BOE Meeting 12/13/21

001joe did you start recording in zoom as well i have yes okay hey joe you need to give me permission to unmute that uh the room joe can you hear me i can't unmute the room you can't i cannot okay hello what about now cool sounds like the mics are still off in the room though yeah but we're we should be they should be able to hear us through the speaker so we're good on our end this is her okay good evening it's six o'clock this is the business meeting of the orange county board of education and i'm calling the meeting to order the first order of business is to read the public charge the orange county board of education pledges to its citizens to conduct its business in a courteous and productive manner showing

002respect for fellow board members staff and citizens the board asks its citizens to conduct themselves with the same courtesy toward both school personnel and each other as per board policy robert's rules of order will be used to conduct meetings a moment of silence will be observed before each meeting please join the board as we observe a moment of silence [Music] thank you i think i'm going to remove this for a moment to make it easier to hear all right the next item is board restructure on friday december 3rd our chair stepped down effective immediately as per board policy 2200 the vice assumes the role until a new chairperson can be identified policy 2200 further states that the board attorney will serve as chairperson of the board for the purpose of conducting the election of said

003chairperson with that said i will turn it over to eva but wait just before i do that i will ask miss mckenzie if you have any uh comments yes i just wanted to share that i stepped down as i'm navigating a health issue related to my vision and i thank all of my colleagues for your support and kindness over the last month or so and um the whoever the new chair is will have my full support and um i look forward to continuing to work with all of you all right thank you miss mckenzie now uh attorney eva thank you ladies and gentlemen the orange county board of education selects its chair through written ballots you each have a ballot before you with the names of all board members on it and you will mark

004your selection and then please sign your ballot they're not secret ballots historically before we do this is there anyone who would like to not be considered for chair okay all right did board members see that okay so please mark your selection and then return the ballots to me yes sign your name one two three four all right i have seven ballots and the results are five votes for miss doyle and two votes for miss hauser miss doyle is elected our chair congratulations madam chair [Music] i forgot the same computer [Music] yeah there you go [Music] oh this is a tall chair this is for bonnie looks like [Music] what's the next item on the agenda agenda adoption yes ma'am okay before we proceed with the agenda adoption i would like to recognize outgoing chair mackenzie

005service to this board and district serving as our chair from july 2020 through december 2021 these past two school years have been some of the most intense for districts nationwide and that stress has been felt by students families teachers administrators superintendents and school boards i'd like to recognize hillary's tireless dedication of time effort and deep heart for the benefit of students and as a fellow board member i appreciate hillary's selflessness and collaborative spirit and the examples she continues to set for us all thank you for your service thank you so much okay um it's time for us to adopt the agenda for the evening do i have a motion to do so a moved managed to remove the adoption of the agenda for this evening this is brenda it's okay i believe there were some

006requests to remove things from consent from consent do we do we not disagree with questions this isn't the consent agenda this is just the agenda this consent is further down isn't it okay i thought you removed things when you adopted agenda but we can do it let's just go in let's go ahead and do it okay that's fine yeah i think there were a few i know will had two things mr atherton yes i'd like to um pull two items from the consent agenda the first uh being the um river park uh easement request from the town letter g and i also would like to pull the force uh forthright advising contract extension and i'd also request that we add the pledge to the agenda since we are at a remote location okay and i

007will say the reason i didn't because in our charge it says uh the pledge will be recited at school sites so that's why since we've agreed we're not going to a school site i would just request we do it since that we begin right into our agenda okay and i think smiley also hadn't okay yes if we could pull the personnel report okay great and the the personnel report that's on there is actually the one that was approved last month but you're right it should be removed from the consent agenda tonight's personnel right yeah [Music] right so the personnel report on the consent agenda is from november 8th right and i think that may just be an oversight but in any case no personnel report on the consent agenda tonight okay great okay and so

008um right let's see so so then we would those items we need to put those items at the at the end it's up to you would you like to add the pledge right after agenda adoption i think that makes sense and then the other two would we do them before information or after information dr felder would if we were to i think they are action items they are action items so you have to put those so should we put them in the discussion and accent action session before we move to work sessions that's right i think they need to be adam is as e and f it'll be e and f okay e and f [Music] all right okay so uh i think we still need a motion and a vote to um uh approve

009the agenda as has changed a revised agenda um mr etherton yes okay and i vote yes and bonnie yes okay and let's see who's next yeah yes and mackenzie yes yes and smiling yes okay and can we just do uh a show of hands when we're in person i think all right and so at this time if you would join me we will stand and there's a glory right there i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty can i ask maybe we'll probably do this in policy that we'll adjust our public charge because there is where it says to do the pledge and not do the pledge so we'll adjust the public charge so that we won't

010have any more speed bucks thank you miss thank you mr stevens all right it is time now for public comment the board of education as an elected representative body of the school district wishes to provide a forum for citizens to address the board of public comments to provide an opportunity for input while conducting an orderly meeting individuals or groups may be heard by the board in accordance with this policy matters involving specific employees are protected under state law and matters relating to specific students are protected under both state and federal law public comment should not address any specific confidential student or personnel matter complaints concerning any specific employee or student are not permissible during public comments if you wish to address a matter that may require identifying either a student or an employee please first

011direct your inquiry to the superintendent for assistance on the process to address your concerns pursuant to the board policy 2310 no profane or vulgar language will be permitted or personal abuse against any person the board chair has the authority to terminate the remarks of any individual when he or she does not adhere to the rules for public participation at board meetings persons wishing to address the board on an open session item on the agenda for that meeting must sign up prior to the board's regular meeting by signing their name and address and the agenda item on which they wish to speak speakers will be called upon to speak in sign of order comments will be limited to three minutes when the three minutes end the speaker must stop speaking immediately the board will not have

012a discussion with any speaker citizens may not interrupt disturb or disrupt a board of education meeting and will be subject to the provisions of the general statutes of north carolina a person who willfully interrupts disturbs or disrupts an official meeting and who upon being directed to leave the meeting by the presiding officer willfully refuses to leave the meeting is subject to further action additionally if there are materials that you wish to present to or give to the board please hand the item or items to our chief communications officer she will deliver the item to the board she is seated over here miss melanie so thank right i believe we have mr one speaker who signed up for public comment is that correct um we received a number of written comments and so um mr mark

013dutton you hear this evening welcome to welcome come to the podium please come to the podium you have three minutes you hear me okay yes sir sir good evening early evening i know these go late i've been on some of your zoom calls that go for three four hours so i appreciate all your service the children i'm a parent of two students in the district one madeline dutton she had another engagement this evening but more it's about carter he's in the seventh grade i'm requesting protection of carter he's 12. he's marginalized he's bullied he's discriminated in the classroom his views are either completely dismissed or he's having to request uh instructors to be age appropriate with contact content and or language in the classroom recently through a series of meetings towards some resolutions he's been

014able to get there but not all he's feeling uncomfortable every other week in the classroom and the numbers are growing he's not unique he's a proud charger he's on the soccer team he plays in the band i've thought some solutions through and i wanted to present him to district in person i've gone twice to request a meeting with leadership you have the charge of stewardship in our district of many schools and to trust the public trust of my my kids there have been no follow-ups by district or courtesy of communication saying we're busy we'll get to you in a couple weeks as my son sits in the cold for over an hour two weeks ago waiting for his bus this includes deeper understanding of why his iep was not being administered as he rose his

015hand for over six weeks through four rife and connie krimas and miss by the principle we've been able to get a resolution with over a thousand minutes that were missed and he wasn't the only student examples of him feeling uncomfortable include mature content of rihanna sir paul mccarthy and kanye west in a video that was shown in his classroom and he he spoke up to get it removed uh within one minute we've had some successes he wanted an empty flagpole now has a flag when he played the games i was able to get over there for the football games as well he's got prayer or a moment of silence back in the classroom he's got diversity in thought but it really focuses around age appropriateness and policies being followed i've read some of your policies

016the last time i was able to get to the board and it's not in the policies it's in the execution and it's in the enforcement i've talked with the sheriff political views are not neutral and it starts here at your leadership level and it filters all the way down to the classroom a combat vet i talked to him last week in retirement up to garlic i'm about 19 years i'm on my 20 years national guard i've been in a combat zone i'm going to coach cusses to his kids middle school football game it's not a combat zone i've been there if you don't think christians are in the united states wait till you got incoming and i've been there they will cry out to jesus god help me and you have christians in your schools

017mr dutton you're at the end of your three minutes please finish up please so with all that said the one thing i will tell you that i teach my kids honesty integrity and decency when you don't get a call back and you're a taxpayer and i paid over 15 000 this year so far i have a concern with leadership in the stewardship of our schools thank you for your time thank you mr dunn that concludes our public comment and dr felder i'd like to pass it to you for recognitions well thank you and congratulations chad doyle all right so our first recognition is for next slide please thank you first recognition is for the theater group at orange high school the theater group from orange high school attended the north carolina theater conference festival on

018november 5th and they returned to orange county schools with not one not two not three but four awards yeah uh the first award was excellence in ensemble acting an award given to the whole cast that recognizes the teamwork and commitment level of all of the actors in both large and small roles they also received a award for excellence in acting an award for excellence in stage combat not sure what that's about but they got an award in that and last but not least excellence in directing so congratulations to mr wilson um who leads this group and who has joined us tonight uh mr wilson is there anything you would like to share with us and thank you uh thank you all for recognizing uh the work of our students i think it's really important for

019our students to have these experiences to go out and interact with students from other schools to see what's going on in the theater community to take stock of their own work and of course to be recognized for it and so uh it was uh truly a privilege to be able to provide them with that opportunity uh i'm grateful to our school administration mr johnson for his support with that and also uh to dr dawson and others uh here in the district uh for being considered of uh at the time there was a lot of you know you know flux in the uh restrictions as far as travel and stuff so i appreciate the willingness to work with us on those and to uh for us to have that chance to go there so anyway thank

020you for the opportunity for us to attend uh really it's about the students and uh their work really is what came through so thank you thank you again mr congratulations all right more recognitions and so next we'd like to congratulate joy alves our 2021 ec teacher of excellence miss alves was recently recognized by her professional peers across the state at the 70th 70th conference of exceptional children in greensboro she is an ec teacher at pathways elementary school miss alves is an exceptional educator who prioritizes student learning while creating a safe and nurturing environment to learn so pictured here are the state ec director sherry thomas and deputy superintendent of the office of educational equity dr catherine edmonds and they presented miss alves with the award of recognition on november 18th so congratulations to miss alves

021who is here tonight and miss alvis we invite you to the podium if you have any words to share with us thank you i just wanted to say thank you for this honor and this acknowledgement and i really am grateful for my team at pathways elementary i could not do my job without them from the regular ed teacher to the principal everybody supports our babies there so thank you for that and thanks to connie crimins and the uc department for their support thank you thank you okay and so the next recognition uh is with regards to our after-school program so our very own orange county schools after school department was recently awarded fasten your seat belts over 2 million dollars that's right over 2 million dollars to support our current five-star license and know that

022five stars is the highest rating a program can achieve after school program starting now and continuing well into 2023 so governor roy cooper recently announced this historic one-time federal 805 million investment in north carolina's early care and learning programs the north carolina child care stabilization grants are made possible by funding from the 2021 american rescue plan act they are designed to support working families with access to high quality affordable child care these grants are going to help our learning programs with recruitment and retention enabling them to provide better wages and benefits to teachers and promoting equity for all our outstanding school-age child care programs are licensed by the north carolina department of health and human services division of child development all of our programs have a five-star rating these uh programs combine leadership guidance and

023independent exploration to give children the freedom and structure they need so well she's already i was going to invite her she's already here and that would be the director of the orange county uh after school county schools after school program is uh tamara mathis uh miss math congratulations is there anything that you would like to share with us good evening everyone and um thank you for this opportunity to share all the good work that um our team has done under the leadership of my current supervisor dr dina keeling as well as my staff wayne winstead and harriet watkins i inherited a great team and so i'm grateful for that um pretty much the grant we're going to use it for is to try to retain our current staff we're also going to use it for

