001[Music] It's nice to see this great turnout here this evening, including a great turnout from the board. It seemed like a long time since we've all been together. uh vacation season is over and um we've had some in the northern part of the United Sta or one in the northern part of the United States and one out west and I don't know where everyone else has been but it's good to have everybody here at one time. So thank you so much. I hope you had a a restful trip and successful trip. I understand that one of the persons, I won't call Joe's name, but I understand that he kissed this kissed the got off his motorcycle and kissed the ground when he got got back in the South. So, we're we're glad everyone's here. Um
002would you join me for invocation? Lord God, we thank you for the privilege of coming here this evening to do the business of Davy County Schools. We ask that we would make the best decisions that we can make and we need wisdom from you. We ask your blessings upon the students. We ask your blessing on the staff that not only those that are here this evening but uh our daily staff that works to make the betterment for our children. Uh guide us in our deliberations. Help us to do the right things tonight. Christ's name. Amen. All right. And would you join me in the pledge of allegiance? I'll ask Mr. Mr. Joe to lead us, please. >> Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands.
003One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. And board, our first item on the agenda is to approve the minutes from our last meeting. You've received those via email. Um, is there a motion to approve the minutes as presented? >> Everybody at once. Joe makes a motion. Stephanie seconds. Any questions about the minutes? Thanks, Carol, for your normal great job of of putting together all the comments and all the things. So, we appreciate that. Uh, we have a motion and a second. All in favor by show of hands. Motion carries 70. Uh, next on the agenda is board chair reports. And I just want to say thank you for the time that many of you took to go on a school visit. Uh I know those things take time. uh my situation
004might be a little bit different in that I'm retired and probably have more flexibility and you have uh taken the opportunity to to get away from your jobs and make visits and spend time doing things that uh that you not only need to do, but you want to do them because you just want to be able to to uh be involved. Uh, if you haven't signed up for an opportunity, next week we have the opportunity to be a server in our child nutrition program. And I don't see George, but he's probably here somewhere. There you are. Are you getting some signups, George? Good. Good. So, take advantage of that. Um, there are also some workshops that are coming up. I know tomorrow starts one in Asheville and school law. Um there's just other opportunities and
005I encourage you to continue to stay busy as you are uh and working in board board stuff as you can. So thank you very much. Uh any questions before we get to the superintendent's report? If not, call on Dr. Belchure for his report. Thank you, Chairman Pototts, and thank you, board, for the opportunity to share with you some of the great things happening all around Davy County. And um as you know, October is National Principles Month. And of course, we all want to take a moment and just recognize the work that they do every day, our principles and our assistant principles. Strong and effective leadership is really what makes a lot of the learning and makes for a successful school system and a successful school. So, we certainly want to take a moment and just
006recognize them. So, principles, assistant principles, and we'll put you on the spot if you could just stand up for us so that we can give you a round of applause. They certainly are the st steady hands and the creative minds that make our vision a reality and we will spend some time in October recognizing them and saying thank you for their hard work. I echo the comments by Chairman Pototts about school visits, board members that were able to go um to our schools. We saw a lot of great things happening. Um the evidence of of learning, the evidence of relationships, and you got an examples in front of you of what that looks like um when those in those visits. Um and it just affirmed for me many of the strengths that we know and
007see every day in our schools. It's not um it's not about individuals, but it's about the collective work that happens every single day and every single minute in our schools. So, thank you for that opportunity to visit throughout September. Also, um I want to say thank you to to some of our industry partners um that hosted manufacturing day. Certainly, um the the CTE department and the work that they put into making this day happen for our school system. It's for me it was great just to get out and learn more about the industry that's all about our c all around our county and some of the good things that um it's really the fruits of the labor the outcome of what happens in our school system that then go into a quality work environment and
008produce products and so we've got you know several seventh graders or seventh graders that on October 3rd visited pro refrigeration reed mill works gilden paltronics decks ingressol rand fuller welding dc CC and Ashley Furniture. So again, thank you to our industry partners that made that happen. In October, we also have Red Ribbon Week coming up and so that's the long largest and longest drug awareness and prevention program in the United States. So there'll be a lot of focus on that at the end of October. And then digital citizenship week is a national event that educates children and young people on how to use technology safely, responsib responsibly, and ethically. um coming up on October 20th. October 17th, that's a required professional day and our curriculum department has been working for to put together. I think
009it is the 13th annual Davyy experience is what I'm told. It's my first. So, I'm excited to see that in action where we can see some of the professional development and learning that takes place all across our district that our staff are sponsoring. And then we will be wrapping up our first quarter grading period on October 28th and an early release day on October 31st, Halloween. So have an opportunity to get lots of candy and chocolate on that half day coming up. National School Lunch Week is next week and the theme this year is Taste the World, your school lunch passport. Um some of you may be serving, but if not, certainly come out and if you don't have an opportunity to serve lunch, at least maybe come by and grab a lunch. I know
010that um I have had the opportunity to visit um some of our cafeterias and our kitchens and it's just great to see the the work that goes on with our school nutrition uh department every day. Finally, just a couple of final points. The state board met last week and there were several items I think that that would could be of interest. Um the report to the general assembly on the four-year cohort graduation rate, 23% of LEAs have met or exceeded the state goal of 91.4% which is really a strong graduation rate. And so Davy County, we were at 91.2%. So we were right there at the state goal, but we've made a lot of progress. And you're going to hear in the accountability report in just a little bit some of the highlights. And that's
011one of those that I wanted to go ahead and frontload and just share with you. DPI um shared that they do not have any immediate concerns about the the federal government shutdown. Most of those grants have been funded and I believe my understanding is that school nutrition has three months of funding already available. So we don't anticipate any disruption due to the government shutdown. That is a question that has come up and so we wanted to make that clear as well. that um the Department of Public Instruction has also established a task force that's going to look at the um accountability system and the task force is going to consider the variability among high schools with respect to available opportunities and funding and design a model that reliably assesses multiple measures of student performance in
012grades 3 through 12. So, there's a lot of conversation right now about the accountability model. I don't know where that might go. So, I will keep you um informed of that, but just wanted to make sure that you were aware that that is a conversation happening at the state level. And then finally, the strategic plan. We've shared a little bit of information about that. That is available online. Um Superintendent Mo Green and the DPI team, they will be visiting our region on October 16th at Eastern Guilford High School at 6 PM and that is for the roll out of the state strategic plan. So, just wanted to make you aware of that. With that said, lots of great things happening and I know that October is going to be a great month and I look
013forward to coming back again next month and sharing some of the great things that happened throughout October and looking ahead. Thank you, Chairman. >> Thank you. And I was so excited to see all of our board members here together. I forgot to say welcome to you guys. So, thank you so much for uh coming out and uh sharing in uh not only the business session but in the opportunities to see your son or daughter or grandchild or whatever the relationship of being recognized here this evening. We we thank you very much for that. Even got a former board person back there that's hiding in the in in the cloud. Thank you, Dr. Graham, for being here. Next, we will start our recognition program and we'll begin with Sherry White. Good evening everyone. I have the
014privilege this evening of recognizing the fifth cohort of teachers to successfully complete the Davy County Schools local endorsement course for AIG. The local endorsement course was established as part of a previous AIG plan with the goal of increasing the number of teachers specifically trained and licensed in gifted education to better meet the needs of advanced learners. During the course, participants complete Canvas modules with monthly readings, assignments, and reflections on best practices for recognizing and teaching gifted learners. They create a digital portfolio, and they attend in-person meetings with their cohort. Once finished, teachers are locally endorsed to teach gifted students in Davy County schools. They earn three CEUs for completing the course and may choose to pursue state certification by completing the practis, which is the state licensing test for add-on lensure in gifted education. There's
015no monetary gain from completing the course or for adding the certification to their state license. The district does reimburse for successful practice score. There's a question on the form that teachers complete to register for the course that ask about their interest in taking the course. More often than not, teachers are looking for strategies to challenge and support gifted learners and they want to continue to grow as an educator. I would now like to recognize the teachers who successfully completed the Davy County Schools local endorsement course this last school year. So, we have three from Shady Grove, Jessica Parish, Taylor Brewer, you guys. Wait up here. And Beth Cheek. And from North Davy, we have Julie Smith. [Applause] So, thank you all for your hard work and congratulations. >> Sorry. Okay. >> Thank you. If you
016would like to continue, please. >> I will. >> So, I also have the honor um this evening of recognizing four students who attended North Carolina Governor School this past summer. Governor School of North Carolina is the oldest statewide summer program, residential program for gifted and talented high school students in the nation. The program is administered by the state board of education and the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction through the Office of Advanced Learning and Gifted Education. Governor School is open to rising seniors who are selected to participate in one of 11 different academic and art disciplines with exceptions for rising juniors who may be selected to participate in performing or visual arts areas. Each summer, selected students are invited to Governor School to help build a learning community at one of two college campuses.
