the two years um all elementary school assistant principles because they are also instructional leaders they're coaching our teachers they will get this content our elementary school and middle school literacy coaches um so some of our schools have multiple literacy coaches and our middle schools weren't included at all and so we want to have this knowledge at the middle school as well um so that when we are in
221mtss meetings and we're problem solving how we need to support students who may not come with those Readiness skills um in early literacy skills we have people at the table that have this knowledge to guide the work um Elementary School reading interventionists were not included at the state level and these are the people that are working with some of our most uh vulnerable and struggling students and we want to make sure that they too have the best practices and then mtss leaders and District staff like myself I wasn't included um from this from the state as well as many of the um members of our cni team and our facilitators so we're excited that the district and Dr Felder has been so supportive um and making sure that we had seats for everyone to get
222this knowledge so that we can engage in this work as an organization we can work together we can learn together we can struggle together um and support each other so that's really exciting um and I know that was a ton of content about letters um quickly I wanted to update you as well on thanks Circa so just like we've been doing um the letters and science of reading focus with our prek um students through fifth grade we've also been working to develop some literacy skills um with our secondary schools and so our sixth through 12th graders um have been working on the Circa framework which focuses on developing literacy and critical thinking skills through writing across the content um our sixth through eth graders have kind of jumped into this already and our ninth through
22312th graders will be jumping in with both feet as we roll into the new semester so um that is exciting work that's also happening um here on the slide there's um the Circa daily rout is listed for you there's um some more professional development that's going to be coming up later this month to support our teachers with this and we've also included um a couple of examples of circus slides that are accessible to um our teachers so that was a lot um so what questions or feedback do you have around science of reading letters and thanks Cura thank you so much Miss Wilson that that that was a lot but I feel like I learned a lot and I I thought I knew some of it before but there was a lot I didn't know
224so really appreciate I don't think I realized how much the letters training involved um we do need to keep our questions really brief because we have a number of action items we have to get to we have a Time Li limit in this building so board members with questions question yes will uh just really quick so the state is paying for the initial roll out is the intention that for for new teachers that come online that the district would be doing that training going forward or how is it sustained past the initial roll out if you will yeah that is a really good question that a lot of us have been asking the state um and we are still awaiting the final answers for what is the sustainability model um the office of early learning
225at DPI assures me that there's a plan and that it will be at the state level but I don't know the specifics of that yet or what the funding sources will be but we will definitely keep you updated as we learn more too thank you you're welcome I just want to say too that getting additional staff trained at the district level and going through the certification gets us trained cert certified trainers right so as new staff come on we will be able to provide additional training and support so that we can onboard new staff and we don't have to necessarily always have to wait for the state good point Dr Dawson um I want to add to that just for clarity that will take us two and a half years to get someone trained so
226we we're gonna have to have like an interim plan of sustainability but we are working to make sure that we have some District trainers come out of this process okay Bonnie yeah so I just this is really fantastic and Miss Wilson your your um enthusiasm is is really overwhelming so thank you for that um thank you H how how does it well I I always worry about you know our teachers our coaches are teaching classes now we have lots of out people out we have people on quarantine we have people on all these different spaces how is that going to affect and and you said it's 168 class hours over two years and I don't know how many other hours for the reading and the bridging and all of that that we're asking are already
227overwhelmed staff to do so we want to do this and what can we do to give them the space to do this yes so we definitely share that um desire to create the space and support our teachers with having the bandwidth to really engage in this work so when I said it's two hours a week that includes s the reading the PLC work the bridge to practice and the online course work so all of that is together and so I've met with principles to begin the conversation of how do we leverage the meetings that we already have with teachers how are we building this work into our current PLC structures because this is going to be the Focus right this is massive but the return on this investment should also be massive and so we
228really want to prioritize this work um and definitely support our schools and be right there with them to make sure that like we have a really solid plan in my opinion to roll out with but we will continue to be very reflective and tuned in to what is the experience of our Learners as we go throughout this course um and may need to make changes and and we're very well aware of that and we're trying to streamline as much as possible so when we're looking also at building capacity through our PLC training that's coming coming up how do we connect that with the letters so it's fluid and I think our teachers have also shown us that through covid and all of this that's been going on we've asked them to hey learn new curriculum