024professional development the five-star license is um a lot to maintain and it takes an enormous amount of professional development with us missing especially so many days of school we're also playing catch-up to getting our staff where they need to be we're also going to use it to provide um licensing supplies a lot of our stuff actually just came in this week and so we're getting a lot of stuff back to the schools that they've been looking for to maintain good centers in the programs for the kids to use we're also going to use it to increase our wages as far as full-time employment for staff who are currently part-time in addition to we want to incorporate some type of academic enrichment hiring additional teachers to help with homework and academic support in that program and

025also to just continue to have a good structure when we have our intercession and summer programs thank you thank you congratulations and thank you so the last recognition tonight is with regards to music education so the benefits of music education are immense and highly beneficial to students music positively impacts a child's academic performance assists in developing social skills and provides an outlet for creativity that is crucial to a child's development orange county school's amazing music teachers have not let covet stop them from providing high quality music instruction to our student musicians as evidenced by two recent events the first event was held on saturday december 4th when three orange county school bands had their talents on full display at the hillsborough holiday parade to the enjoyment of the community it's worth noting that some of

026the students first learned their instruments virtually via zoom and practice with masking and other covet restrictions so bravo to tanya murphy band director at orange middle school whose band is depicted in the photo on this slide as well as to her colleagues aaron know from orange high school and josh chavanovich from cedar ridge high school the second event that showcased our student musician's amazing talents occurred on december the 11th at the prism concert held in person at al standback the prison concert was a one-hour holiday concert showcasing all five orange county school band programs and is a long standing tradition in orange county schools both of these events led by orange county schools amazing band directors brought bright lights in the district's recovery and returned to in-person learning so while none of the directors are

027here tonight we certainly want to give them a round of applause as well so madam chair that concludes the recognitions for tonight thank you dr felder okay at this time i would invite board comments and i'm sure we will all keep our comments on the short side um and so who would like to start mr mr atherton would you like to start sure um so um i did get a chance to go to the ib program with several other board members the business advisory board uh lots of things going on and the community around that we had multiple budget meetings and i appreciate everybody being able to attend maddox especially the extended board um got to attend uh the play aftermath was wonderful to be in an interactive play and in person um uh the

028hillsborough and effluent parade was very enjoyable and the prism concert i got to attend that in person as well it was fabulous it is so great to hear all of our talented students and i'll close with um i really like the career technical education business flyer that's been created and i wish we could push that out further because it's a flyer that is asking business to engage us and it has all of this wonderful quantitative programs how many students we have how many certifications and i feel you know it's one of those that if we could get more advertisements out our community could learn about them and engage them as well and our students and businesses thank you thank you mr atherton mckenzie yes i'm going to keep my comments brief i just want to

029share my deep gratitude for all of our staff members teachers um thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything you do i hope you have a lovely holiday break and get a lot of rest and take care of yourselves and your families thank you mr kenzie smiley um uh i went to all four of the high schools um to hear the um students um student forums and i want to thank you ms doyle for setting those up um the students were reflecting about what sort of creates a sense of belonging for them um that was there were some really common themes across those um and some unique things so i appreciated being able to hear from students um and i told the students that i'd pass on what i heard to anybody who

030wasn't able to be there and i took a ton of notes so i'm going to be sending my notes over to mrs doyle this week i attended a session about underage drinking and excessive drinking in orange county set up by the health department um i was really concerned there to learn that the share of stores checking ids has plummeted in the past couple of years and and there are some efforts underway to look at that um let's see i attended unc's race racism and racial equity symposium um i'll keep that i won't get into detail okay attended the ib program at cedar ridge that was excellent um some of those papers that they do really look college level to me um went to the cedar ridge high school performance of aftermath which was incredibly powerful

031and the december and november budget meetings um i had a great chat last week with a career development coordinator and i think i've said this before but i would really love us to consider where in the district we could support some interns um you know in skilled trades i think in communications like students who have an interest in marketing or communications they could help us sort of look at our website um i uh miss houser and i attended the family success alliance steering committee meeting this morning they have a new director i think we should start forwarding them the agendas from those because there's a lot of good information in there i used to do that and then um and lastly i just want to thank ms mckenzie for serving as chair of the board

032for the past year and a half um it's hard to overstate what a challenging time it has been to serve in that role and i think you've led with a lot of courage and heart and a lot of hard work um and as a board member i've really appreciated your transparency with the rest of the board and your openness and just your your efforts to reflect and continually improve how this board operates and sort of how to adapt to the situation we found ourselves in so i just want to thank you for your service thank you thank you let's do this mr stevens thank you stevens oh yes well i will keep it incredibly brief because we've got to get out of here everybody so thank you for your service ms mckenzie it was it

033was a difficult time i know um but we thank you for all that you've done for our board thank you and as a general reminder we have policy on friday and it's going to be all patrick and so we're going to get out of there by 11 30. okay all right thank you dr martin um i attended the ivy program at cedar ridge high school i enjoyed um interacting with the students and um the staff there i also attended the road to recovery and dr moore i'm sorry to interrupt they're saying i think you may be pressed did you just did she mute herself oh you're not supposed to touch it okay just put it closer to you and talking to the mic sorry um i attended the ib program at cedar ridge high school

034i had a great time interacting with the students and engaging with them about their projects i also attended the road to recovery in north carolina public school seminar with dr mayer and dr corn of north carolina department of instruction on december the 7th thank you thank you dr marvis hauser how do you want me to do that you don't need to push it don't touch it okay if we push it we're muting ourselves that work yes okay so i wanted to thank dr felder for the recognitions um and plus one on that because we spend a lot of time here talking about the challenges facing the schools and the district and it's just wonderful to see the students and teachers their resilience and how unstoppable they are in the light of this so bravo to

035them and i also just wanted to say thanks to will atherton for pushing so hard to get us into this wonderful space and from the start of this meeting it's just so nice to hear what everybody is saying so thank you for pushing a heart into dr felder and her staff for making it happen so quickly thank you thank you miss houser um um as some other people have said i have appreciated recent opportunities to hear our students um i did have the chance to go to see the outsiders at orange high school and it really was a triumph of a performance that brought me to tears many times having read that book with my kids as they came through middle school in orange county schools and never seeing it performed and it really to

036me touched on the theme of student belonging that we are talking about much i also enjoyed the passionate and incredibly professional presentations of their own work by students at cedar ridge in the ib program i came away with some books i need to read i appreciate all all of our high school principals including our orange county um academy our online academy miss fournier for making space for board members to listen in on student forums at their schools this past week and some of the themes that i heard also these past two years have been a heavy lift for students um they are resilient adaptable collaborative and fierce advocates for one another but it has not been easy for them and i hope as a board we can continue to find ways to support what they

037need in terms of having the time and space to feel connected with their friends and peers and and seeing their experiences goals dreams and identities reflected in the broader school community around them all right um it's time for to approve the consent agenda i know we had several items um pulled so i think we need a motion to adopt the consent agenda most of them to approve the revised consent agenda second okay and all in favor aye aye any opposed very good all right thank you stevens for keeping an eye on me i need it okay um all right we are ready for uh our discussion and action section of the of the meeting tonight and the first item is our cobit 19 safety and health updates and so am i passing it to you

038dr felder or to mr abele i think that we needed to um discuss the easement and also the forthright advertising contract from the consent agenda okay i think we were in i think we're putting them if this is a we have a b we have a through d and i think we added them for e and f that is where you put it yeah is it that's where she put it would it be better to put them in front does it oh it doesn't really matter totally fine yeah we were just confused over here okay it's probably the mask because she did say e and f you do okay she's becoming a southerner okay mr evilly good evening we wanted to bring before you just a reminder that each month we have made recommendations for

039not only our students but our staff individuals within our schools and our community in order to protect in-person learning that has been our goal is to ensuring that the health safety and protocols in place meet that goal and students are able to be in school without any closures shutdowns or any extended period of time but we'd have to revert back to remote learning and so we are proud that to date we have not had any um closures to report to the board or to the public next slide so we do have uh information we wanted to present to you which is case tracking we obviously know as you may have heard orange county has slipped back into high community transmission at this time that is not unique if you look across the state the transmission

040rates are up and across the nation transmission rates are up there's various degrees of information as to why that may be certainly the holidays as we've seen throughout the pandemic contribute to horizon case counts and so what we wanted to do is hearing um that we have gone back into a high community transmission was to present to you our case tracking for the last couple weeks and i'll make some comments and reference to that so when we look across the number of cases we looked at positive cases that are being recorded and tracked looked at secondary cases and secondary transmission those students that had to go into quarantine and then those that were presumptive positive and i'll just give a breakdown of each one obviously a positive case is to confirm a confirmed case either

041by a rapid test or a pcr test but it is medically confirmed that cova does exist within the individual secondary cases are cases that evolve from a primary case and these are cases within the school setting and this is certainly a very um high level area for us to pay attention to and to focus on as you heard from the medical experts over the last several months not only is it about the number of cases because it is virtually impossible to stop covert transmission in public settings which would include um school buildings but what we also want to monitor for is our mitigation strategy working are the recommendations working and are we seeing continued transmission within the school and you can see by the case counts on the past couple weeks i believe on that

042chart there is one secondary transmission that we were able to confirm from a primary case students in quarantine those are students that have an exposure to a positive case and they must be quarantined for a variety of reasons such as neither individuals was masking properly the student may not have been fully vaccinated or they may have not had kova within the previous 90 days so therefore after that exposure they were required to quarantine and then a prompt presumptive positive is an individual case i'm presenting today a cough new cough new flu new symptoms that are related to coven 19 and i would be presumptive positive until either i isolate for the amount of time or i present and have a coveted test that shows i don't have code with 19 and so the presumptive positives

043are strictly individual cases where there are symptoms present and we go through the isolation process to try to roll out within the building so those are our case counts both by students and by staff members obviously you see larger numbers at the elementary school that's our population that has the least access to vaccine or did have the least access to vaccinations for so long we started immediately uh within seven days of the emergency youth authorization for children ages five to eleven within a week i want to say you know congratulations certainly to sylvia compton our district league nurse who's here this evening and all of her staff and working with the health department medical providers that we had our first clinics up and operating on elementary campuses providing shots for our parents right on school

044sites within seven days of that emergency authorization and we continue providing not only first doses but second doses to try to get as many of our students vaccinated before they leave for the holidays this friday and so you can see they're still lagging behind with the number of students vaccinated which does contribute to more presumptive positive because remember what i said there were three reasons um when we when we look at that and those students not being vaccinated uh we just want to continue to monitor that to make sure um that that's not contributing to the case council or numbers and then we just had information released obviously with booster or the secondary students and 16 and 17 year olds are now eligible for booster shots that's not going to be reflected in our vaccination

045rates or numbers yet but we still see a large percentage of our staff that's vaccinated and secondary students that are getting vaccinated and then we will continue to monitor for the elementary students next slide so we do have additional recommendations this evening as we one want to make sure that we're following recommendations from the health care providers the orange county health department abc science collaborative and guidelines from the north carolina department of health and human services to be consistent in our approach to make sure that our guidelines are following the three data points that we're tracking the community transmission rates the number of secondary cases and the vaccination rates within the schools but we want to make sure our guidance is consistent because if we are not able to consistently implement then that causes us

046more difficulties as we're trying to mitigate or put strategies in place within the school buildings so i'll walk through each of these feel free to stop me or i'll stop and pause when we finish the list as well number one outdoor masking remains optional masks are required indoors and on school buses and that's following all the recommendations to date no physical distancing would be required for students outdoors except when students are eating and it's recommended three feet to the extent possible i know you've seen some feedback and there was some confusion about if they're playing basketball but they're playing on the swings or if they're doing this activity outside some schools were were not it was just very difficult to implement consistent physical distancing requirements and so talking with the health director we felt like

047just removing the outdoor physical distance and requirements across the board except for eating would be clearer and easier for schools to implement number three fans visitors individuals on a campus for events or activities no physical distancing required outdoors indoors individuals that are non-household members will continue to maintain at least three feet of physical distancing now we're in a county building tonight so you all were asked to be six feet and we'll continue to follow those recommendations but for a school campus we would follow at least three feet for those visitors coming into school buildings for events for physical distancing for non-household members again if there's members of the same household they can sit right together and then the cdc still recommends within the toolkit six feet for individuals that are not fully vaccinated again without