017This past summer, Meredith College hosted Governor School East and Greensboro College hosted Governor School West. Program integrates academic disciplines, the arts, and unique courses. The curriculum focuses on the exploration of the most recent ideas and concepts in each discipline and does not involve credit, tests, or grades. Governor School is an amazing opportunity for students, but the process is highly competitive. Students go through a local and state nomination process and each district and school has its own process to determine nominees at the state level. Typically around 1,800 students from across the state are nominated and around 800 of those are selected to attend. The district pays tuition for students attending. At this time, I would like to recognize the 2025 North Carolina Governor School attendees representing Davy County Schools. from Davy County Early College, Gracie Howser
018for English, and Alex Romero Martinez for math. [Applause] Congratulations. And then Luke Wner and Ethan Demer. Luke Wner for social science and Ethan Demer for trumpet from Davy High School. [Applause] There you go. Congratulations students and staff members who were recognized earlier. Uh next Jen will be talking about the state school growth for the 2425 school year. >> All right. Good evening. Good evening board members, staff and guest. Um later on the agenda, as Dr. Belchure mentioned, Mr. Puit will be going over our accountability updates from last year's state testing results that will include several points to celebrate for our district. But at this time, I'm going to recognize schools that exceeded growth within our state's accountability model. Exceeding growth means that students progress was notably higher compared to other schools within the state. Why
019is measuring growth important? Growth measures focus on students progress made over the year, not just their final proficiency scores. Growth measures the direct impact on each student's learning. And each school's growth score contributes to 20% of the school's overall accountability grade. This last school year, we had five schools that exceeded growth. I'm going to start with recognizing Moxville Elementary School. Please come up. Moxville Elementary School representatives. [Applause] Are we going to do next? Shady Grove Elementary School. [Applause] Next would be North Davy. Middle School. [Applause] All right. And then I have William Ellis Middle School. [Applause] All right. And then William R. Davyy Elementary School. [Applause] So I want to say congratulations to all of these schools. Um all of our schools have worked very hard but it does take intentionality and work hard work
020and intentional hard work to get exceeded growth. So we want to congratulate each of them. [Applause] Okay, moving along board. Our next item on the agenda is the consent agenda. There are seven uh excuse me, four items that you've had a chance to peruse. May I get a motion to accept those? So moved by Joe second kind seconds. Any questions on the consent agenda? If not, show of hands of support. Motion carries 70. Next on our business items. First item, Clay Harris, the 2526 budget resolution. Good evening team. Typically, we do our budget resolution in the consent agenda. Um when Dr. Dr. Belchure and I sat down and talked. We want to take um this time spend a little bit of time talking about u our budget where we are kind of what what part
021we're playing in that as well as assure the board as well as our guests that we are in very good financial position. Um you'll hear that in the audit when um our auditors come up a little bit later for last year's. But when we take a look at this year, we want to take a few minutes and kind of talk through where we are. We do not have a state budget. Um so we we've held off and worked under the continuing budget resolution up to this point just so that I mean hoping we would get some more information. We think we've gotten everything we're going to get at this point um for right now. And so um what I' what I've presented to you tonight is the b the resolution. It's very similar to what
022we talked about in April and the May time frame. what was in the draft resolution. I made a few modifications to it um for uh um state aotments that have changed a little bit but nothing in our local federal or uh fundate have I made any changes to that. Um from that perspective um our budget from for this year is right at $74 million. You compare that to the audit that we'll talk about tonight, which is right at 76.5 million dollars. Um the biggest change is around federal funding. We just there's a lot of uncertainty on what we're going to get um down the road with our federal their federal budgets as we work through that. And so I tried to be very conservative when we took a look at that and kind of worked
023through that. I've had conversations with departments that are impacted by that. they're they're looking at that to understand where they are and make sure that they're within what their guidelines are in their a lotments um from that perspective. Again, this is really around when I when I build this, I build it based on three-year trend and then whatever information we have at that time. And so that's the reason I feel confident that the draft resolution we we approved in June as well as the resolution we have tonight are going to be as close as we can get um given the information that we have. So I'll be happy to talk about any questions or any concerns or anything y'all would like to talk about from that perspective. Not seeing any questions. I'll ask that we
024we move forward and approve the budget this before you tonight. We have a recommendation from Mr. Harris to accept the budget resolution for fiscal year 2526. There a motion to accept that. Mr. Jones makes a motion. Is there a second? Stephanie makes a second. All right. Any questions for Mr. Harris or Superintendent? >> Clay. I just make a comment really quick again. Just want to thank you for answering the questions, taking the time. I know we don't always discuss specifically what's in it tonight, but I have called Clay. I know some other people might have as well, and you're always quick to explain it, help us understand it, and really keep us on a great track. So, just thank you again for all the time you and your team put into it. >> I have
025a great team. So, thank >> any other comments, >> Mr. Let me add one more thing. Um, understand resolution is before you tonight does not include capital. We approved that resolution back in June. So, it's all the other funds besides capital. >> Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. We have a motion and a second on the floor. All in favor? Motion carries 70. >> Dr. Belchure. Declaration of surplus property. >> Yes, sir. Thank you. So, uh, we I have a, um, recommendation that we adopt a resolution to declare some of our property as surplus. And this the property that we're referring to is the former administrative offices for the Davy County Board of Education. That property is on the south side of Cherry Street. That is between North Main Street and Railroad Street in Moxville.