229such as hegerty and even though it was a new lift for them they've also seen the benefits and how it's helping them even though they're learning something new the ability for them to have more impact and they've appreciated that and they're looking for something like this because again as the audit showed that they're not seeing the same level of value in some of the things that they're using and they're asking us to give us give them the tools and the materials that will have the kind of impact that they want to make so it is a trade-off but I think our teachers are seeing the value in it and I think this is also why one of the consent agenda items I hope we get to soon that the district is trying to show our
230value of their time and their commitment to their professionalism and so I hope that we get to talk about that a little bit so so just to throw a thought out is for example I noticed that our teachers are giving up their breaks to cover lunch outdoor lunches and for Co and is there a way can that we can begin to trans transition volunteers for example into the lunch duty so that our teachers can get a break you know get some time off you know so they just need time you know it's not you know it's not this is the right thing to do there's no question but we just need you know we're we're asking people to give us even more time and they're out of time you know you know they're double doing
231double duty already so I just wondered how we can take some of the some things off their plate that are less critical and that's all okay I think we're gonna have to come back to some of those ideas and um and just so you know M the the areas that we do have volunteers that can sign up because that has been limited one one of the uh few areas that volunteers can sign up through volunteer tractor is helping with lunch duty and uh recess support yeah but maybe we can support schools and try to recruit more but I think again at this time we're being mindful because of alron and who we bringing into the schools to help with that yeah thank you so much Dr Johson um we had pulled two items from consent
232Sarah did you want to ask those questions about D sure thanks um okay so um the two items from consent um one of them relates to letters training it's the compensation for staff um my question I'm I'm very supportive of um adding additional compensation for staff um for the letters training um but I don't know um what is the total cost of that and where is the funding coming from so it says um it says the stiens this will offset the district around 275k from local funds I yeah I I don't I don't quite understand where the money is coming from or what the total so I just wanted to clarify that yeah and I do want to differentiate that like Miss Wilson was explaining the state is providing some compensation for state funded positions
233and that's $165 per um unit and so we are asking for approval to add some additional by adding for the state funded $340 additional each year so that over two years it' be a total of $680 this would allow our state funded staff to receive $1,000 per year in addition um you heard Miss Wilson say that because we value um professional development for addition staff that the state was not covering we have added that and for those people to receive the same amount $1,000 per year that would be something that the district would have to pick up the full cost and so we we're rounding up and rounding up high on about $275,000 to cover all of this and so per year it would be about 173,00 for year one and same for year two
234and what we're looking at and we should be able to cover with lapsed salaries for both years and are we just there there are other things we've used lap celeries for like are we absolutely convinced that we can cover I I just want to make sure and I just conferred with because I know Miss wrath would have been more than happy to be here to um give more detail but I did confer with her uh this afternoon just to make sure that we would be able to cover this and she did confirm that we would be able cover with lap salaries okay thank you so much so that's 173 each year 1375 and that's again please 1 it's rounding up yeah and it's a ballpark figure it's 1375 each year okay 137 5 137 500
235yeah okay do I have a motion to approve the letters training staff stiens so moved second second have a motion from Miss Smiley and a second from Miss McKenzie all in favor I hi any oppose no great thank you all so very much for your support of this work you are most welcome great con got okay Miss Kens I think I think you're gonna answer Sarah's questions about item D about item D yes the new positions oh and good evening everyone good evening um yes I I had a similar I mean the financial impact was my question here as well um yeah it was 65,000 prek teacher and 35,000 teacher assistant yes it said um the need um for additional Services became apparent during the first part of the year and the additional dollars will
236offset some of the requested salary so I understand that there's some additional dollars and it'll be partially covered I was again just hoping to understand what what do you expect to be the total cost yeah and where is the funding coming from it so so teacher we estimate is about $75,000 and a teacher assistant is about 35,000 or $30,000 um including salary and benefits so when you um look at that we did receive additional prek funds to offset a portion of that we do have additional uh special education funds so between our federal funding and our state funding I ran the numbers today and we will um have significant carryover in our federal funding um which again look looking at the needs of the district if we want to invest some of that carryover um
237prek would be where to do it because of the number of students that keep coming up for referral the number of students rep placing we've been um on a delicate balance of making sure we have enough spaces each year and it's just we're at that spot where we need to act that's great so you expect to be able to sustain that carryover that funding in your budget yes okay great that was my question right all right I'll motion to approve that one okay second second from Miss Stevens all in favor I I closed great thank you so much thank you Miss crims okay are we um Dr Felder can you um tell us are we going to try to get through all four of these items or are we going to hold on one well