048putting a burden on staff trying to figure out who's vaccinated who's not vaccinated where is a good physical distancing protocol at this point in time again we felt like three feet was consistent within the school day that's what's asked in the toolkit it's three feet of physical distance to the extent possible and so for our visitors to the campus we will utilize the three feet distancing requirement next slide students on a stage for band concert plays or performances there would be no physical distancing required recommended three feet is feasible again if there's only a few students that are performing or they can perform that activity with appropriate physical distancing then certainly we would encourage the schools the lead staff members the directors etc to take advantage of that but if it require you know there's

04930 kids trying to perform um a set or a routine um or to perform and they need to be closer together then we would allow them to do that again the key being masks are still going to be worn it's going to be limiting the amount of time and we're going to continue to encourage the vaccination rates of those students so that will help out as well but again it just helps with the communication so whether you're on a basketball court and you're performing or playing or you're on a stage the same roles would apply as far as engagement with other students for those activities students in band course and physical education classrooms again we would move to the three feet rule due to the nature of physical exertion singing performance this is one where

050the toolkit still recommended six feet to the extent possible we have done that you know we were very risk adverse at the beginning of the year we limited the amount of playing time we have since continued to incrementally increase that with the amount of performance time we have bell covers we have singer's masks again we're not seeing secondary transmission so it's appropriate to reduce down the physical distancing that was required in those classrooms from six feet to three feet and then we would just uh as a reminder um to all of our campuses as we look at the physical distancing requirements those may need to be more stringent um or more less restrictive based on the situation and again we're going to be monitoring case counts and we're going to be looking at student vaccination

051rates but just so folks know you know that three feet and where we are we hopefully want to continue to approve right i mean our goal certainly would be get back to as close to being normal as we can following the health safety guidelines that are recommended in ensuring that we're putting the best practices in place to keep in person learning going through the throughout the year but if we have to fall back or we have to implement then certainly we would we would do that so those are our recommendations this evening we know students are getting ready to go for break obviously there's a little concern there for us um with the spike that was seen i did get additional information i don't know that was in your packet this evening but the county

052i did ask the health director the county um cases that they're seeing with the large spiking cases in the number of cases if they had any trends yet so far in the data and it looks like from the end of last week that was around the 24 to 48 age range and so it looks like those case increases don't necessarily seem to be coming from the schools but we'll want to continue to monitor and certainly certainly when students come back on january 3rd we want to make sure we're monitoring we're following protocols we're identifying any students we would ask parents this evening listening or hearing and we'll continue to communicate child has symptoms they're presenting with illness do not send them back to school you know do contact the school nurse and health care providers

053so that we can make sure that as we're opening schools back up in january we're not having outbreaks or cases within the school i'll pause there for the six items on the slide questions or comments some of us might have some questions i know i do uh ms miley um uh thank you so first of all thank you miss drably for the um the more detailed information about the cases so the primary versus secondary the quarantines and the presumptive positives it's very very helpful information so i just want to thank you all for for bringing that um uh i'm not sure if this is going to replace like the district's tracker on the website that that type of information if it is i would put a little footnote explaining what presumptive positive means because if

054i'm understanding correctly that means that like second week of school when my kid stayed i kept her home because she had a runny nose and a cough and stuff she was in that category she would have been one of those counts but she never was she wasn't positive i got a negative test she wasn't you know just running out so um something maybe to explain that one um the um the events indoors um where uh non-household members are supposed to be keeping physical distancing um you know i think that there have been some events in the district where lately where that has not been happening and so i'm like how are we helping schools sort of plan an event to best enable that like you know yeah is there more we can do to sort

055of help schools think about you know splitting the performance into the two different grades for example to sort of lower the number of people in the auditorium or something like that yeah that's a great point so we continue to help by offering operations team meetings or times for administrative staff we typically meet every friday or every other friday to clarify and communicate and help provide support and assistance from the operation team through the pandemic this would be an item that certainly would provide technical or on-site assistance to i know back in september when we put the outdoor requirements in place you know i worked with google maps and measurements and helped principals you know measure the bleachers for exactly with six feet of when we were doing outdoor physical distancing exactly how many individuals we

056could calculate per venue and that's really one of the things we clarified and helped principals with last week it really is venue and the physical distancing number drives the number of people so whether i'm in the cafeteria whether i'm in the media center whether i'm in the auditorium or the gymnasium we have to look at the the size like this room the county was right on 35 people that's all you know we've measured we figured out that's that's your limit and so we can help the schools provide that technical assistance myself darwin our director of environmental health and safety our maintenance facility team so we're happy to help them how we can use different tools and things to do that um so you know that's one is providing them the direct assistance and helping them

057with the venue and the physical distancing i think having the three feet consistently will help out across the campus so they understand you know that is the standard we have i think we'll provide help and assistance to them also we implement it at the beginning of the year go fan for our athletic programs and so being able to have a ticket system to sell tickets helps us with the number of tickets being sold with pre-sale etc you mentioned several of the other strategies i heard schools talking about this fall as well multiple performance times different days and times maybe even a different venue you know the middle there's at a middle school and the high school has a bigger setting then you might go there for the performance of them thank you does that help

058out it sure does thank you very much okay uh mr atherton you had questions so i i first want to thank you for all the data and definitely moving us forward because we know that covet is not going away we need to figure out what our normalcy is um a question i have that is not on here is currently for sports for non-vaccinated we require two tests a week and looking at the recommendations and what everybody else is doing if you will two seems excessive have you all reviewed that and is there a reason that did not come forward as a recommendation to go to one yeah because we we just simply are still in the process of getting things implemented up and running it was the board's intent that we do twice a week

059um with wrestling right now that's one that that we would probably continue to recommend because what the medical professionals asked was they test prior to being on the mat and sometimes they have matches multiple times per week and so if we only tested once per week we might miss that window that would those items like that were items that we would be bringing back or talking about in january um tonight we wanted to concentrate on the clarity and the alignment of what we're currently doing and then in january we'll bring back athletic or other recommendations as well but your points will take and the documentation in the toolkit does specify a minimum of once per week just a recommendation on that is to your point maybe that's tied to when they have matches versus two

060a week that way they're not taking two a week and they have no matches right because they have more weeks of no matches than matches but that seems like that would be a fair way to to manage that if you will thank you hillary did you have your hand up okay miss houser yes um i want to thank you also for this um you know when i listen to this i go boy we've come a long way from virtual learning and hybrid instruction and just not knowing what's coming next and so and thanks to everybody in this room who has done an incredible job keeping our schools open and safe and it's it's fantastic our world is changing you know there's more and more talk about moving from pandemic to endemic there's more talk about

061now our kids are getting vaccinated i would love it if as you give us reports in the future if we can get the vaccination rates of our students there's therapies that are emerging that are that are becoming home accessible all of these are going to make the risk of covid lower and maybe i'm kidding myself because i just want you know i think we all want to move on so i'm just asking if we can begin to evolve our thinking to say when is it safe to take the next step forward for example moving to lunch indoors winter's coming and you know kids get sick just from being outside um so so um can we begin to think about bringing the kids and not until after january when we our kids have all had a

062chance to get vaccinated who want to be but can we think about moving lunch inside um assuming strict protocols and stuff like that but anyway i'd like us to start thinking about an evolving model that starts to if our world is getting safer to start to put all those safety checks in place thank you i will just say very briefly uh with the concern for winter months i know dr felner and i and the team have already been discussing especially breakfast with with that early morning time because of the overnight temperatures we are watching monitoring um and then followed by lunch as well but i but i your point well taken and i will just wanted to mention that's already in discussion thank you we recognize that we are approaching those overnight early morning children

063okay dr moore did you have any questions okay mr stevens nope we're good okay i had a couple questions um thank you so much mr abella i i agree as others said that this is an incredibly helpful presentation with all the um everything that was captured in that table um and i had um a couple things stood out one and i appreciate that you emphasize we really aren't seeing secondary transmission so even with lifting outdoor masks that's really wonderful i was surprised by the number of presumed positives so it looks like our elementaries range from zero cases to six presumed positives one to forty three and i thought wow that's as others just said that's a lot of kids and i guess what i was wondering is are all of those kids you know staying

064home for two weeks or some of them you know we we've approved the test to stay as and so are some of these people presume positive but after five days they decide to get tests and they're negative they go back so like i guess i'm wondering like what's the length of time that all those presumed positives are really staying out for us they're just a wide variety thank you hello good evening um so can everybody hear me so i want to point out first test to stay there are certain criterias for students to be eligible for that study the study for tests to stay is if somebody was exposed to somebody positive and they would not fall under the exception to quarantine so when we're talking about presumptive positives that does not include the group

065we're talking about exactly could you say that one more time okay so test to stay is somebody that would have been quarantined due to exposure of somebody positive for cobit when we're discussing presumptive positives the big reason i felt the need to put that in there is because even though our positive cases are going down we're still excluding students from school based on symptoms that are recommended from the state that our local health department has implemented for us to use so what that means is if a child presents with any symptom that we can relate to covet and i'll be more than happy to go over those with you we are then required we do we still do an assessment we interview we first rule out has the child tested positive for covet in the

066last three months has the child been around anybody positive if if those all know um then we say okay is this an illness that is new so for example we do have children that have allergies um but then we have doctors note that have to stipulate precisely what the ailment is and what symptoms that we're looking for that are not outside of the normal range if we've already sent this child home within oh and what i say is two week time frame and they've already tested negative for covet and they present with the same symptom we do not send them back home these are for students that go outside of that normal range and or have a new symptom they do not have to stay out for the full 10 days they can then go

067get a cova test but it has to be a pcr it cannot be a rapid antigen test once they return back to us with proof of the negative test they are welcome to come back to school so a lot of these students may be out for one day maybe two but depending as well some parents may not have the flexibility to get them there we do have a star med that is in the parking lot of the dss building they're there monday through saturday from 11 to 7 p.m because we have been working with them diligently since covet started originally they were only there monday through friday from nine to five and we did realize that that was not a good time for a lot of our families especially if they're working so a lot

068of them come pick up their kids and you recommend they go directly there the test results do come back fairly quickly within 24 hours thank you i did want to comment on the vaccination rate um somebody mentioned about us getting our student vaccination rate i'm definitely working on that it does take a little bit of time as you can imagine we have to look them up individually it's not an easy task but with our with our clinics that we had for our elementary schools we had 1413 students come out and get vaccinated on our first round of clinics that does not just include orange county school students though we do have students from outside of the district because this was an open public event on return so every school had a second clinic that was

069not advertised because it was intended for the second dose we had about half of that um reasons are not 100 known but in discussing with my daily health department meetings um it could have been side effects reaction parents got a little bit leery some of them may have gone to their own area or healthcare provider to go ahead and access that starmed is one of the few companies that will let you go to another site and get that vaccine so in other words if there's star med in south carolina and they were out of town for that reason or it was time to do it they will let them make the appointment at another location so we only know the numbers at our locations okay sarah smile i don't know if you remember but they

070told us what the hell at the family success alliance mean they gave us student numbers they're very high for the county overall the county overall was really impressive over 70 percent i think no that includes well yeah so for the whole county for five to elevens it was like forty in the forties it was maybe forty six forty seven it's over seventy percent food county overall for the teenagers for the older kids it was in the seventies yeah yeah so when we come back in january i plan to have those numbers any other questions um go ahead so at the clinic i did hear a parent that came in and they were talking to the staff and said my child has a fever and they said no don't take the second one so i i

071don't know how often that happens but they said you need to go take the test and et cetera et cetera so so did they not provide they showed up i had symptoms or they just said this was the total number so correct so what you're saying everything you're saying so if they have a fever or they have an illness they do have a series of questions um if they answer yes to those then they cannot get the vaccine at that point in time so what they would do is reschedule another time the only numbers that star med which is uh the state company that was referred to us from our local health department gave us are the ones that they held for us um and that's because of hipaa they're not allowed to give me

072um numbers at other locations okay thank you any other questions for ms compton thank you so much mrs compton mr abele i just had one other question and i think you were touching on this um i know before omicron um we had been hopeful to have the idea of like target dates you know to keep moving forward in january and it seems like we're set back a little bit um with the higher cases but it seems like you're also working forward to new recommendations in january so i assume you're in terms of lifting um easing things is that is that the correct impression that you're monitoring things and looking towards easing things and we'll have more information at the january meeting i i think that's yes that's one way to say that what we what