026Davy County tax information indicates a land area of approximately 2.7 acres. The front portion of the land is improved with an office building that contains about 10,182 square feet on the ground floor and about 2,400 square ft in the basement. The land is improve is improved with a detached storage building at about 1,600 square ft. And so that is the property that we are um in reference to. Our resolution reads as follows. Whereas that the Davy County Board of Education, DCS, owns certain real real estate located at 220 Cherry Street, Moxville, North Carolina. The Cherry Street property, more particularly described, which property functioned as the central office for DCS for many years. And whereas with the support of the Davyy County Board of Commissioners, DCS constructed a new central office at 1200 Salsbury Street, Moxville,
027North Carolina, and has fully moved its staff and services out of the Cherry Street property, making the Cherry Street property unnecessary and undesirable for public school purposes, thus making the Cherry Street property surplus property pursuant to North Carolina General Statute 115C 518. Whereas the DCS desires to sell its Cherry Street property to maximize resources available for public school purposes. And whereas DCS has received a written offer to purchase the Cherry Street property for the purchase price of $450,000 from the Davy County Museum, Inc., which offer it will accept if the commissioners do not purchase the property. Now therefore, DCS hereby declares the Cherry Street property surplus property because it is unnecessary and undesirable for public school purposes pursuant to North Carolina General Statute 115C 518 and offers it for sale to the Davy County Board
028of Commissioners for fair market value in the event that the commissioners do not opt to purchase the property. They intend to accept the offer from the Davy County Museum, Inc. and dispose of it in accordance with law. this the seventh day of October 2025. >> So board, it would be appropriate to entertain a motion to adopt the resolution. >> Is there a motion to adopt the resolution as presented by Dr. Boucher? Michael Hunter makes a motion. Second. Joe makes a second. Now, questions or concerns regarding the resolution? If not, all in favor? Motion carries. 70. The property is now surplus. So, that will lead us to our next item. Dr. Belchure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also bring before you a recommendation um regarding the sale of the surplus property. On September 6, 2025, the
029Davy County Board of Education received an offer from the Davy County Museum, Inc. here and after DMI to purchase that certain real estate owned by the Davy County Board of Education and located at 220 Cherry Street located at tax parcel 115160B 0001 here and after the Cherry Street property more particularly described in the attachment hereto for the purchase price of $450,000 the Cherry Street property is unnecessary and undesirable for public school purposes and pursuant to North Carolina General Statute 15 C518. The board has declared it surplus property. In its meeting on October 17th, the board entered a resolution declaring the property a surplus property and accepting the offer to purchase the property from DMI subject to the express condition that it first be offered to the Davyy County Board of Commissioners for a right to
030purchase the Cherry Street property at fair market value. After and in the event that the commissioners determine that they do not want to purchase the Cherry Street property at fair market value, the board will accept the offer of the DMI to sell the property as is where is and proceed to use the methods for disposal provided by law in North Carolina General Statute 168266 and 168269 using the upset bid process until complete. The board authorizes our chair and superintendent and attorneys to take all steps necessary to complete the process of disposal of the Cherry Street property. So my recommendation, Mr. Chairman, is to accept that offer. >> Okay. Board, you've heard the recommendation of our superintendent that we accept the offer from the Davy County Museum of $450,000 for the purchase of 220 Cherry Street.
031Uh is that a is there a motion? Stephanie makes a motion. Is there a second? Marie makes a second. Okay. Now, opportunity for questions or comments. Thought we would hear a lot. Let me say that I appreciate the work that this committee has done to try to get a historical building site. U Bill Junker and Charles Quincshaw and there are number of others. I shouldn't even start calling names because they all been working so hard and they raised this money in such a short period of time which really shows us that they have a a strong commitment to it and so uh I personally am pleased that they're interested in it. Uh the letter that we received was signed by Charles Krenshaw who is a former uh teacher in Davy County schools and has worked
032uh along with this committee to to make this a reality. So if you see Charles or any of those committee members, Khan, I think you've been involved with them. I know you've been involved with them in terms of representing us for values of the building. We thank you for that. >> Oh, yeah. You're welcome. Uh they have very good intent um on the building, doing some renovation and uh doing some really uh good serving for the community of Davy County. Well pleased of the group that are making the offer. They were wanting to make the offer before they had the money in hand. And so we had to explain to them it doesn't work like that. This is surplus uh building for a p surplus public building. And uh so they went out very shortly
033and got the money. I'm impressed. Got a motion, a second. Is there there's a vote for acceptance? All in favor? Motion carries 70. and if you will be uh so kind to let them know. In fact, your phone's probably going to ring in the next two minutes. I'm sure they're online watching. >> I'm I'm more than happy to do that. >> Thank you very much. >> Uh Karen and Clay, you're teaming up together to make a presentation from RISE. >> Good evening, everyone. We are excited to share that Davy County Schools has been chosen as the only school district for the first ever philanthropic event hosted by the Rise Collective. That is the nonprofit arm of Rise Indoor Sports located in Bermuda Run. The event that we're talking about tonight is called the reindeer games,
034which is a free two-day holiday camp for approximately 100 to 150 K through5 elementary students in Davy County schools. It'll be held Monday and Tuesday, December 22nd through 23rd. And that's the first two days of the Christmas holiday break. And it'll be from 8 am to 5 pm at Rise Sports where they will participate in a full day of activities such as games, sports, crafts, a full day with meals and snacks provided. And they'll also have take-home meals to take home to their families at night. And they'll leave with um a really cool gift. We don't know what that is yet, but it they'll leave with some great memories as well. The event will be staffed by RISE employees, volunteers, and also Davy County High School athletes and club members who are volunteering their time
035as well. And our individual school staff members will help identify the individual students that will benefit most from this experience. And the selection will be prioritized with students based on need uh which many in fact many factors include income or child needs during that holiday time period um or some other challenges that they might recommend these students for. Now as far as logistics that's his ball game. So >> the the reason that that we need to take a look at it and the board needs to be involved on this is our policy 6320 is related to use of our buses. So our activity buses can be used for school related or school sponsored events. Um and so we we do that through our transportation department uh day in and day out. Um the reason this
036is unique is um because this is a not for-profit. Um the board has to approve the use of our buses for this function. Um and so uh the plan is they'll be picked up between 7:30 at 8 or 8 between 7:30 and 8:00 in the morning. They'll be transported to RISE. They'll go back home between 4:30 and 5. So we'll pick up at um Koulamy and Katzer and then we'll for one route. The second route will be at William and Moxville. Then they'll be taken to um to Rise to the facility for the day. Um Rise will pick up the total cost of driver maintenance cost, util I mean all the mileage, everything. Um we'll build in for that um to know exactly what the cost will be. Um they called and asked us about
037it. They looked at doing charter service and that was very expensive and so that's the reason they approached us about using our activity buses. Um so once we the board's okay with that, then we'll take a look at the cost. We'll give them what that cost would be. It'll be a flat rate um based on the mileage and everything else and then uh we we'll work through it from that standpoint. So I ask you for a vote to to move this forward. >> Is this just for title one schools? >> Um it's open to any K any K5 students. We're picking up at the the four schools because they're so far away and doing that community stop. We will not be doing anything in neighborhoods. They have to get them to the schools and we'll
038pick them up at the school because your activity buses do not have stop arms or anything else for us to be able to stop and pick up in neighborhoods. So, they will have to go to school to be picked up. We tried to centralize it as neighborhood pickups. School was the best best location to do that. Okay. Again, the reason we're involved, we have to, this is policy that we have to approve this field trip because of using our activity buses on a non instructional activity. So, can we get a motion on the floor to that effect? Khan makes a motion that we accept the proposal. Second. Jeff makes a second. Any questions now for Clay or Karen? >> Mr. Chairman, if I could make just one comment on this as well, just as a
039point of emphasis, I think it's >> I want to acknowledge that this is a a heavy lift for our transportation department when you think about two days right at Christmas time, but at the same time, the heart for kids is really important and we certainly appreciate that opportunity. And I think um the reason that this is in policy this way, like the school system does not want to become the transportation department for everything and anything across Davy County. And so this is one of those oneoff kinds of events that we would look at. And if there's other nonprofits, 501c's that have other opportunities that would benefit our children, again, those would have to come to the board for approval as well. So this is just a unique opportunity. Okay. Any other comments or questions? Okay,
040we have a motion and a second on the floor. All in favor? Motion carries. 70. again. I'm sure Karen or someone will be letting them know. Clay. >> Okay. Thank you very much. >> Okay. Superintendent Belchure. Motion to approve for the North Carolina voting school board association voting delegate. >> Yes. So, we do have a motion that Chairman Pototts represents the uh Davy County at the North Carolina School Board Association as a voting delegate. Those decisions um during the the schoolboard association's annual meeting of the delegate assembly establishes the direction of the schoolboard association. Those decisions will impact how the association interacts at the state and national levels. And as a potential delegate, Chairman Pototts would be the voice of of you, the board, and would take action on matters at hand by voting as
041directed by your board. Selection of your voting delegates is up to the board. And so the deadline to submit our delegates is October 29th. You've got the qualifications there of being a vote voting delegate. And I'm happy to and pleased to say that Chairman Pototts more than meets those qualifications. And so um that is the recommendation that Chairman Pototts serves as your voting delegate. This is required by the association. Is there a motion to nominate me or approve me to be the voting delegate for Stephanie? Who is that said that? >> I'll give you the second. Stephanie's hand was up. Okay. Any question or concerns? If not, we have a motion in a second. All in favor? Thank you. Motion carries 70. And I'll do my best to represent you guys. Okay. Financial audit Clay.