238I am hopeful that we can get through A and B very quickly okay great um so if Miss mat is when you say A and B very quickly are you saying we're going to I have a level of discomfort with leaving off um hes because we've received an email from a parent or so already um so you why couldn't we as a board address D and hold the other two for the next meeting because we we have gotten emails from parents about this whole um HS well so we believe that um we we can we recognize that there have been some parent outreaches and that we can address those but uh to we need time to really go deep into D and um not sure if we can do that in this meeting uh but
239we could address a and um ab and C uh we believe we can get through rather quickly and so um we have time with regards to uh the lottery system it says 20 minutes and it's there's 20 minutes on our clock if we deal with h hes I just I just know the parents have been reaching out and you just said that so whatever the pleasure of the board is I'm fine are we able to go P past 10 in this building if we need to what are we able to go past 10:00 in this building if we need to yeah and pay $365 we don't want to pay 36 okay okay Mr AB just told me that the lottery is February 16th is that right and so I you know I am with you
240car can just tell the parents in her email that it'll be address later well I think it will be thoroughly addressed before the lottery but I mean I'm not attached if everybody wants to do it I'm fine but I'm actually with you I think there's a more urgency that's right to deal with the HS issue than the other I agreee I think I think Dr Felder feels some urgency with um a couple of these position requests though position requests for the night I do only because um so we know that we are approaching hiring season and um and so it's just a title change there's there's uh not a salary change with that one and the other position we are uh in dire need for after school and so um that's a position we just
241need approval to move forward on the other item regarding facilities that one is CR we're timeline wise we've got to get to that tonight that can't wait to the next board meeting um so but you know let's go extra half hour or hour if we have to okay let's let's just get started with a with uh Miss mat at the same time please U Miss Hatcher and miss matthysse that way we can move very quickly thank you you may begin okay no come on I'll move good evening Miss mantis good evening um thank you guys for your time and it will be very very brief um of course you guys know that after school received a stabilization Grant and primarily what we want to do is is um continue to hire staff who do not
242work currently with um Orange County schools and so we can have them work longer to the do the things that we need to do in the after school program right now we have three vacancies and we are filling it with part-time people sometimes us and so we really need to get these positions filled as people have been waiting for a good while to um fill these positions that's the longest short of it basically just a reclassification cuz currently right now they work um they're getting to the program at 3:45 I mean 245 with the children and we want to also address Co protocol we want to make sure that we are ready prepared for the kids to come and the proposal is for them that the position be from 1 to six as traditional programs
243operate you need a position for a longer person to be able to fill it who's not also like a teacher or something or they're running out of a classroom right and then we're not paying the time and a half right gotcha any board questions yes we have questions will and no you go ahead I'm always going go ahead all right well I don't like rushing through this because we dismantled that department and and messed up a lot of people's lives and my my first question is oh it's gone uh when we've had a coordinator in the past then we got rid of the director when we had a director then we didn't have the coordinator but now we're going to have a coordinator the director and a chief just seems like a lot of layers
244of bosses that that concerns me um and and you said this is a new position well it's new only because we're changing the hours that the person works we currently have the positions but it's only from 2 to six right so we need to change it from 1 to 6 the position is not currently available for me to fill it because it doesn't exist as I needed to and currently we don't have enough positions to fill some of the vacancies we have and these are these are fight coordinators these are the the staff that's running the after school program they're not like I under her I'm familiar with that and and I know that's why I I said in my experience well we've been here for a while and we've added positions there and um
245this why I didn't want to do this one because it would take some time time and I don't like rushing through it but my concern is that uh you said there are site coordinators for all of the locations my concern was that in the past when we've gotten rid of the coordinators then we added the director and I'm just concerned now that we have so we're very top head we have you we have you and we now we going to get coordinators so that was my concern the coordinators are the people that the site person we are a licensed program it is not an option for us to not have this position well we want to do is make it longer for them to do their job adequately right now they have 15 minutes because
246we're using Tas to to serve the program that is not enough time for them to get ready for 10 and something kids 50 kids yeah so we need them to work longer to do their job the issue is it's it's causing other problems when the licensing consultant comes because they don't have time to do any other the licensing work and if I could add the the funding that you receive through the grant is is uh to be used in part uh in support of Staffing right it's the same job that currently exists two people left one went to a prek job so that person is no longer there and then another person um is one of the coordinators in the office we actually don't have enough staff compared to the way it should be done