073we constantly do is review the data every seven days we bring recommendations every 14 to 21 we look back 21 days and we try to look forward as well monitoring the cases monitoring um the data we have to where we are as a community there's other data points certainly we're looking at i just don't bring those before you hospitalization rates and other things that may have community impacts if we would have an outbreak um you know with the medical care being available for individuals but certainly our goal i think has been if things look like they're progressing in the right direction our case counts are minimal and we have the recommendation from the orange county health department then we review and bring back the best recommendations to the board based on those factors okay thank

074you so much um miss houser um first on you know in january if we could also get a report from abc collaborative on therapies that are emerging and i have on the if i have if now that our young our elementary students are being vaccinated if students are vaccinated and they show symptoms will they still be presumed positive the answer is yes that we would still treat them as a presumed positive and the reason for that is we know that there are other variants out there as well as the vaccine doesn't protect you from getting coveted what it's intended for is to reduce the effects of covet and to help minimize the spread thank you thank you so much thank you those are big good cases again even though you're vaccinated that they would recommend

075you still go get a test okay would you like us to um vote to um entertain and approving the safety and health updates before we move down to the school safety updates i don't think there's yes i think that would be helpful so do i have a motion to approve the health and safety recommendations so i moved second okay i have a motion for mr atherton and a second from vice chair stevens um all in favor any opposed all right wonderful thank you hey mr abele all right so i have the next item which is really uh part two this design is for information uh both for our school community um and uh individuals here this evening and those listening from home wanted to bring an update on some safety protocols and safety standards and

076initiatives that are taking place in the district certainly we we all are very aware of another tragic incident that occurred on a school campus in the united states earlier this month after each and every incident even though we're not there and directly involved we are involved because we have children on school campuses and we want to make sure we're learning and following up um as much about those situations as we can in order to um ensure we're putting the best plans and the best measures in place for our district so we wanted to just give an update and say we work very closely with the hillsborough police department the orange county sheriff's department orange county emergency management and then also the north carolina department of public safety were several state law initiatives that were passed

077several years ago one including that all building plans were submitted to the state so if there is a tragic accident it doesn't matter who's responding they have access to the school facility plans panic alarms were part of that initiative several years ago the anonymous reporting act which i think is in our slide as well was initiative it came from the state to ensure that there was an anonymous reporting ability across all school districts in the state and so we still work very closely with them on safety and security initiatives in schools we look at other elements of safety you can see i just listed a few on that screen from environmental health to playgrounds to everything in between our things that fall under safety within the district and then we also had national consultants with

078safe havens international that did on-site assessments um about five years ago or six years ago and then came back in 2018 to do a review and an update as well and we still follow up and ensure that we're following those recommendations and any updates to the next one wanted to talk about um you know again a lot of things you'll hear us say is about prevention and protection we want to put all mitigation strategies in place and then respond um as necessary many times we're asked about details of our safety plans on you know in the public or um here tonight again in a public open setting we do not discuss the details of the safety plans the board does have that right reserved under north carolina general statute to discuss safety plans um in

079closed session and so we do that on an annual basis we do perform active shooter tabletop exercises so they're not actual events that are taking place within a building with actors or individuals some states allow that we do not do that what is required by state law is an active shooter tabletop exercise and we do that annually and so we walk through the elements of that both on the preparation the protection the mitigation and then the response from that and then our administrators intern walk through those tabletops with their individual school staff we also do actual drills a lockdown drill that element of stopping and securing within buildings we did perform lockdown drills or completing the fall lockdown drills at this time they'll also be a spring lockdown drill and then we also um want

080to make sure we're communicating out to our parents so even if this is real i want to make sure parents know about what's taking place what's happening we know with this age of technology and social media and texting most likely information is leaving or going out by the time we can even start our mass notification system and so it's important that we ask parents to be patient um the district will communicate with you we will give you up-to-date information we will communicate with you and the one thing i would just stress to parents this evening or when they're listening is if there's an event on a school campus i know i had a child in the school as well your first gut reaction is you want to see your child you want to go there

081you want to put your arms around them you want to hug them you want to make sure you want to look them in the eyes and know that they're safe and they're okay however in an emergency situation when we're trying to either bring resources onto the campus that could be food water could be life safety it could be other first responders or we're trying to get students off of campus to relocate them to a safe location having individuals rushing to the campuses can cause a delay and both a being rendered in the response that we're trying to do or in what we're trying to get if we need to exit the campus in the office you know there could be other situations um you know gas leaks or other things happening we have to evacuate

082a campus and so we need those streets clear we need the roadways clear and we know i mean you all heard all the traffic issues about schools at pickup times and just imagine if everybody's trying to come to the school at one time it really would overwhelm the first responders so we just ask our parents to be patient we will immediately communicate and we will keep you informed of whatever is happening on the school campus next slide again one of the areas that we are reviewing and have been working on and certainly there was um some concerns with some some back order of some work um to be done was to get our door locked hardware uh making sure that those were working those were secured we brought in additional individuals to work nights and

083weekends we had a review and an inventory done of every door unlocked on the campus and we are communicating directly with principals to ensure two things not only one is the work being identified and completed but two i put my key in a door today my key breaks it's gonna take some time for somebody to respond we have thousands of doors and locks in the in the district and i can't secure that door there needs to be a plan b immediately put in place so that may be relocating the classroom it may be temporarily using another space it may be having another plan in place on that campus while that work is being performed to get that item corrected so we want to make sure we're empowering our leaders and our staff when they are

084faced with an unexpected situation because it works today but it doesn't work tomorrow we're identifying that communicating that making sure we have plans in place we talked earlier this year about new radio systems that are that are going in place on all school campuses and what i would say is that new system will allow us to start to communicate between campuses so if there's an incident at orange middle school and we need to quickly communicate to orange high school they can do that just like the law enforcement officers can between the campuses we are finalizing new security camera systems that the board approved a couple years ago they're finishing up that project we are reviewing and installing additional door access controls when that project was put in place those were designated at certain locations on

085a campus now with outdoor classrooms and going outside we've identified many other locations that could use those next slide um again one thing we we put in our communication last week that i wanted to mention here again this evening we see time and time again this statement is not about gun ownership it's about ensuring that if there are guns in the home they don't show up on a school campus and the orange county sheriff's department offers free gun locks free of charge we put information in our flyer communication that went out there's a number of direct contact if you have the need for a gun lock there are gun locks available free of charge we need parents to assist us time and time again when we review cases around the country the majority of what

086i see in the reports is the child brought the gun from home so we need assistance we're we're talking about all the things we're doing on a campus but we really need assistance outside of the campus as well full utilization of the say something anonymous reporting act again there's a 24 7 365 access center that all school districts in the state um go through they also communicate directly with 9-1-1 i do want to recognize ms cherita cobb i think she's in the room somewhere she gets each and every one of those reports doesn't matter whether it's 1 a.m 6 a.m 7 00 on a sunday night 2 o'clock on a tuesday morning she gets those reports and immediately acts upon those and in most cases is whether it's a wellness check or it's um someone

087reporting my friends in trouble you know they're they're thinking about suicide getting counselors getting interventions um she is right on that um and so there's a team that immediately responds and we would just say if you see something say something the app works whether it's someone in need whether it's a safety concern or an issue we do have that tool and it is an anonymous report that can be made um and we can get the assistance needed and then lastly i just wanted to mention um there are threat assessment teams on the campuses with individuals that are involved in those and we are providing or we'll be providing stop the bleed training for all staff and there is a module we've learned that is now available virtually and we're looking at um implementing that and

088we would have current permission to do that because it's again you in order to stop the bleed you got to understand something tragic has happened um and so we want to make sure if we roll that module out for secondary students that parents have an opportunity just like any of the other first aid or other training we would do and then we want to also make sure we place those kits throughout the schools as well next slide so questions or comments in reference to some of the safety initiatives taking place within the district mr ashton so the question i have is um and i appreciate all the background and i know just for public consumption there's a lot of things we can't discuss in public um but one that comes to mind is what is

089the appropriate way that someone should report there's a door problem or a lock problem whether it's a student a coach that's not on campus or you know they don't have access to our you know pos or you know how to open up a maintenance request do we have a process where it's identified as hey this is safety we need somebody to look at it immediately or you know what what are we doing around that so um thank you for the question so we we have clarified two things one from our administrators if there's a safety related issue door locks being the most recent topic of conversation those items would call in we have availability all day long we have teams that respond all night long so if it's a safety related or emergency issue administrators

090call and we respond for the public or for students we have the anonymous reporting act if it's a safety issue they can report it we are looking at getting a button or a tool on our website we're a little hesitant about doing that because what we don't want is yes that might be useful for someone to report you know there's a wire over here and somebody was tripping over it earlier just as an example so that's a safety issue versus a suicide and they put it in the wrong tool and it doesn't get acted upon as quickly as it should so we want to be very careful about pools and resources i would say contact an administrator a teacher coach let them know they'll report it to their administrator and but if it is a

091critical safety issue they always can put it in the app it's a life safety issue that team goes through the life safety individuals if they look at that and say there's not a life safety issue that emergency response is needed and they're going to still filter it to the district and then we'll address it through our normal processes yeah i i hope when we do another district message will include how how the families or people that are coming to any of our events will know to do that yeah exactly and i think it's very similar to the process um you know different situation obviously on a different level recently you know with restrooms like this restroom needs service here's the process here so you go to see here's what you do if if this restaurant

092needs service whether it's service or supplies right certainly your points well taken is and one of the things we've done to that end with regards to restrooms uh is to ensure that there's signage up just reminding those who are using the restrooms if they have any concerns where to go to report the concerns but custodians are also checking restrooms regularly but in between um we put up some signage to help remind our students and staff of what to do oh they have concerns a lot of places have just put up qr codes that people can scan too to be able to say immediately here's an issue they already know the location where it was scanned the time anyway just technology if it's available yeah absolutely thank you i wanted to say mr abella that as

093a parent i've i've received um and i know this has been a real focus i've received uh more consistent communication and quick communication when there have been bigger concerns out of school and even smaller i'm and we see it as board members what gets sent out in other schools but also as a parent i'm receiving prompt communication of you might have heard this rumor today and you know i feel like we've we've gained some ground in consistent and transparent communication so i appreciate appreciate all those efforts thank you miss doyle and um just want to acknowledge the work of the communications department with supporting schools with that effort so there's an undertaking thank you thank you miss stowe okay miss miley um i might just suggest um and thank you for this that um we

094repeat the the message about the free gun locks because i think the you know the initial safety message was a big one and i think that's a really to your point about like what are some of the root causes we could get at um i was curious i know that at one point we were using um some sort of program to that in a geographical area there was some sort of like um if there were particular words um being used on social media um that it would sort of send an alert so that are we still using that we're not using that program anymore i remember that i cannot remember what the name of it was but can you come to the podium and speak thank you i believe the product was something like social

095sentinel social it might be a bit social sentinel that might have been that's right yeah yeah good evening i apologize i have my hat on i'm still cool um it was social sentinel and we are not using it any longer we did stop because it only accessed unlocked accounts so if the count was locked it was not accessing it and um as mr oblak stated i was receiving those alerts all day and night and they would be around a basketball game or um an activity or somebody an adult was talking about politics and so that was like over the top and it really was not effective because we weren't getting anything from our students as far as they were concerned about what we received from the say something is more appropriate and um great thank

096you thank you i remember correctly we were cruising along pretty good on that until basketball season rolled around and everyone was talking about shooting directions and shooting balls that was that yeah um first thank you for this and honestly with everything that's been going on i can't tell you how much i appreciate the work that your team is doing with the sheriff's department and how you're just staying right on top of it makes me feel a lot better so thank you i have a question i'm not sure if it's for ms stowe or for you and it has to do with reach so when we send these communications out or you know and i know your group's been working on text messaging to families that might not be getting emails and others so you know

097do we are our messages getting out to all our families and i presume if they go school by school if there's an event at the school we just contact the school but are they is everybody getting them i don't know the data side of it good evening so yes i work really closely with mr miller and his department in ensuring that all 7 200 students are accurate right now you may not i know you've done a lot of approval but the board approved some ttcs for data staff to go through and ensure that we're not getting bounce backs as far as knowing if a parent opened the email and read it we don't have that capability that's not tied into our system um but we feel pretty confident that we have to correct uh emails