042You want to introduce our speaker or >> I'll introduce Andy Deal. Andy Deal. He's a partner with Anderson Smith and White. He's partnered with us for several years to do our audit. So, I'm gonna hand it to him. >> Thank you. Good evening. Hope everyone's doing well tonight. Um, as Clay said, I'm Andy Deal. I'm a partner with the accounting firm Anderson Smith and White. We're the auditors for Davy County Schools. Um, I'm here tonight to give a summary of the audited financial statements for the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2025. Uh so keep in mind all the dollar amounts we're talking about tonight are as of and for the year ended June 30th, 2025. Um we basically have a PowerPoint here to present tonight. We um we've basically pulled out all the important pages
043in the 80page financial statements and and put them in the PowerPoint um so we can focus on the important stuff. Um if anybody has any questions while we're going through these, you know, feel free to stop me. Um, I would also like to point out too the the financial statements are currently in draft form. Um, the federal OM have not released the federal compliance supplements at this point. Um, and due to that, we're not allowed to release uh like final audited financial statements. Everything has to be in draft and that's statewide, nationwide. um you know, we're not allowed to release the final audit until we get those final federal compliance supplements. And the compliance supplements are basically a checklist from the federal office of management and budget that tells us kind of what we're supposed
044to look at during the audit. Um we do have a draft of the compliance supplements. Um so we we you know, we don't think there'll be any changes to these financial statements. Um we're just not allowed to pull draft off the report until we get that final copy. Um there are four audit reports in the financial statements. Um the first audit report here deals with the numbers portion, the financial statements themselves and if they're in accordance with GAAP or generally accepted uh accounting principles. Um we're pleased to report this is an unmodified report. Um you could call an unmodified a clean report. The reason it's referred to as unmodified, that means we didn't note anything during our audit, like an audit finding that would cause us to modify our audit report. Um, the other three
045audit reports all deal with compliance, like compliance with federal and state grants, and we'll go over those later. Um, the first slide here is our governmental funds balance sheet. Um, this is probably uh one of of the two most important pages in the financial statements. This page here is going to give you a snapshot of the financial condition of the school district as of June 30th, 2025. So, this is all your funds in the school district except for your child nutrition fund. Uh the child nutrition fund has different accounting rules, more similar to a for-profit company. Um so, their financial statements are in a different format and we'll go over those later. Um but one number I always want to focus on here is our fund balance in the general fund. If you look at
046the first column, the second number from the bottom, we're reporting about $3.3 million of fund balance at the end of the year. Um, for a district your size, um, you know, I'm an accountant. I'm always going to tell you to save more money. I would like to see more fund balance, but for a district your size compared to similar districts across the state, you're doing great. Um, you know, lots of districts are really struggling and losing fund balance during fiscal year 25. We, you know, most of our clients lost fund balance and a lot of them a significant amount of fund balance. Um, we had funds expiring during the year which just really put a strain um on fund balances across the state. >> Andy, let me add one thing. by based on our policy,
047we have to have 17% fund balance based on our general fund. We're trending at about 24% right now. So, we're well above where we need to be from a from a fund balance perspective. Okay. Um the next slide, this is the statement of revenues, expenditures, and changes in fund balance for the same funds. Um you could call this an income statement, a profit and loss statement. Um this is going to if you look at the full report it'll give you much more detailed uh on the expenditures and the revenues. So it's going to show you all the revenues and expenditures um of all the governmental funds. And again uh one number I want to point out here. So for the fiscal year ended 2025 we had a $228,000 decrease in fund balance in the general
048fund. We started the year with 3.5 million ended with 3.3 million. Um, I almost consider that break even. $228,000 on 15 million pretty much break even. And again, um, you know, most districts across the state lost fund balance and a significant amount of fund balance. So, um, you know, definitely good news for the district. It could always be better financially, but you know, given the current environment we're in right now, um, you know, you're ahead of most districts your size. Um I mentioned earlier the child nutrition fund has different accounting rules. Um due to those accounting rules they are required to put liabilities on their financial statements for the state pension plan, the retirement health plan. Um those are massive liabilities that are calculated by an actuary at the state level and divided up amongst
049the districts. Um, in short, what this does when when you slap those liabilities on the financial statements, it really makes it hard to determine, okay, how well did the program do? Did they lose money? Did they make money? Because you could have big fluctuations in those liabilities. And it can make it seem like they they had a lot of net income or had a big net loss when really it was just all on paper. You know, no checks are written because of those liabilities. Um, the thing I like to look at to determine the health of the program is the statement of cash flows. So, here on this slide, we have the statement of cash flows for the child nutrition fund. And this is going to give you a pretty detailed look at the change
050in cash for the year. Um, so for fiscal year 25, if we look at the second number from the bottom, we started the year with about 3.5 million in cash and ended with about 3.5 million in cash. We lost about $20,000 which again on 3.5 million is about break even. Um you know most districts your size in child nutrition lost a fair amount of cash in fiscal year 25. Statemandated uh wage increases uh rising food cost really really put a a strain on this program. So the fact that we we pretty much broke even that's great news for the school district. Um I mentioned earlier there are three audit reports that deal with compliance. Um the first one is our report on internal control over compliance and internal control over uh financial reporting. This is
051an unmodified report or clean report. Um our next report is on the district's compliance with the major federal programs and again this is an unmodified report or clean report. an unmodified report is the the cleanest report you can get. Um and then the last audit report is our report on the district's compliance with the major state programs. And again, so this is an unmodified audit report. Um so all the audit reports during our audit um were unmodified. So that that's really positive for the school district. Um we had no findings or any question costs or anything like that during our audit. Um, next we just have some charts that just kind of, you know, go over some financial trends for the past 10 years. Um, this first one here is just our revenue for the
052past 10 years. Um, you can see we're up. This is mainly due to um the increase in ESSER funds. If you look at the blue part of the bar graph, that's all your esser your federal funds and and those increases are, you know, the CO 19 relief funds. Um and then the the main uh reason for your state increases are just wage increases at the state level. Um this chart here is our CO 19 related revenue for the past five years. So you can see in 2020 it was basically nothing. 2022 2023 about 6 million a year and then all that all those funds have expired now. So this is going to be another you know obstacle we're going to have to face. uh you know maintaining that fund balance. You know when when you're
053talking six million a year, you're going to feel that. Um this chart here is our fund balance for the last 10 years. Um you know, always focus on your general fund because your general fund, that's your contingency plan. If you get cuts from the the county, the federal, the state, your general fund fund balance is what you have to fall back on. Um if you look at the uh the blue bar, that's our general fund fund balance. So you can see since 2015, we we've came a long way. Um really did a great job growing that fund balance. Um but just given the current environment we're in, I don't think we're going to see increases at the federal level, your increases at the state level are pretty much going to be eaten up by state
054mandates like state wage increases, retirement rate increases. Um, so we're really going to have to keep an eye on this just to maintain that fund balance and make sure we don't um, you know, start going the wrong direction as far as fund balance goes. Um, this chart here is our uh, retirement contributions for the past 10 years. Um, this is one of the biggest reasons it's so hard um, to to maintain your fund balance and this is one of the main reasons districts are losing fund balance. Um, the retirement contribution rates, they're set by the state. Nobody in this room has control over those rates, but you have to pay them. Not only do you have to pay them for state employees, you got to pay them for federal employees, locally funded employees, pretty much
055all your employees. Um, I've been doing this 15 years. I think there's been one year where they didn't increase these retirement rates. Um, that was this past year, but this this year they've increased them again. So pretty much 14 out of 15 years they've went up. So um the first column here is the district's pension contribution, your required contribution to the pension plan. The next one is the post-employment health care contribution. And keep in mind this is just postemployment health care. Um this is health insurance employees get when they retire. This does not include current health insurance. And then the the last column here is your total. And then the final column here is our covered employees. So back in 2016, our total retirement contributions were 4.9 million on 830 employees. Go forward 10 years,