247but I'll be glad to share how we really should work in the real world at another time that's I know how it works and I know how it works great because we used to make a lot of money hold on Bonnie will and then Bonnie so so the question I have is in the description it's singular but everywhere else it's plural how many are we being asked to approve it's not clear to me that this is one or 14 or seven or I I don't understand how many positions this is there's seven sites right now we have at least three openings they're like there's no one there and so sometimes we have a sub to come in which is not the preference and sometimes we have a office person to go over to the site
248let me ask differently are we being asked to convert all seven to fulltime are we being asked to do this for three we're actually doing this for three now but the goal would be to convert them all as people the positions right as those positions become vacant because again ideally you want someone there from one to to six versus coming in 15 minutes before the children I I'm not I wasn't looking for the justification of it I I'm just trying to understand what we're approving and then my assumption is that when the grant funding runs out this would be funded by the after school Enterprise f fun correct the goal is also to continue to uh seek more grants okay and is this going to cause the program to increase the cost no bnie yeah
249it does one one thing it it EDS by going to 30 hours you're going to 30 hours so now we pay benefits for employees so we're not attracting anyone by paying them for four hours a day oh no I get it I just trying to understand what the numberers correct if if I could just add and correct me if I'm wrong Miss mats and uh Dr keing at some point the fee may need to be increased so um just want to be clear about that and we also hope that by having this being a full-time position it also gives us the ability when there is a teacher workday maybe not every teacher workday being able to have after school because they will have training but now we would be able to do that because when
250it's a teacher work a TA are working but if this person is full-time dedicated to after school then we can start running some of that as another option for parents then are they still on a TA are they on a TA salary scale or do they pay you know what's what's the salary scale can you repeat the question what is the salary scale right now we want to start them at 21 um which is some of the current people in the position now once they make their time and have there range between 25 and currently thank you that's very helpful okay okay SAR I was going to motion to approve unless there were other questions I'll second that okay uh motion from Miss Smiley and a second from Miss Hower all in favor I I
251any opposed great thank you thank you so much good evening again I come before you to request a title change from human capital benefit special specialist to human capital Specialists this position um will there will not let me first say there will not be any salary change we are seeking to change this position title so it can help us with our upcoming SCA Staffing concerns that we have because of covid and also to prepare us for the upcoming um Staffing demands that we currently see and [Music] anticipate second a motion from Miss Stevens and a second from Miss Smiley all in favor I any opposed great thank you so much Miss Hatcher all right so Dr Felder um we have 10 minutes or we can extend but uh looks like we're going to go ahead
252with the facility assessment yes okay please good evening as you saw in the packet of information um our facility study the last comprehensive study was completed in 2013 as part of the updated Capital Improvement an investment plan with the county we do a 10-year plan that's submitted annually for uh funding one year at a time however we try to plan projects out shortterm up to 5 years longterm uh year six through 10 the county has now asked that rather than just projecting those projects years 6 through 10 we get more detailed in the projects and the long range needs um and so part of our assessment is our data sources with our comprehensive facility plans are really outdated as we specified in the um abstract materials what we'd like to do is put a request
253for proposal out and have a new facility comprehensive assessment completed um the time in for this is is great because it'll allow us to update our capital investment plan it'll allow us to provide additional information to the task force um that's at the um county level which some of you serve on and it will prepare us um should there be a bond issued in the county over the next couple years we would have an updated assessment to be able to identify those projects as well okay questions Miss Howard yeah I I'm um this one throws me I was surprised to see this at all on the agenda because for me when I think of the urgency in our Capital planning it's to get those 5 HVAC projects that are from the 2014 plan at least
254planned and ready to go because we don't even have dates to get those done so I'd love to see for so that would be my first priority my second priority we've talked about this in the retreat some other times is to get and it ties into the Strategic plan and that's to get a maintenance process going that's a we're turning around stuff a little bit faster and more effectively and then once we have those projects resourced and planned I'd be a lot more comfortable taking this on but I don't know how we could take this on ahead of those and just to add you know it would also help and you know this is true and the capital needs task force is we're trying to find some new ways to do things that are better