098and uh certainly cell phones because they had to opt into that and enter their cell phone number um and then phone numbers from time to time we have people say that's not my number now and it is important for families if they do update an email if they do update their cell phone they have to tell us so that we can update that immediately and they would do that by contacting their school or letting their child's teacher great thank you any other board members with questions from mr oblay thank you so much mr oblay for all you're doing appreciate it and we just received that update right dr felder there wasn't an action item with the safety part i'm sorry i don't think there was an action yeah we took care of that great mm-hmm

099okay so now mr belly now we're moving on to re um the open limited and close school soccer filter coming back yes so i'm inviting mr abele back he's going to introduce a new member to the ocs team as well i wanted to introduce uh to the board and to our community catherine mall i'm our new student assignment uh specialist and technology coordinator within the district um i've had the opportunity to work with katherine for quite some time now and she's been providing over 10 years of assistance to southern orange county remain mainly talk about this evening and but she comes with a wealth of experience and knowledge especially on processes and procedures and so we're bringing her up to speed on our policies and our protocol when it comes to student assignment but we're

100just so excited to have her and welcome i'm glad you're here so i told her i helped her tonight we're going to walk through and kind of tag team a little bit with this i will say publicly we we have quite a few slides for prayer this evening that is for background information uh we're not going to spend time going through but if anyone from the public wanted information or wanted more um about the processes and procedures that's embedded within this powerpoint presentation tonight that you can find i'm on the board agendas page we do have three policies that help guide us with the procedures and leads us to the recommendations we're making this evening next slide and then we have put definitions for terms that we may be using this evening as well next

101slide and then primarily we'll be talking about um with transfers and those are discretionary transfers meaning you have the ability you're assigned to one school that you want to attend another school we bring those schools um recommendations to the board under three categories those that are open those that are limited have some capacity restrictions and then those that are closed so those are our definitions we'll use this evening as well next slide and we have membership and capacities and um i prepared a chart which is of course much easier to read on your own computers that gives you the relative page of the schools outside of is an orange county ordinance that schools adequate public facilities ordinance that was passed a while ago to make sure that there are suits in the public field and

102also if a number goes over a certain level to indicate that a new school is needed to be added to the county's crt that go also sets the capacity based on the number of classrooms that are in each facility i listed the membership on november 15 part of the requirements of the zapfo ordinance is to provide the number of students enrolled at each school on november 15 they call it membership because maybe it's a little more exciting or exclusive but it really means enrollment i have then provided the number of available seats at each school and then the level of service that each school is operating at evelyn sheets global elementary hillsborough elementary new hope elementary and river park elementary are over capacity i do want to point out that we have several students of

103course in the online academy and we decided that we needed to make room for the children at each school in case something were to change with the state allowing us to continue or in the future so those students are added back to the school that they would have gone to had they not chosen instead to attend the online academy so having space at a school is one thing next slide please this second slide talks about the number of students in each class because of the state legislated class size limitations there might be plenty of seats in third grade but because the class size is 16 in first grade there are not seats there so we are watching both the number of seats available at each school as well as the number of seats available in

104each classroom next slide we are we have established several priorities for transfer approval to go to a school to which your child is not assigned the first priority is students who live in the district who are already attending that school on a previously approved transfer they'll be able to return and then the second priority is if a sibling is in attendance at that school the remainder of the seats are offered in order to current students who are new to the transfer process and are domiciled within the boundaries and then out of district students who are requesting admission to the schools and just to reiterate we will deny any and all transfer requests that would cause us to exceed those legislative class size requirements or need additional staff or facilities that's just reiterating the policy for

105those who are interested and for our capacity designations based on the slides that you have seen we are considering the following schools open we've got central elementary grady brown elementary pathways elementary bradley hill middle and orange middle they all have at least 15 percent of their seats available limited capacity in this year is just one school we've got stand back middle school with 88 um in use and then close school so the capacity is at 95 or higher upland sheep's new health river park and orange farm we need to be sure that we are saving fees for all the new students who are moving into the district and that we are providing options for overcrowding next slide so with that um one of the difficult items that we're presented with when we talk about transfers

106and projecting transfers for next year with the opportunity to attend another school then one is assigned is with our k-3 class size mandates that have become lower over the last several years and this year was the full implementation that was based on the legislative requirements and so our physical class size can only exceed within an individual class size a couple students based on the state allotments and that allotment formula is 16 for kindergarten 17 or 16 excuse me let me try this again 18 for kindergarten 16 for first grade 17 for second grade 17 fourth uh third grade and so you can see you have a higher number in kindergarten and then the students move the first grade but the allotment size goes down to 16 that goes back up to 17. it makes it

107difficult because students are tracking through but for those students assigned k3 meeting those class size requirements we do have to keep an eye on that and so we couldn't just open up necessarily transfers we really have to look at by grade level so when we first started this process back in 2015 or 16 in the district we just looked at the school right now we actually have to look at the grade level because the grade levels especially k3 have to meet those lea class sizes for those individual class sizes which is much smaller than it used to be seven eight years ago when we had 22 students in some of these classrooms and then so we would want to limit those ability for those transfers and then we would ask that the superintendent or designee

108may allow additional k-12 transfer requests outside of the transfer window i'm in order to ease overcrowding at over capacity schools or eliminate class size exceptions so that you would give the superintendent myself the authority as we move throughout the rest uh then the transfer window closes this spring that if there are exceptions or if there are needs we would have the ability to offer transfers to individuals in order to meet these now again we're not talking about forcing students to move if there was ever a case we would have to spot reassign a redistrict in an emergency situation we certainly would bring those back to the board for approval what we're talking about is by already by policy if it's a new family that moves in we're going to give them once they receive their

109notice of assignment they get the 10 days um to apply for transfer but there may be circumstances that change where we have overcrowding and this would allow us the flexibility to go ahead and correct those or eliminate those so we'll keep going i just wanted to stop at this point give you that snapshot summary there next slide and then we also have choice programs um through the lottery process so there are board identified choice programs within the district um central elementary school engineering is elementary and that was a board designated choice program there are no capacity restrictions to that school hillsborough elementary school is the only year-round program year-round school within the district it does not have in a student assignment zone it's open to ellie elementary family to apply we start with open seats

110in kindergarten we have 72 based on again those four classrooms 18 students per class that gives us 72 spaces for the lottery processes and then grades one through five once students are in in kindergarten they can progress but as seats become open because students either a decide to go back to their base school or b they move out of the district then additional seats are opened up and we would offer those through the lottery process as well effluent cheeks global elementary school this is the first time this is a new change remember several years ago we were looking to bring students to upland cheeks and now that school is over capacity there is a tremendous amount of growth happening in this district but it also recognizes the hard work of the campus there with their

111student enrollments continuing to grow and then cedar ridge high school the ib program and the way that was set was 40 spaces per grade and we would recommend we continue that at this time and those are the four choice programs that have been operating and the only change to the list this year would be effluent cheeks elementary school being closed what's not on the list is new hope elementary school dual language that is a program within a school that was approved several years ago it is not a recognized district-wide choice program so that's why it's not on the list so there still may be other programs that are operating within schools they're just not district choice programs next slide catherine's going to talk about some important dates for these applications and when these processes move

112forward so just to kind of let you know where we are and where we've come or where we've been you set the tuition rate in november we did the satso reporting and today's 13th so we're going to be having our recommendations approved the window to apply for a school of choice is the month of january january 1 to 31 the software will be live and families will be able to log in and make their requests january 21 is when we're going to send the annual notice of student assignment letters we're getting everything geocoded and all set up so that everyone has written notice of the school that they're assigned to in the coming year in february we are going to read oh next slide in february we are going to review the school choice applications

113and notify families and also in february the regular transfer window opens so we have the different software programs the same program a different module opening up so that families that want to attend to school other than when they're assigned but not for a choice program can apply for those big day is february 15 with kindergarten and new student registration taking place in march we are going to notify um or just process all the applications there's quite a few of them and then in april we're going to notify all the families of their approvals and the appeal process all right next slide we've already moved on so with that in summary we have four recommendations for the board this evening central grady brown pathways elementary schools and gravley hill and orange middle schools are designated open

114a.l stambach middle school is designated limited capacity and effluent cheeks global new hope and river park elementary school in orange high are designated closed the k3 new transfer k3 request will not be approved unless there is more than 15 percent available at the desired grade level again preserving capacity restrictions the superintendent designee again may allow those additional k-12 transfers we discussed earlier and then a new item we want to continue to explore and provide this is based very much along the review process the board did last month in reviewing our transportation policies allowing us to provide transportation for employees where feasible that we can expand services we want to provide that same opportunity to our choice programs and provide transportation services to the extent possible and feasible at this time we're not asking the board

115to approve any additional bus or bus drivers but we do want it to start to at least inquire with families about the opportunities and if that is a barrier for individuals attending a choice program then we want to do everything we can as we talk about equity of how we eliminate that barrier and so our transportation services need to be reviewed when if we prioritize choice programs and that choice for families and we should be looking at transportation services as well i don't know this first year if we're going to be able to provide transportation to every individual that requests it just because of feasibility but i will say we want to put the best plan forward and bring back the best recommendation to the board and that and if that includes additional staff personnel

116or equipment then we'll certainly want to let you know but before staff moved along the lines of involving a very heavy lift to provide this opportunity we wanted to bring this before the board this evening and seek your approval as part of these recommendations to begin that planning process questions or comments questions for mr abele or for ms mao and welcome as mao to orange county schools ms mckenzie thank you um thank you mr abele and ms mal for this report and these thoughtful recommendations i really appreciate them um i am really pleased to see us looking at transportation for choice programs i think that that is a real barrier for some families and having access to these programs one of the things that i just feel like i have to say while we're talking

117about choice programs is that our one school that doesn't have a district is you know disproportionately white and disproportionately a very small percentage of free and reduced lunch and um i wonder if we can have a conversation about waiting the lottery so that the incoming class at least matches the free and reduced lunch numbers that our district has as a whole i'm wondering um if you can tell me what the current um breakdown for of demographics at hes is by race and also what the percentage of students who are on free and reduced lunch there versus the district please okay so we have some of that information the demographics and we can provide that chart not just for hillsboro but we can provide that to all of the board across the district um with those

118breakdowns for you we'll need to add in the free reduced lunch percentages we typically just report those by campus not breaking that information down i was just asking for the whole number not the breakdown of that specific number um so again i would have to get i can send that report back up oh there it is right there thank you thank you thank you miss ralph quickly uh on the side isn't that something it looks like sure so um in regards to the demographics for hillsboro elementary uh right now based upon uh the last adm data that we had 77 were white 8 multi-racial 8 black 5 hispanic and 2 percent were asian and there's uh 61 free and reduced students which is 14 and a half of the total population and what is our

119um district-wide free and reduced number percentage it's around 43 okay could you repeat miss rath what the percentage was for hes for the pre-introduced lunch i didn't i didn't hear it yes it's 61 students which is 14 and a half percent thank you total um enrollment is 418 and 61 are free and reduced thank you so much miss rath for me personally i just feel like if we're going to have this program it needs to be accessible to a demographic that represents our full district and so i'm so pleased to see this transportation but i do think that it warrants us having a conversation about waiting the lottery ms duvison are there any limitations for us to do that as far as using free and reduced lunch data yeah there are that data is very

120closely guarded by federal regulators and so in order to use a student's frl status for student assignment their parents would have to consent so we would have to put in other words we can't just go to child nutrition and get the data on which students are free and reduce lunch in order to use it for student assignment because that's not it's only supposed to be used for nutrition but unless we ask parents when they apply for the school to give consent for their child's frl data to be retrieved which it would be in their interest to do to the extent that it would potentially provide them with a weight so but parents would have to sign consent for that data to be used for that purpose okay that makes sense and incoming kindergartners who hadn't

121filled out that information yet what about what would happen with that so well i understand the application period hasn't opened yet is that right so if i understand if if they're currently a four-year-old or they haven't turned five or they're not in our district they're not going to be under necessarily our reporting um because they're not in our child nutrition program unless they're in a pre-k program i think we could pull some of the direct certification data if a parent gave permission for that but we would have to research because they're not a student at that point i see what you're saying they don't have the data we would have available to us during the application yeah i mean you could ask them in the application to report the information that would lead to that