056we go from 5 million to over 10 million and our covered employees dropped. So I mean, these are, you know, the mandated increases that are are a lot of times not funded. Um, you know, just because Raleigh increases the retirement rate, that doesn't mean they're sitting there in Washington going, "Oh, we got to give them more Title One funding. We got to give them more EC funding." Even your state dollar aotments, they don't always go up when you when you get these increases. So, it really really puts a strain on fund balance. Um, so like I said, I think it's going to who knows what the future holds, but you know, in the in the near future, it's not going to be easy to maintain that fund balance. So, we definitely need to keep an
057eye on that because, you know, if costs go up and your state and federal revenues are flat or down, the only thing you can do is cut cost or get more money from the county. I mean, that's that's where you're at. So, just definitely something to keep an eye on. Um, you know, nothing to be alarmed at yet, but just want everybody to know where we're at right now. Um, that's all I have tonight. If anybody has any, you know, questions, please feel free to ask. or if you have a anything that uh we can ask a question to Clay. He knows all the answers to um when we when we bought the uh I can't remember the name of this uh safety what are they open gate thank you very much when we bought
058those we paid for that out of fund balance from capital is that correct >> capital fund balance >> and have we been able to >> we we about half of the cost. >> Okay. >> So, and through through the safety grant. So, >> thank you. >> Questions for Andy, guys. Andy, you must have have done a superior job since no one has questions. We thank you very much for doing this and working with our staff. And we thank our staff for working with Andy and his company as well. U >> yeah that that that the same on our end. I mean when we come to Davy County Schools um you know a federal and state single audit we're asking for a ton of documentation and you know anything we asked of Clay and his department
059and it and it's pretty much districtwide. No matter how big the list is, we get the stuff. We get it in a timely manner. It's complete. when we ask questions, we get not vague responses. So, um, you know, pleased to report we didn't have any difficulties completing the audit because, um, you know, it's not always like that. >> We're glad to hear that. Thank you very much. >> Well, this doesn't require any board action, but we do thank you for this report and this update. >> Y and >> have a good evening. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Uh, next we have our summer policy updates. Dr. Belchure. >> Thank you, board. There are a a lot of summer policy updates. These are all policies that were updated due to changes in the law
060by the general assembly that were signed and passed over the summer and then signed into law by the governor. I'm going to go through these just very quickly. Just know that this is first reading, so we'll be get open for feedback. If you have any questions, comments, um certainly reach out. Um we can um address some of those. But you'll see 1310 parental involvement. This is a required change due to the law regarding sleeping quarters on field trips and different activities that are authorized by the school. We then get into a series of title 9 updates, federal title 9 changes with the new federal administration and how they administer Title 9 versus the previous administration. So 17104207230 discrimination and harassment prohibit prohibited by federal law. You'll see that that's an update there. 1720 40 30
0617235. Um title 9 non-discrimination on the basis of sex and then our local regulation process for addressing harassment, bullying and discrimination complaints. We have a required update with that 1725 40357236 and that's title 9 sexual harassment prohibited conduct and the reporting process. Um some policy changes there that are required and 1726 4036 7237 title 9 sexual harassment grievance process is I think the final title 9 update. We do have another one 1735 4329 and 7311 bullying and harassing behavior that is prohibited. Um that is also a required title 9 um change as well. 1742 responding to complaints and 1760 prohibition against retaliation. Those are only updates to legal references that you'll see. 3210 parental inspection of and objection to instructional materials. This is a revision um of the law that um parents have a right
062to be able to access um certain revisions of and review and have time to review instructional materials. And so that is one of the the summer updates um as well. 3320 um this is school trips and it's aligned with that part about the overnight field trips and some of the parent notification and the sleeping quarters there. 3510 religious-based exemptions from school programs. This policy is um a revision under law from the general assembly um that provides alternative um a requirement for the school to provide alternative assignments for a religious exemp exemption. Um so that's what that change is um in reference to 3620 extracurricular activities and student organizations. This is also another one that relates back to sleeping quarters on field trips. um that reflects that change in the law as well. 40237233 pregnant and
063um parenting students and employees. This is um part of the title 9 update and so you'll see that one. 4120 doicile of residence requirements. This is a change in in general statute related to students of uh children of military families and the enrollment process for them. of course one that got a lot of attention and we've had lot several conversations about 4318 use of wireless communication devices. You can see that um our policy was in compliance but now we have clarified language in that um to match the law and what the law says related to that communication wireless communication devices 5070 public records retention release and disposition of those records. That's a change to the law regarding public uh record information in school personnel. 6125 administering medicines to students in the consent. If you'll remember
064last month, we talked about the um epinephrine auto and delivery systems. Um we brought that one and then lo and behold, we looked over this. We forgot about this policy that has that same language within the policy. So that's why you'll see this one in there. Um allowing that that nasal spray to be used. 6340 transportation service vehicle contracts. This is a history check or a criminal history check. um requirement for recruitment and selection of personnel and that same um law relates to 7100 recruitment and selection of of personnel. So you'll see those changes and then personnel files 7820. Um that is also an updating um in accordance with changes in state laws regarding information about central office employees that must be posted online. And if you'll remember there was a lot of conversation about
065um central office salaries and different things. So you'll see um that policy recommendation as well. Again, this is first reading. We'll receive feedback and bring these back to you in November for action. >> Okay. Thank you. There's enough there that we can read one policy every night dur during the weekdays and we'll be right up to date. Thank you very much. Uh then we have some policies that we need to resend. >> Yeah. So again, these policies that you'll see listed for to rescend are related to um the title N changes. So with the change in administration and the updates, um we'll we'll resend some of those policies just to make sure that we get that cleaned up. 1710 4020 7230 or 1720 4030 7235 um 1720R that's our regulation. 1725 and 1725 4035 7236R
066and 7232 are the policies that were recommended to rescend um given the the changes that were recommending that we recommended previously. >> Okay. So we will vote on those in November. >> Okay. Now to Mr. Puit accountability report. >> As Mr. Puit makes his way um to present our accountability report, I know that there is a lot of great things to celebrate and uh we have some opportunities to go out to some schools and recognize individual schools that have made some great accomplishments. But we also want to make sure that we recognize that it's hard work doing what our teachers do in a classroom today. And you heard um our from our um audit. School finance is a challenge right now. And so we've had a lot of good results and appreciate the hard work
067and that helps get results in the classroom. And so you can't do that um without teachers can't be successful without the resources and the support. So it takes all of us and I'm certainly appreciate all the hard work that goes into this. And Mr. Mr. Puit, I commend you for um recognizing those efforts and I'm excited to to see what you're going to share with us. >> Well, thank you, Dr. Belchure, uh Chairman Pototts, members of the board, um staff, and our guests. Um I'm here tonight, as Dr. Belchure said, uh to present an overview of Davy County Schools um 2024 2025 accountability results. And uh Dr. Belchure took the words right out of my mouth. Um none of this happens just like the good work that's been done by Clay and his team to
068get get the audit report. Um, none of this happens without the work of teachers, without the work of administrators, um, custodial workers, all of those people that work in schools, um, from from the cafeteria to the bus and and on up. And so, um, just want to take a moment to say that I kind of view this report as an academic state of our schools. And, uh, much like our our fiscal house, um, the state of our schools academically is very strong. Um, and some of the things that you're going to see, um, will indicate that. Uh first, how do we get these results? Um some of the components um of the the grading process for schools as you will see 80% of the the school grade comes from academic achievement components in elementary schools,
069middle schools, um those are reading proficiencies, math proficiency, science proficiency, and English learner progress. at our high school level. Um that has broadened a little bit with our English two proficiency, math one or math three proficiency, biology, English learner progress, math course rigor, um ACT, ACT work keys, and our four-year graduation rate. So, a little bit more goes into that at the high school level because there are less tested subjects to be able to make a determination on on how well the school is doing. 20% of that grade is our growth component. And as we saw earlier, we had five schools that exceeded growth according to the state this year. What that means is there was significant evidence that students at those schools outperformed what they should have done in terms of the state's expectations.