255so I'd rather not jump the gun on this with another facilities plan that's going to take 10 years to to fund and get done so just I'm I'm not sure why this is I'd be happy to wait a couple of months and get those other things done respond to that Mr ABY yeah just as we discussed in the task force um in order to project and identif ify the projects Beyond those currently on the table we are going to have to have updated facility assessments of our building so that we can prioritize this board can prioritize the needs because right now you have an inventory of buildings that far exceed your funding sources and you'll need to make decisions based on which projects are or are not being funded for priorities and it's hard to
256do that with data that's 10 years old at this point in time also the cost that we're trying to utilize from those assessments is quite outdated in fact cost have gone up about 30% this year alone I don't think this is going to detract or take away from the project plan and the other work that needs to be done what we'll do is we'll post the request for proposal we'll go through that selection process bring that contract back to the board for approval and they can go off and do that work why we still doing the other comprehensive um projects that we've already discussed I don't see this work detracting us but if we don't get them started we're not going to be able to make our deadlines even next year for what our Capital
257needs are going to be in the new process and format that the county expects as was discussed in the task force Chapel Hill has already updated their assessments um because we worked on that when I was in Chapel Hill but we have not updated and done any feasibility studies or updated our Assessments in a long time any other board members have questions will so one of the things that we've talked about a lot with the county is our a lot of our buildings aren't to standard code they're not standard sizes you know when we talk about safo or others how is this study going to tell us about or look at this building we would recommend repacing versus hey I'm going to go tell you that the sewer is out of date you need to
258replace it the roof is out of date the AC's out of date I'd rather them come tell us that it's cheaper to go build a new building and us to have that kind of discussion versus just getting back a laundry list of here's all the expensive stuff you can't do right now so I just want to make sure that we're looking at it holistically besides just the individual systems yeah AB absolutely and that's what that's part of the assessments that were done in Chapel Hill was looking at the feasibility because you you have to make decisions about how much money you're going to spend renovating buildings when you go to prioritize those which buildings possibly um need to be just new schools that are brought online at some point in time and the cost of
259those Renovations based on the needs um within the schools and the other thing they look at is the length of time that it would take um with those building needs for instance you're looking at the short term within the 5 years for the major system and components that are identified but then you have to also look at the compounding of that by delaying these projects over time and at what point is it more feasible to do new construction or expand buildings or renovate buildings because that's that's the other element is the renovation the other component of this is tying um back to our Student Assignment plan and looking at our capacity and our needs um as well which is another um comprehensive assessment that we'll be completing but they will bring back uh this is
260what it would cost to to build new versus here that feasibility needs to be part of this assessment because if not it's like you said we have a book of millions of dollars of needs but there's projects that aren't put together and there's no decision points for how we go about getting that work completed and this is just a our key request that is correct this is I we we in good faith can't put out rfps or proposals without the board knowing about those because the second part of that is bringing you back a contract for approval okay um Miss Smiley and then I know Miss Stevens excellent um so I you said Chapel Hill recently did something similar so is the output of this um going to address the same sort of standard set
261of questions as for any building Chapel Hill for example so you know some of the more creative things we've talked about like you know putting all those projects together and prioritizing you know any of those things that could that could happen will the output of this sort of facilitate that in terms of similar information across full School District I think that's a little more difficult because um Chapel Hill was addressing um some of their older skills and Chapel Hill also had gone through a period of time where they were building new schools on a continual basis and then that kind of stopped 15 or 20 years ago and so their assessment was a little bit different because they don't have critical components in multiple buildings like we have with the age of our buildings and
262our schools here I do think there are similarities in the feasibility there are similarities in now the um project plans and what the county expects from both school districts and looking at the long range forecasting and in fact I was on a call this past week with um my colleagues in Chapel Hill because as we prepare um our facility assessments and as we work towards the capital Improvement projects there are things that we can pair and mirror and work together on to complete because we're both addressing the same issues great Stevens chair I would make a motion that we approve authorization for 2022 second all in favor I any opposed than thank you thank you all right and um we've made a decision to have the HS Elementary School assignment priorities on our next meeting
263agenda is that correct okay I'm sorry and letter e correct we would the first reading of policies as well yes Dr that okay do I have a motion to adjourn we took the oh I'm sorry we we also had a a draft e earlier in the evening the first of polies yes ma'am yep motion to adjourn second from Miss Smiley and a second from Miss McKenzie all in favor all post great have a good evening everybody thank you