122designation to report their income essentially um it would again be voluntary um right so that and there are other you know there obviously there are certain characteristics that we can't look at when we are assigning someone there are some that that we can such as um neighborhood you could preference certain neighborhoods you could preference parents educational attainment level so there are some things like that that are not protected categories and i will say catherine and i have experience working on a very similar situation and there's several ways we did use planning segments we call them planning segments we look at census data which shows poverty level by segment and we also looked at third grade academic achievement for segments over time in order to prioritize students higher in the lottery based on the planning segment

123data that we were able to gather and that helped us determining because sometimes what you find is those academic performance indicators and census poverty data mirrors some of the data you were just mentioning you know again for us um you know we have time at this point in time tonight we're just we're recommending um the move forward standpoints we are happy um prior to those applications being closed i think we would want to um you know there is not i'm saying there's an opportunity to get this before the application period closes i think that's our key is if we are changing the priority levels we would need to have a discussion and a plan of those prior to the closing of the applications because at that point when we run the lotteries based on those

124priorities but i think we can turn around with your feedback and hearing your comments this evening a plan that would have additional elements for priority in the lottery so um thank you so much and thank you for your um your question ms mckenzie so if the applications um if the window is january through 31st it would also be turning around putting that communication out at the beginning of the application part right so that families would be motivated to disclose information income information that might favor them or yeah we could certainly ask them as part of the application process we can ask them with permission additional qualifying information on the back end as far as census data planning date meant academic data for segments we can pull that information and then we prioritize based on the

125zones those students are applying from another reason a board might consider that is you know if you do have a magnet program you do want to watch where zones and where students are coming from because you wouldn't want if you had 500 seats over here you know 500 kids that leave one school like you you can start to look at where we're having overcrowding and certainly like your priorities overcrowding could be a priority you know because you're comp you're applying from an overcrowded school which helps us and so there's there's a way to look at other elements besides just a straight blind lottery wonderful do we have other questions um that we need to ask eva at this time or are we able to go forward with this vector filter like in terms of miss

126um mckenzie's comment do we need to discuss any more having communication around the hes application or anything okay all right so mr atherton and then miss houser um so first uh just thank you for all the data lots of great information and having the choice transportation and options i think is good as well one that i ask every time is the orange high school engineering program that was intended to be district-wide do we know why that is not district-wide at this point mr atherton um i i did not okay um you know now that you mentioned it i do recall that conversation several years ago um i don't know we just we need to follow up on that and bring that back and bring back information in january we will follow up on that okay

127good evening chair doyle vice chair stephen ford um the situation hasn't really improved since the situation last year where it's been difficult to retain our staff with the project lead the way training um so that you know it's it hasn't strengthened to the level quite yet and it was hindered of course with covid situation but um as you saw on the consent agenda we are continuing to build that program and as soon as we have it strong enough where we can make it that is still the plan just wanted you to know that that is still the plan we're continuing to develop the program and as soon as we have some stability with staffing to be able to maintain we will expand that all right thank you um just a couple more one the families

128that are already approved and discretionary transfers do not need to resubmit is that correct i believe that's correct that the the board um made a switch and changed the policy and so to take stress off families and to actually reduce staff time processing applications that were automatically approved by policy because they could return i believe that is correct that they are automatically coming back and i guess the last one i have is more on the conversation of ags and do we know how many people are typically on the waiting list and then how many if we expand the transportation would be what that would look like yeah i do not have that information on the previous years i know last year and some with covet and folk schooling with pandemic and folks going to online

129academy options as well i would need to just touch base and provide a report to the board on the historical wait list and how many of that is we can definitely pull that information we would know because as soon as the lottery runs it generates a wait list so we would be able to generate that report for you fairly quickly and i i should have that by friday all right thank you miss houser yeah a few things this has been this was great um i'm all in on transportation at hes as well as the waiting on the law i thought we actually were already waiting the lottery i guess we're not the other thing is for those of you who aren't at the budget committee the new summer school i'm sorry the new after school

130program is going to include intercession camps at hes which also will help to make it more accessible so that's a really nice feature um i i'm there's a couple of things that are bothering me one is i didn't think the stem program at central was active so to call it a choice program you know it's i didn't think there was a program there to sign up for so it's probably i didn't think we even had it staffed actually so it might be worth i don't know if we need to make it go away or what but i'd like to um so miss houser uh thank you for um bringing this up and so we do have schools i.e central elementary school uh efflin cheeks global elementary school that are choice schools by way of district

131definition but not necessarily in terms of of programming meaning support from the district yes so i understand that at one time there was uh greater support but not as much uh for those programs so uh that is something that we uh may want to come back to and have a conversation if we're going to have a school and designate that school as a choice school what does that mean what kind of support is needed what does the program look like we do know that we don't have many if at all in terms of families applying to attend for those programs so but in name yes it is a choice program but not um with the support that it would really need to have uh in order to be a bona fide in my opinion um

132choice program and i do want to give credit to the staff that are at those schools whenever and wherever possible they are looking to continue to develop those themes within their classes and their programming but they do need support just like dr felder is saying and that's you know that's what we were looking at last year and then of course our focus shifted to uh the impact of kobit but we do hope to provide additional support because there are such great opportunities especially when you think about the stem areas and where that is the now and the future of our children and so we do hope to continue to expand and we hope that that's where the support will be as far as global of course you know our kids are living in a global

133market so we are going to look at taking a look at different ways that we can and that was something that we shared previously that there are a number of ways and ideas that we would like to support the schools in developing their choice names okay i was just um you know so i i love the idea of of stem at entry of stem at central i loved it when it was set up but it just hasn't stayed there so i just didn't know if we should offer the opportunity to sign up for a program that we that's still under development so and f1 it doesn't matter i have and i also didn't know if dual language should be a program that we expand because there seems to be such interest in it and then

134i just have another comment on sappho so every time i see a report that shows our sappho capacity i cringe because the board constantly says that sappho doesn't really reflect the capacity situation in our school in fact it's worse because sappho doesn't count pre-k sappho doesn't count some of the exceptional needs that we have in our schools so i just didn't know if there's a way to start to start reporting in fact the real situation of classroom capacity in these schools because my concern is there more urgency than we're seeing in the report i think we can certainly provide additional details there was an effort across the schools in orange county working with sappot committee i think we even had board members from both school districts on the zapotec when the question came up about

135pre-k and about alignment to the new class size numbers about reflections of the actual usage within buildings to your point um i don't know we ever had a working solution of what that outcome would be in reporting numbers there are a tremendous amount of auxiliary services mental health services counseling services speech language occupational you name it services being provided in schools that aren't accounted for with capacity numbers coaches that are in schools other individuals that are in school some you're going to talk about this evening every time we add those positions or individuals in schools to provide the supports that are really needed in this day and age to serve students they're not encountered in cephalo i mean they're not in buildings in general they're not capturing that which is why it's important we continue

136to monitor and report that we do track conversions of classrooms or conversions of spaces um as well within buildings but we can look at a better way to report that and reflect on that and i will say with sapfo um a hundred percent does not meet a threshold all of us sitting in this room would say wait a minute there's a hundred percent of the building being utilized that would signal a problem in most places sappo utilizes 105 capacity as the trigger point for elementary 107 for middle school and 110 for high school which can be very difficult when you're trying to walk down hallways in your 10 percent of the high school over capacity so i think we've always said with the sappo trigger points for when that would trigger building expansions new schools

137etc that those capacity thresholds seem to be a little bit higher and when you factor in everything i mentioned and you you're discussing here um it just doesn't show the true stress in buildings so so my my question is or my point is when you show us capacity numbers would you show the real numbers not the the sapphire numbers are not our real numbers in fact the i think the capacity issues in some of our schools are much worse than sappo reports and it would be helpful to see that i would recommend sharing both yes yeah right then it shows how far off sappho is maybe we can make it go away okay other questions from board members for mr abele thank you so much mr mr abele um for your presentation tonight um do

138i have a motion to approve the open and limited closed schools i moved second okay all in favor aye aye the oppose great wonderful all right we are moving on to two position requests the first one is a behavior interventionist specialist at new hope elementary who is presenting thank you uh mrs doyle so uh presenting tonight will be uh miss joyce hatcher um chief for human capital and organizational development and joining her is dr uh meredith meyer who is the principal of new hope elementary school good evening madam chair congratulations board members and dr felder it is my honor tonight to come with dr mayer and we're going to talk about the request for a new position at new hope elementary school the name of the new position will be a student support coach this

139position will be based on the data that is needed to support the needs of the students there while providing student services support i'm sorry this position will be funded by title 1 funds on the school's title 1 funds may i add and also too this position will focus on student services support as well as a multi-tiered system better known as mtss i am now going to turn this over to dr mayor and she can talk to you more about the needs of her school and why she is requesting this position thank you miss hatcher good evening madam chair congratulations vice chair members of the board superintendent builder my name is dr meredith mayor i'm the principal at new hope as ms hatcher mentioned and it is a privilege to stand before you this evening to

140request this position and it is my honor to be able to present to you the needs of new hope at this time um as detailed in our job description that is proposed we have a demonstrated need at new hope elementary for a newly created student support coaching position as it aligns with our school improvement plan specifically key strategy three and goal number one regarding the importance of student support in increasing academic achievement as well as key strategy two of our goal number four to support students well-being and to ensure that all students have what they need to be successful by empowering school culture through provisions of robust student support services so as designed this student support coach position would provide targeted support to teachers and students across our entire school specifically in k2 grade spans

141where we currently have our greatest need our students would benefit from significant research-based social emotional behavioral intervention support and or continued related service delivery as it would be needed and as we know the pandemic has indeed shaped the social and emotional needs and well-being of all of our students across the district specifically in our new hope student body but at new hope it has really just exacerbated a need that has been consistent and persistent throughout the last few years um and we hope that we as we continue to do our very best every single day um to serve our students in a really holistic way including social emotional and academic support we have already called upon several of the lovely people in this room for support including all of our ec specialists and departments so

142thank you to all of our department leads there in order to help with assisting strategies routines documentation crisis plan implementation and to detect and chart data trends to mitigate prevent and support students throughout what has been proven to be a very difficult and emotionally taxing transition back to in-person learning so again i'd like to thank all of the folks in this room that have helped us throughout this entire year other elementary school leaders my supervisors my colleagues for the collective support that we brainstormed throughout to help all of our student bodies but specifically in this case new hope um in honoring all of that comprehensive support and with no detriment to the effort that has been put in there is still a gap at new hope elementary and how we can reasonably staff the levels

143of our current student needs um and in this regard we want to make sure that we are able to continue to put a priority on student well-being and instructional efficacy at the same time we don't want to leave either out um so our wonderful existing support staff our counselors our social worker our administration all of our specific classroom teachers that are working directly with students with the greatest need are working overtime quite literally to meet the needs of all of our students and this position would add so much needed and explicit support or social emotional and academic growth of every student at new hope so i'd be happy to answer any of your questions and thank you for your time thank you so much dr mayer and miss hatcher um any questions for either one

144of them this smiley not not a question just a reaction which is i'm so pleased that you have brought this position forward and that you have the um funds to do it and um i do like i don't know what will be clearer to job applicants but student support coach feels more positive framing i think than behavior intermittent so i like that absolutely thank you glad glad you're adding resources motion to approve a second okay i have a motion from uh mr atherton a second from mr stephen's all in favor aye aye nope any opposed great thank you thank you so much thank you both okay and we have another position request we do indeed and uh so i'd like to invite mrs connie uh crimins uh executive director for um ec and pre-k uh

145to present excuse me good evening board um congratulations ms doyle on your appointment or your election this evening um and thank you ms mckenzie for your support throughout the years it has meant a lot um here to to request educational diagnosticians and primary support persons um within the district and as you have seen throughout the abstract there are multiple vacancies still for school psychologists as well as an ongoing backlog of referrals and evaluations that are due for our exceptional children's program our school psychology to try to rearrange their schedules to try to cover um as many of these evaluations as we can but they just cannot catch up and we have tried to recruit and hire additional school psychologists to to our vacancies there is a statewide shortage of school psychologists which is making it