070So my hat really goes off to the teachers and staffs of those five schools for the excellent work that they've done. Um, as we are moving on, um, just a little bit about what growth looks like. Um, so the way that the state sort of does it there there's two different models. There's a predictive model and there's a gains model. Um both of those um sort of work on the same principle with the gains model. That's what you see illustrated here. And that basically says that if a student is ranked if we if we took all of the population of our schools um statewide and we ranked them one to 100, right? If there were only 100 students and your student is 43rd at the beginning of this year, they should also be 43rd at
071the end of this year. And that's how growth is determined. So, if they're 43rd coming in, they're 43rd leaving, that means there's a growth index of zero. You've done what you're supposed to do. If they lose ground, then you've lost growth. If they gain ground more than they were supposed to, and they wind up 39th instead of 43rd, then you can say that they've exceeded growth and and done well and above what they were able to do. So that sort of what that does is it allows us to compare kids um in terms of not necessarily their overall proficiency which can be impacted by a lot of different factors but it sort of distills it down to how much did each individual child grow within a particular year giving us a much more personal measure
072of how they're doing. Um so you can sort of see what that looks like there. In the predictive model, um it's much the same except for you're basically saying based on performance in previous tests, this is what we predict this child to have done. Did they match that? Did they exceed it? Or did they fall below what that predictive model is? Most of our tests are done on the gains model. There's a couple that are done on the predictive model because there's just not enough data. Um for instance, they've never taken a biology test before. So you can't really use the gains model on that. you have to use other tests to predict what they would have done. All right. So, as you can see, um sort of sort of the first of our good
073news here. Um district level achievement. This is for our end of grade proficiency overall. So, this is all of our students, all of our schools K through six. So, this is going to be our end of grade proficiency. And as you can see, 2021-22 um we had an overall proficiency of 56.8 um% of our students are at or above grade level. um this past year that is up to 60.7% and I'm happy to report that not only does that put us ranked 19th in the state of North Carolina out of all school districts. Um there are 115 school districts in North Carolina, we are 19th out of those in terms of our EOCC proficiency and we are number one in our region which is absolutely amazing. Uh last year just to put that into context
074we were 31st. So we had a huge gain last year. A lot of people worked really really hard to make that happen. And of course proficiency. This would be for our high school. Um you can see that again in 202122 we had 49.9%. We have fallen off. You see a little bit of a growth there for a bit and then it is a falloff um for that to end up at 51.6% is just below that for ours. The 51.6% that you see there is actually the state of North Carolina. um that doesn't necessarily mean all doom and gloom, however, because even that, uh puts us ranked 56, which is in the top 48% of North Carolina. So, not quite where we want to be, and there's certainly um some growth to be done in that
075area. Uh but, um it is it is still uh pretty pretty good when we're looking at things. Um as you are looking here, again, reading achievement is one of the the factors that goes into our academic grade. Um and with that you can see that um we have a lot of green on there. Green basically means that we grew um and that we exceed we met or exceeded growth on that. So um you can see out of our um out of all of the subjects that we have grades grade three through eight and then English two where we grade reading um we did very very well. Um the stars that you see out there, 33rd um for grade three through eight as a whole, 34th for grade three reading, um 35th for grade five reading,
076we were 29th in the state for grade seven, 22nd for grade 8, and then English 2, we were 34th. All of those are in the top third of North Carolina schools. So again, um some some great success, room for improvement, but certainly um something to be proud of. Math achievement You can certainly see a focus, right? Uh we had a couple years ago, if you've been in Davy County Schools, you you know that we had Davy Leads, which is a reading initiative. Um after that sort of grant funding ran through its course, we switched our focus to math because reading had had improved. Um and you can definitely see that focus on math coming through here. Again, um you know, all of those stars that you see up there are in the top third. So,
077you know, we were 12th in the state 3 through eight, 20th in the state in fifth fourth grade, 32nd in fifth, 12th in sixth, seventh in grade seven. And Davy County Schools ranked fourth in the state of North Carolina for grade eight math. [Applause] Um, science achievement. Um, we did have a brand new test this year in science. Um and our students took that and ran with it. Um grade five, you see we were 12th in the state. Grade 8th we were 11th in the state. And for biology this year at the high school level we were 24th in the state of North Carolina. So you can see again u just like with with math and with reading we are we're posting pretty strong numbers compared to those district around us and around the state.