146even harder we have reached out to schools of ed the new admin for our department has reached out to all the schools of higher ed to try to find december graduates and they are the school psychologists are just not out there in order to alleviate some of the evaluation components on the school psychologist we can use educational diagnosticians which are certified teachers and they can perform the educational assessments they can also work with parents to get the um any behavior rating skills adaptive behavior skills and then they can work to pull that process together so that our school psychologists aren't having to go and chase down this piece of data and go to this person and get this piece of data so really it would be someone who can complete assessments and then pull that

147process together additionally we are using virtual psychologists um and that poses it's a good thing it does help to complete those assessment but it uh poses a issue with who is going to monitor that student during the assessments so the second position that i'm requesting are primary support persons and they are a ta position that will um go ahead and monitor the student then they will this position will upload any of the documents that the school or that the virtual psychologist needs as well as then um pulling that report from the site and uploading that into our online assessment at this point i i don't have any more information i've given you the information in the abstract and i have any questions that you have i'd be happy to answer thank you ms crewman's questions

148ms smiley and then mr arthurton um thank you i'm i'm glad we're looking for creative solutions to get through this backlog because it's really really crucial um how many of those school psych positions are still vacant wow i mean if there's just generally a shortage i just don't even know you know even if this is sort of a short-term solution for us what the longer-term solution is if there just aren't enough school psychologists do you have any thoughts about that yes we've we've been looking at the possibility of bringing in school psychology interns the interns can function as a building school psychologist with the oversight of one of our current psychologists so we've had two two people who are interested and we are actively pursuing them to see if they would be willing to come

149and join orange county schools in talking with other districts who have used the interns as a temporary solution what has happened is then they've grown their own so to say and those interns tend to stay that's great wonderful the question i had is i'm glad we're looking at solutions like this as well um what happens or what's the duration that they'll be hired for because we'll all of a sudden at some point have psychologists coming in and then these positions would no longer be or what's the thought on it long term so we have been um thinking about what to do and we don't see that the primary support person that virtual psychologist seems to be a very popular option and so i i we do anticipate the primary support persons will be needed as

150for the educational diagnosticians we believe that that would be something to evaluate at the end of this school year um looking at the funding looking at um how they have helped if we are still in that deficit of vacancies um they would be able to continue to help support the school psychologist as we want to move the school psychologists more to the ability to interact with students so even if we have continued fte still these educational diagnosticians can take the educational piece that that tracking of documents and data down and we may be able to use them in that capacity and then our free up the school psychologist to do additional or different work all right thank you i have a follow-up question to that the numbers provided um for the four educational diagnosticians um

151the 260 thousand um it seems like it it was saying here that um the that dpis ec division has allocated the additional federal funds to cover that but if we don't end up needing them for a whole year it won't actually be that much am i correct interpreting that okay correct so we've we've obtained additional funding from dpi um about 400 000 right now and so this and it does those funds do have a 27 month life cycle so um there is additional funding to look at continuity at least into next year um again to make sure that our school psychologists have the support that they need to be able to do their job and quite frankly to be able to breathe a little bit wonderful yes dr moore and then ms hauser um mr

152kramen so i just wanted to let you know that i am in full support of this position um if the remaining cases are not closed the district we're going to have major issues with compliance guidelines uh you know that can lead to funding issues missed um opportunities for early intervention for uh younger students maybe trying to enter a pre-k um so overall we're going to have a impact it's going to affect our students and staff so i would like to make a motion to approve a position well i have a question before we do i just wanted to i have a couple questions on it and i agree about the urgency um a couple of things first of all just to understand so would the diagnosticians would be leveraging the psychologist so we'd get more

153out of the psychologist could they be taking some of the work away yes they would be taking a portion of the assessment away so that the psychologist could get to the portions that they need to um perform as an educational diagnostician cannot perform the ic test okay now we're having trouble hiring a lot of people are we going to have be able to hire these folks so these are future positions i anticipate that this is this would be a position that teachers from other districts would apply for and then um just to be proactive if there are teachers in our own districts who want to apply we would have to look at and enable them to fill their position or work with the school principal in order to figure figure out a means to allow

154them to do a portion of that but still make sure that our students with special needs and receiving special education okay and then i um let's say you're able to fill these positions in a month or two i'm um i'm concerned about what it's going to really take to whittle through this backlog because my concern is do we need to do more and i'm interested in dr felder and i've talked about this i'm interested in seeing if we can contract with school psychologists through private practices and other places just because the backlog is substantial so it's it's you know i'm just not sure this will be enough but i'm i'm i'm well second if there's no other questions i'll send second doctor moore's motion okay are there any other questions uh for mr mitch okay

155great so we have a motion from dr moore and we have a second from miss hauser all in favor aye aye okay no opposed great thank you so much ms permanente thank you very much okay and before we move on to our work session we had two items pulled from consent so the first one was item g about the easement at river park elementary school and then the second one is about uh extended contract with forthright consulting doctor yes so let's uh begin with the easement uh consent item and then i'd like to invite well he's already here and board members i will note as with regard to the easement and mr evelyn i've talked about this that were to go through the final documents like the deed will still come back for your approval

156um [Music] or in this case easement slash there will be next steps for you to do so i think what they're looking for tonight is essentially permission to move forward with exploring this and but i'll let mr abele speak thank you so in your packet i won't be able to pull it up you do have access to this information there was a request from the town of hillsboro there's currently a pump station located um just south of the eno river they wanted to relocate that with the fema grant out of the flood zone and had suggested utilizing river park elementary schools campus with an area that was just adjacent outside of the flood zone due to the higher elevation and the fact that there's already service lines coming through that area on the map that

157was provided if you look at the information you see a green line that's running from the school that's our sanitary sewer line that's coming out it's about a six inch pipe if you ever walk down towards the river off campus there's several manholes you will see um service utility covers um throughout that property going down and that's those lines that are running from the from the river park elementary school property what was requested was either an easement to build a new pump station this is located underground there would be a utility building much like the one at all stand back the small building you see at the rear of the school that would service the generator and the the servicing area for the pump control system most of what they would install would be underground

158and so they asked for us to consider this i recommended land acquisition of the one acre versus um easement for the the reason of environmental control and future environmental issues i'm at the pump station or any other issues that may result from that i felt it would be in the best interest of the school district that rather than just having an easement with that service line and that system there that we would deed that one acre of land with your permission to them so that they would retain responsibility for the equipment or any environment or other issues that would arise from that being located there there are some a couple savings and benefits to the school district one that entire green line from the school all the way to the river we maintain that as

159a private line and so by moving the pump station up that service channel we would only then be responsible from the school to there it's a very old line very costly to maintain and so it would reduce the amount of linear feet that were required to maintain along that service line the second thing we talked about was an educational component you know we could much like we've done interpretive signs at the board of education that's being completed at the ice house you know there could be an educational component explaining to the students what this project is and what's taking place um out there it is outside of the area that they utilize for outdoor classrooms there are several trails back there but i'm not familiar with any trails that go directly down that line again

160because there's um covers and utility covers that are located throughout the property at this stage for utilities and easements and services we don't involve the schools or school principals but certainly once we would do final placement or we would have an approval for a project we would be walking the site and going through making sure there's no impacts in the town it certainly understands they wouldn't recommend the project if there were any negative impacts to the school or the operation of the schools and if you know i'm not aware of anything currently to date but certainly we would make sure there's no um you know issues with the school replacement um for this i know i talked to mr witter you know late this afternoon and certainly if there is a land acquisition there would

161be some money that would come back to the school district now that could be a dollar that could be something more than that we'd have to value the property and certainly if there is any funding they would want to use it to increase their outdoor learning capacity playgrounds or something along that same pathway that the students use we do know we've had previously security issues raised with individuals that come up from the trails from the river and wander onto the back side of that property and so this would also give us an opportunity to think about our campus safety security plan um without with accessing the rear of that campus and so what we communicated with the town is this project would also have to have some security features built into it whether it's town

162vehicles or maintenance or individuals coming on to the easement but we would want to tie that into our campus security plan just to make sure it's safe there is a generator that would run on the pump station 30 minutes a week for testing and they would they could run that at obstacle hours so very little impact from the schools again most of that land and area is in the floodplain or just out of the floodplain and it's not uh i i just wouldn't recommend if you get curious and you want to go out there wear high boots uh mr atherton did your questions well you know you sent us a lot of information just a few hours before the meeting and i have not had time to go through all of it but i do

163feel as a board member giving time for our community to see it as well before we make a decision and some discussion i did hear you talk about the acre because that was very confusing because normally based on the pictures it's about 30 by 30 right which is about 900 square feet and an acre is like 43 000 square feet and it you know i know that we've talked in the past about you know outdoor space and expansions and how we're using it and things like that but i i would just really like to hear from anybody in the schools that have thoughts around it as well not just all of a sudden it's here and we make a decision to move forward so i'd just like to ask to have some time to think

164about this typically and i certainly understand that point typically schools are not involved with utilities and easements and upgrades that are happening on property um within the within the school outside of areas that are used by the school because the areas by the school property and that property extends all the way around to the board of education there's the ice houses there i mean there's other designated areas there that are within the town permits or permission areas anyway i mean like i said we already have different utility access and covers on there but certainly we'll proceed in the manner that you feel is best but it's not like we're getting ready to do a service upgrade to electricity at orange high school that we didn't communicate or ask the principal or people to weigh in

165on the utility upgrades now we communicated the days the buildings the service lines are going to be down etc um and so but we're happy to proceed yeah in a different manner but if i could also just um chime in on this mr abberton um and and thank you for raising this so both mr abele and i had an opportunity to touch base with the school's principal uh today uh and he acknowledged that um it's not an area that oh that is a uh an area that students even use uh and so um he did not express any concern to us we can certainly have further conversation with him um but we did have a conversation with the school's principal today mr aberle i don't know if you want to add anything else from that

166conversation i think that was yeah i just want to add that this is not we're upgrading power we're getting rid of an acre of land at our school and that's very different than than we're just upgrading or we're fixing a sewer line or and i i i get it i get it but when we're removing land i think it is a bigger conversation and you know is there possibility of you know during this discussion that the town takes ownership of the maintenance of the sewer from the school to there as part of this agreement versus we just sell them a land for the dollar and you don't so i i would just like more time to anyway that's right yeah okay miss houser yeah i i agree completely you know we're talking about putting a

167pumping station on a school property it's not our utility it's the town's utility and it's really different and to me in the spirit of a board and a district that talks about building trust often this is how you build trust by not making a decision without getting their involvement they once i believe once people hear about it they're going to go yeah that sounds fine to us but i think if we don't go to them and i've been on the receiving end of this many times in other settings when you're on the receiving end of this and it's done to you the reaction is really different so i'd say we owe our school the courtesy of understanding this so that they can say sure that looks fine other board members well it's not a fully

168formed thought um but you know i i hear that point and i could imagine us doing a little bit of a a little bit of a sort of communicating in case folks want to proactively in case books want to share public comment before our next meeting or something like that um i think a lot of the information you sent us by email today was very reassuring to me in terms of like it's far off in the back and it's the whole thing's going to be underground except for this one little building and it's not going to overlap with the trails and you know all of those things the access won't be through the school property all of those things were very reassuring and i think it would have been it would have been helpful to

169me to like have a little bit more of that in for me i think if more of that had been in the agenda i could imagine uh i think that would have been helpful in terms of um uh reaction um yeah so i mean i guess that's that's my thought is i don't i don't feel strongly about needing the the public uh the additional time for for community input um but i'm also fine with it so my reaction is it really we want to have a functioning sewer system and we want to have a pump that's out of the floodplain so i personally don't feel the same reaction although i i hear your appointments however mr atherton and their their points well taken um the original map makes it look like this you know bright

170corner at the end of the property and then it talks about how it's down a tree and you can't you know it's down a hill and you can't even see it from the you know it seems to me like a necessary thing that might have to happen i'm curious about what timing we need to accommodate some of the concerns that were raised so so how pressing is it to have this approved tonight versus the next movie the next meeting again it's a pleasure the board if you're not comfortable with the decision and a recommendation then you certainly can defer that until you have the appropriate amount of information you need to make a decision i mean we'll communicate to the town i don't know if there were any deadlines on them doing their fema applications

171i know this was part of the mitigation program in order to receive funds to relocate and designate that in a different area there's still obviously you know work to be done on the project and i think you know the information you received this afternoon is you know this is something that's going to take you know one to two years and then once they actually start on it's gonna take about six to nine months um and it sounded like from previously when you did the upgrades at river park there was there was a question or concern about the serviceability of that line and about building something on the campus so i think they were looking at being able to provide this off campus as well but we'll bring it back when we need to bring it

172back okay and i'll tell you some of the next steps i think part of why this was coming now is and i'm not aware of any reason why i can't wait a month but the next steps would involve a survey which would you know ask the town to complete um and in order to complete this transaction the board would have to declare the land surplus there would need to be a deed [Music] and so particularly the survey which obviously is a cost to the town i imagine that they probably want to know that it's likelihood so again that doesn't mean it has to happen tonight but just there are a number of steps that would happen and then like i said the board would have to declare that the land is not needed for the

173school and then we if we are able to work out a sale as opposed to an easement um which i do you know makes sense if we can do it then there would need to be a deed approved by the board yes i just for clarity i i think this is a simple courtesy that we offer to the parents and the school by saying we're looking at this so there's no surprises i think it's one meeting maybe it's through the pta or through the school but it's literally one meeting i'm hoping that there won't be much interest in it but if anyone's interested in it they'll be able to know about it and there's no surprises that that's all i'm not looking for a big public input public comment just a really simple courtesy meeting

174sure um what do you mean by courtesy meeting like are you hoping that there's an event at the school that like i'm just trying to understand what's gonna change between now and january i have no i mean i don't have any skin in this game i don't care if we wait a month or a prove it tonight i have no problem with it but i just don't understand what it is that's gonna shift between now and then they would know the difference is that they would know that it's happening and they wouldn't hear about it and the rumor mill wouldn't run with it i really want to be transparent about it that's that's all if this is an exploratory step to survey and i mean i assume with a survey it would be flagged people

175are going to have no idea where it is or what it is in the woods of cameron or river park um again i'm not necessarily pushing for it to happen tonight but if we still have to have an action on the back end and they're going to go flag it so people can actually see where it is it makes more sense to me to do that for so that people actually understand where it would be and how it would impact the way they use the land then to have a meeting and say this about some random space in the woods but that's just my two cents i don't know that it has to be sequential steps i think you've surveyed people can go out on the land and look at it but it won't be

176flagged it's not marked we can it's our land right we could take i don't have authority to grant easements or to grant individuals to take the next steps without the board our policy has been that the utilities and easements the authority has been with the board there's many districts there are utility and other easements that this staff um sure tenant does needs have the ability to designate and to work on easements with government agencies but this is not one of those and and i will say that part of the difference here is that we're talking about a sale yes right absolutely which i recommended based on any future concerns so avoid any issues with us taking on responsibility of the compensation and and given we got most of this data three hours before the meeting

177i mean i haven't even had a chance to go through all the data that was given to us all i'm asking is we don't make a decision right now until we all have a chance to actually go through the data come back answer the questions if public has concerns they can bring it up too yes mackenzie is the landmark mr abele like would anyone be able to go back there and see what it is at this point i wouldn't recommend folks go back there it's really uh property that in my recollection and my understanding we've not used or would want people back on because it slopes off it's very muddy it floods it's unusable we would not build or recommend or be able to put anything in that area and if we do have people

178that are using it then i have security concerns that we probably should review that makes sense to me so it sounds like the only time crunch is if the town's funding source from fema is impacted by our not approving tonight um would we be able to um table this until next meeting unless we hear otherwise would that be reasonable approve it we we can vote either way we can um we can have a vote and see if we approve this tonight or we can vote to wait till next month i i would prefer to wait and just again it's a courtesy you know only land use things whether they're egregious or not land use things make people upset and so i just don't and if this is as patrick says there should be no reason

179for people to be upset so i just want to be transparent just let people know it's coming and you know i didn't hear there's an urgency that it has to happen now but that's where i am okay as well i mean i haven't been able to review all the data we're given so i would like to wait as well okay other board members all right i'll chime in okay you can start looking at me but my only um reservation would be uh because it's not it's not a matter of we having not read all of the information that is all for me i haven't read it all yet because i was busy this afternoon right okay and we do have two meetings in january i believe and so i think the first one is that

180the 10th i believe so we could put it on there you would cheer so just say okay so let's move this to um the january 10th meeting all right is that okay done that was great thank you thanks thank you mr avilee okay and then our second item that we had pulled was uh in regards to forthright dr felder so mr atherton did you have any questions the only thing i would say is i know that they've been renewed multiple times and we had said they would not be renewed so i'm just pulling it to vote no yeah well you know i've expressed my concern with you dr felder so it's no surprise that it's nothing personal it's just business i don't support this because it's the third time and i do not like what

181they wrote at the bottom of their um document that they oh i thought i heard somebody talking uh the orange county they aid orange county leaders uh with providing talking points for events ffa and churches i have a level of discomfort with that because i believe i'm sure uh ms stowe is quite capable to do that not putting anything extra on your plate but i know that she's capable to do that and it's just a few things so anyway i'm just one vote that's just my level of discomfort because this is the third time and it seems that they could prioritize or something maybe we could do it for six months not a whole year so anyway it's just one vote or two so i thank you both for your uh input i don't know

182if others want to comment before i uh makes a few statements here do any other board members i mean yeah so i just want to say that um i certainly hear your concern and know that i would never ever bring a request if it was not a necessity this is not a nicety and i wish we were not in a position where we needed additional support but we do uh our communication re uh continue to so when uh the contract well let's back up a little bit so this contract uh with uh forthright and and honestly if it's not forthright then let's pick another vendor we need support at the end of the day uh that's the bottom line in the area of communications and so cloth right was brought on uh back in 2019

183if you recall and supported us through a period of time when we really did not have anyone in the communications department and provided great support since that time our communication responsibilities and needs have grown exponentially without question and and we're not the only school district that is uh experiencing additional demands and needs with regards to communication and we when we also when we think about goal 4 of our strategic plan which is empowering culture and i'm going to read exactly what it says is to cultivate supportive partnerships among families schools and community stakeholders to support students well-being and ensure all students have what they need to be successful uh you know part of that to just what we were discussing about engaging uh the uh river park uh community around the easement request involves communication

184and so um there are just increased demands for information about our priorities we have a number of new initiatives around our strategic plan our equity plan covet policies and protocol just to name a few all of those involved communications our schools are demanding and requesting and requiring additional support which our communications department is doing a phenomenal job of that and so yes when i came last year i didn't know i had no crystal ball i couldn't tell you what the exact needs were going to be this this school year but the needs for communication continue we're in the midst of and i shared with the board uh examples of the projects that we're still in the midst of including our equity video that video is not completed we need to get that completed and i

185would like to continue the partnership with them uh to at least finish up the projects that we are currently uh working on but they have been of great support to us and as i said if it's an issue with forthright fine we can find another um a vendor to support us but that doesn't take away from the communication needs that we have and so we just we just can't and and really when you think about it every department uh and so this is not uncommon to outsource when additional support is needed and every department in this district has outsourced uh and continues to do that when additional support is needed this department is no different and so i humbly and respectfully request i understand the concern but as i said i would not bring this

186concern if it were not a necessity so i humbly and respectfully request that the approval for this extension smiley um and dr felder the budget for this is coming from your budget absolutely you are prioritizing this in your budget yes yeah um you know i i initially had some concerns about this for the same reasons you know the you know we don't want to keep extending and extending um but when i think about the scope of what the communications team is taking on and how much more there is to do like the depth of improvement in family communications the need to clearly communicate our strategic plan where is this district going and why and how um the you know just the the range of things i do believe that we don't have a big enough

187team to do it all and that we need more support for that um and so i was that initially you know i you know sort of initially had to like well we should just hire another person on that team if we need the support i think you probably need like a higher level i think you could probably get more bang for your buck by doing this than doing that at this moment um and so um yeah i can i this is something that i'm gonna support and um particularly i think because it is coming from your budget yes that i want you to be able to have control over how you decide how to prioritize that can i also mention am i correct in recalling it's not the same um it's a smaller amount than

188an initial initial year that's correct so your first the first one was um it looks like it was about um 75 000 a year something something like that and this is for 35 000. what's that 185 was actually 95 okay and so that was during the period of time when we didn't have staff in the communications office but the contract for tonight is for 35 yes ma'am okay ms mckenzie so i'm just going to echo ms smiley's sentiment i feel like um personally i have really appreciated the thorough communication we have been receiving i feel like communication has really improved i as outgoing chair have seen the ridiculous number of foia requests that come in and the level of communication that this community expects from the district um i just trust dr felder at the

189end of the day and if this is something she feels like she needs for the district to be successful then it's more important to me to value the communication to our community and our families than it is to not pivot when we need to renew a contract that we didn't expect to so i'll motion to approve this not ready funny okay well this is emotion i just um and and honestly i think forthright has done a nice job and i i'm pleased with that um to me the whole thing about strategy says we have a strategy and now it's time to move to implementation it's time to move to the schools it's time to move to conversations about student outcomes it's a time to deal with this teacher shortages and continually playing back the strategy

190is as it makes it almost um dismissive of the experiences that our schools are having delivering high quality education which is really the work so i'm a little concerned about continuing a communication a kind of a hyper communication process or a meta communication process when you know and i think ms stowe and her staff are really digging in and and really getting into the and and other members of the senior staff have been digging in and really communicate talking to the schools it's personal it's not kind of that polished communication it's about let's get personal let's get down into it and get the work done that's where i am on it and i don't see how this um continuing forthright helps us and and i want to keep the door open if we need to

191bring them back let's do it but i'm not supportive of continuing okay question yes and you know i just sarah you just made brought up a good point you said uh the staff's not big enough so from where i see it if the staff's not big enough then we should use that money and hire somebody hire a staff person to help ms doe and miss a bunch that's that's i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt you yeah you said that it made me think about it my only concern was the amount of money i think we would be putting into this contract probably could not get this tier of support um in terms of like a communications professional at like the right stage of their career you know okay well there's also the fact that

192we haven't known how much the covid generated levels of communication are going to continue and so you know this this is a little bit of a stop gap measure which is appropriate when we're responding to something that we don't know how long it will continue um because mr's department does a lot uh with our kobo communications so we have a motion from ms mckenzie do we have a second i'll second it hey all in favor aye aye aye all opposed nay okay that motion passes no it did not it did not that was oh there were four oh i'm sorry they're four opposed yes there were four oh who did i miss i'm sorry is the number four oh okay okay so that sorry about that all right oh madam chair we're going to have

193to go into closed session and the next two items say it's 45 minutes we can't do it in 45 minutes we got to do closed session in an hour so we would i think we need to probably hold these two items if we could so we can go into closed session if that's all right with everybody okay how do we feel about that your filter yeah uh we have one hour so if we have an hour left and i think that is for closed session is that yeah because we need to be out by ten yeah then there's no way to do these last two um yes you put points items minutes for discussion items right and do them well right right yeah so my apologies to staff who were here to present okay okay

194so do we need a motion to do this to go into closer well no okay so just to to delay these two work session items for next time okay we are going to delay these two work session items so our next meeting and um the one item if at all possible and i don't know uh mr if you can abbreviate do a very abbreviated um presentation on the logo that is holding up work and we know it's not a item for uh action but it is a discussion item uh unless you all are okay with us moving forward with it but we've not been able to update the website uh powerpoint decks uh letterhead um without this opportunity so i i don't know if there are any questions about it maybe we can do that

195you do have access to the slide deck uh you have had information provided to you previously it was also in a weekly update recently does anyone have questions for mr i don't i don't i don't know i'll just say i think it i think it looks great i think it's a really nice direction okay okay thank you okay all right so do i read this and then take a motion all right so pursuant to north carolina general statute 143-318-118183 and a6 to consult with the attorney as needed to preserve the attorney-client privilege to consider confidential personnel matters and to prevent the disclosure of personnel information that is privileged or confidential under nc general statute 115c 319 and student information that is confidential under the family educational rights and privacy act 20 usc 1232g do i

196have a motion to go into closed session i'll make that motion second thank you all in favor aye okay and so we're now in closed session yeah we're gonna go in that room are we gonna you