078Other indicators at the high school level um are the graduation rate, math course rigor, ACT work keys, and our EEL progress or English learner progress. Um for that grad rate, um you see our four-year graduation rate has increased from 88.1% in 223 and and then last year it was 91.2. our district has had a longstanding uh goal of 90% graduation rate and we beat that for the first time in district history last year. Um so again that doesn't start at the high school even though that's where the grade sort of counts. If you're waiting till high school to start preventing grad dropouts then you've waited way too late. So that goes all the way up K through 12 um should be very very proud of that that number. Math course rigor that is the number
079of students who have taken and completed math three. Uh we were over 95% which is the state requirement. ACT work keys um we have gone we had a 59.3% that is a combination of ACT scores which are of course national test all of our 11th graders take and also our work keys which are offered to our senior um seniors who are CTE completers. So they take that, they're able to earn business credentials based on those tests. Um and our students uh did really really well on those last year. Um EL progress um again that was a mo that was an area of concern for us a couple of years ago when we saw that 14.5 and 22 23. Um there were a lot of people hitting the panic button. We went to work and we
080have steadily increased that. We've more than doubled that in two years which is a fantastic thing for us to have done for those for those students and also for all of our students. Talking about those school performance grades that is where our schools are rated A B C D um based on the state and where they are. Um you can see that in 2223 we had um 10 of our schools were a B or a C school. Um that dropped a little bit. We are back to 10 this year. Uh 2425 at meet or exceeds or I'm sorry at a B or a C level. We did have one school that is a D level and that's the lowest that we've had in the past several years as well. So again, more of our schools,
081if you remember, the other one of our goals was all of our schools meeting or exceeding growth. And this is one of those pieces that gets us there. We're very very close to achieving that. So um several of our schools did have a lot of of success. Um, as you can see, one school um increased last year from a C to a B. That was North Davy Middle School. Um, two schools improved from D's to C's and one school moved from a C to to a D, unfortunately. Uh, but that is um still a strong showing for our schools. If you're looking up there and you're saying, "Wait a minute, what happened? We lost a school." We did. Uh, the virtual school did close last year. So, even though um it was there, it sort
082of got taken out of those those rankings. Um, school growth. Again, you can see we're making very, very good progress. Um, exceeded or met growth. Last year, we finished with 10 of our schools. That's up from seven just four years ago. Um, now we only have two schools that failed to meet or exceed growth this past year. Um, so that is um that puts us a lot closer to meeting that goal that we set um in our last strategic plan. We do have one school that is graded on the alternative model. um that is CDA. U the alternative model 20% is student persistence which is defined as the percent of students who remain enrolled in the North Carolina public school throughout the end of the year. 20% is school achievement which are the same um
083basic indicators that any high school has and then 60% is on school growth. Um last year um our CDA was given a score of maintaining which meant they have a 77.4% persistent score uh 34 30.4 4% were proficient and then the overall school school score was a 53.9. Um, so they bounced back a little bit u from the previous year. Some celebrations. Again, we've already mentioned some of these, but I just think they're worth highlighting again. That 91.2% graduation rate puts us just under the state goal. Um, and that is uh that's up 3.1% from just a couple years ago. It's up almost 6% since 2015. Um and again that is the highest mark that we have achieved. Five schools exceeded growth up from two in 2223. 10 schools met or exceeded growth. That's up
084from seven. Three schools increased letter grades in performance. Our middle school math proficiency um was stellar last year. Sixth grade ranking 12th in the state. Seventh grade being seventh and eighth being fourth. That cannot be underestimated. Our eighth grade in particular had huge gains last year. So that's something for our eighth grade teachers to be very very proud of. Uh work keys um at our high school level ranked 13th in the state and second in our region. That's kudos to our CTE programs. Um some individual school accolades. Um overall student growth, we had several schools, William Ellis, Shady Grove, William Rar Davyy, um North Davyy, and Moxville all were in the top 25% of schools in overall growth in the state of North Carolina. top 50% of schools, Pine Brook Elementary, Davy County Virtual School,
085South Davy Middle, and Davy County Early College. So, we had a lot of school success there. Um, math growth. Again, you see that sort of concentration in math over the last couple of years. We have a top 5% um school, North Davy Middle, which ranked 93rd out of 1846 schools. Um, yeah. [Music] And then uh top 25 schools, William R. Davy, Moxville, South Davies, Shady Grove, and Koulam all were in the top 25 in math growth. Reading again um we've fallen a little bit there. Um we had one school or two schools that were top 50%, one that still exists. DC Virtual School and Shady Grove Elementary were in the top 50% of our reading scores. So, um as as you've seen, there's a lot to celebrate. There's still a lot of work to do.
086Um, and our schools and our teachers are well aware of that. But it is certainly good to see some of the the hard work being rewarded and showing um in in the prof proficiencies and success of our students. Reading compared to math proficiency and growth, reading does lag behind. Um, that's one of the areas that I think we need to uh go in the future. We we've had many conversations about that. There is a new program that was brought out. Many of you probably remember letters a couple of years ago. We're still waiting to see what the impact of that program is going to be. Um hopefully it will help us regrow um some of those reading scores. High school math math one growth and proficiency continue to lag pretty much behind all of the
087other indicators. Um that's not necessarily something that's uncommon if you look around the state of North Carolina, but it certainly is an area where we can do do better. Um and then finally, um low performing schools. We did have two schools that exited low performing status this year. Um, one school unfortunately was labeled low performing based on the 2425 um, test scores for the first time. Um, and I'm going to bring up that principle in just a few moments to talk. Uh, before I do that, however, just a quick reminder to the board. Um, as part of general statute 115C 105.37, uh, the board u for schools designated as low performing, the following action uh will be recommended for a vote of approval at the November 4th, 2025 board meeting and that is that the
088principal will be retained in their current position. Uh the approval of school improvement plans for the 2526 school year has to be approved by the board of education and written notification to parents and guardians of low performing status and plans for improvement as well. Um so that being said, um Miss Cheryl Reeves going to come up to discuss um your school improvement plans >> board. As Miss Reeves makes her way up to share that, I just want to um echo all of the the good work that um Mr. Puit has shared. And at the same time, Miss Reeves and Miss Beichum are going to share with you some of their priorities. And I want to commend them for taking the time to work with their staff and to have those tough conversations about um a
089label that comes from the state. We talked about how a task force is going to look at the accountability model. There are certainly some gaps and some holes with the current accountability model, but yet it's the game and it's the measure that we play by and we want to do well by that, but at the same time recognize some of those gaps and holes. But with that said, Miss Reeves and Miss Beichchum have done a great job identifying those priorities and they're going to share that with you now um on some of the work that they are going to do this year to help address some of the some of the things that perhaps could help continue to show growth and improvement in that area. So, thank you for being here. >> Thank you. Um
090good evening members of the board and Dr. Belure. Um, thank you for your time tonight as we consider the improvement plan of Corner Elementary. And I'm looking for my slides. Keep going. Aha, there we are. Okay. So, um throughout this, um presentation, um I'm going to outline our current data, how we got to where we are, um and then our plan for improvement and kind of talk a little bit about our core values and the actions that we have already taken towards improvement at corner. So, first I want you to to think about our students, our demographics. So when we talk about this data, um we're actually talking about students and their individual personalities and the impact that we have on their academic success going through high school. So at Cornasser Elementary, we have 406
091students. um 24 of them are AIG, 75 of them are students with disabilities, 199 are economically disadvantaged, and then we have 285 who are white, and 80 who are Hispanic. Now, you might say that's not all of our students. I know that. Um these are the ones that are designated in our um I'm sorry, right? In our subgroups. Um when you look at our EVOS data, this is the the groups of students that we have enough of to count in our subgroup data. Okay. So over time um we have kind of taken a look at our proficiency trends and you can see that on the graph here. You can see from 2021 to 2025. Um in 2022 there was a high in all three subject areas that are tested, reading, math, and science. and then
092it has kind of um decreased gradually over the last few years. Um I would like to highlight that in the last year the the decrease the percent decrease was less than it was in the previous years. So what that means is that while we're not going in the correct direction, we're not moving up, we have started to level off, if that makes sense. I'd also like to highlight our growth. Um, so in 2024, our growth results were that all subject areas met growth with the exception of fifth grade, reading, and math. We saw the same thing in 2025. The difference is that in 2024, um, fourth grade exceeded in math, whereas in 2025, they met growth. Um I do want to say that clearly with this data we know that there is a growth area
093in fifth grade in math and reading and we know that and we have been working with our staff on that. So um our staff members and and I'll refer to them as PLTs and you'll see a link there um for our PLT goals but what they are is really our grade levels. um each grade level sat down and looked at their students data coming into this year and they said okay this is where our students are and this is where we need to get them by the middle of the year and then this is where we need to get them by the end of the year. After each PLT or grade level did that, as a school, we sat down and said, "Okay, if we meet those goals as we have set out, then we
094will increase student proficiency in math to 57%. In reading to 50% and in science to 70%." I want to make sure that you understand that that is not our end goal. We have a three-year goal to get all three of those up much higher. our our goal is for 80% proficiency in all three of those. I can set goals, but obviously we need a plan. Um, so we have our school improvement plan highlights and um, for those of you who are familiar with school improvement plans, um, they have their little indicator numbers, but I'm going to break that down into um what we what we call um the the highlights here. So instructional activities is our our first priority. Could you guys hear me? Okay, good. I didn't even notice. Um, so our goal is
095um to meet that 80%. What we kind of have right now is essentially an upside down triangle. We have too many students in tier 2 and tier three and we're not meeting their needs in tier one. So we've really been working on that with our professional development goals and with what we're doing with our teachers. So that brings us to professional development. Um, our focus this year is making sure that that tier one instruction, your regular instruction that you get from your core classroom teacher meets the needs of the students who are sitting in your classroom. Um, our teachers have been at the beginning of the school year, they met with the curriculum coaches to develop their core planning for quarter 1. So that's their lesson planning for quarter one to make sure that it
096aligns to the state standards and the state expectations. Um we also focused on vocabulary to make sure that we are meeting that that need. If you look at our um I ready data it shows that we have a clear discrepancy in student vocabulary and their understanding of some of the words which is obviously going to affect their ability to read and answer questions. Um we are doing a book study on best practices of tier one instruction through all of our staff meetings and and then we will continue to work on purposeful questions questioning pardon me. So when we develop our core plans, our next step is for teachers to read through that and say, "Okay, you know what? I'm going to plan for these questions in instruction so that instead of asking yes and no
097questions, they're really asking deeper questions of students and making them think to be able to answer critically. In doing this, um, we needed to kind of step back and look at Cornancer's mission and vision and figure out what are our core values, what are our goals, what do we want our students to really be able to do? So, we asked teachers a couple of questions. Um, what do you want if we were to have a reunion, what do you want students to remember about their time at Cornancer? And the most common things that we heard was that we they wanted them to have learned, to have had fun, and to have felt safe and loved. Um, I think that we would all agree I would want my child to enjoy that as well. Um, but
098then we started to dig a little deeper. Okay, what does it mean to have had fun and learned? Because we want to make sure that we're not separating the fun from the learning. Um, so one of our things that we really wanted to focus on is have we turned the fun into a chance to get away from instruction or have we turned the instruction into what is fun in school. Does that make sense? Okay. So, we've been working on some changes. The first is um we took out our computer lab. Um, I may have you might have seen me on the news. I'm not normally on the news, but anyway. Um, so we took out our computer lab and we have implemented a steam lab instead. So our librarian, Miss Eder, reads to students on
099Wednesdays and then on Thursday or Friday when students go to that lab, they do some sort of hands-on activity that aligns to that story. They're also on Monday or Tuesday doing science experiments or social studies experiments that align to the curriculum. So they're kind of getting that double dose, but it's also handson with the engineering design process so that they're having to think through these things that they're doing. Um the second thing that we're doing is we have put in an intervention and extension time in our schedule. when students were being pulled out for EC services, for AIG, um for tier 2, for tier three, what happens is you're being pulled out of your instruction time and then you're missing that in that that core instruction in the classroom. So, we built that into our
100school schedule so that when students are pulled out, the students who are left are also doing something that is aligned to their specific goals and their specific needs. it's not continuing with that instruction that other students are missing. And then the third thing that we're doing is we're trying to protect instructional time. So we looked at the data last year and we noticed that we had a significant number of students checked out halfway through the day, sometimes right at 11:30, sometimes at noon, but a large number of students were being checked out early. That coincided with events that we had for families. Now, I want to make sure that you understand that we're not saying we don't want families at school. We definitely want our families at school, but we want to also protect the
101time that students are spending in the classroom. So, we've adjusted that with things like grandparents day. Instead of doing it at lunch, we did it for breakfast so that your grandparents could come in, have breakfast, shop at the bookstore, bye, have a nice day, and then they could leave. Um, and we had between third, fourth, and fifth grade this year, we had one child check out early instead of last year pretty much all but four checked out early. Um, so that was huge for us. Um, we're also trying to remove um things that might be in lie of education. So, we do still have things like our trunk or treat, but instead of taking the afternoon to do it, we've moved it to the evening. So, we're trying to protect that instructional time by being
102cognizant of what we schedule during the school day. Um, last, I have our um our agenda. If you would like to click on that, peruse it when you're bored and you finish reading the policy updates, you're welcome to do that. Um, I do want to make sure that you understand that right now we have a three-year plan. Our one-year plan is what is posted on those percentages, but our three-year plan, we do want to get as close to that 80% proficient in all three areas as possible so that we know that we can show that our students are learning what they need to know to move on to the next grade level. >> Do you have any questions? >> Questions, comments? I'll just say that from seeing you work with kids at the high school
103when you're assistant principal, I know how dedicated you are, how much you care about the kids. So, um I feel like you're you're going to get your scores up and um look forward to tracking you this year and seeing the improvement because I've got confidence that that you'll get them there. >> Thank you. >> One more question. I know on one of the beginning of the slides um you can see it going south all at the same time in the subjects. Has that been identified? >> It has not. Um I will say that what that tends to when looking at the data what it tends to look like is you might have had because it's based on your third, fourth, and fifth grade scores. um you might have had a particularly higher level of students
104or students who are more proficient leave out of fifth grade and students who are less proficient move into third grade. So you start to see a gradual decline if that continues. Um so that's why it's it's not just a 35 problem, I guess, if I could say it that way. We need to focus K5 because students who are going into third grade need to come in more proficient so that we can continue to build that I wish that there was a rating scale or grade on uh every child being loved. If we did, you'd have an A+ and uh I get an opportunity to observe that every day. And I publicly say we appreciate what you're doing. Uh, and we know the test results are going to come, >> but child safety and the care
105for the child, it's it's amazing. And that's true with all of our principles, all of our schools. When we did our school visits, uh, there was no show and tail. I mean, it was just what you see every day, I'm sure. And it's it's nice to know that we got a school system where people care about children and their learning and not just one or the other. But thank you very much. No further questions. We'll >> Mr. Chairman, I would like to just add to that. Thank you um to our board and to the principles that are here for supporting your colleagues and for championing our school system and our public schools. It's hard work and so it's good to hear those affirmations and it means a lot. So, thank you sir. >> Thank you.
106>> Can I ask a question really quick to Mr. Puit actually just for the information. Thank you so much. Your presentations are always great and the data you put together is so well easily read. So, but I just have a question. Um >> congratulations to everyone on the math scores too. That is incredible that we are ranked in that. the North Carolina math one EOCC score. I'm just curious because I know some of our eighth graders can take math one at eighth grade. Um, but I it's my understanding that those they score pretty well, but then when they get to nth grade, they don't necessarily have to take math one right away. Do you think that plays into why that math score or do you have any insight? >> It it does make a difference.
107Um, so our eighth graders who take math one are typically your higher flyer eighth graders who are ready to go ahead and tackle high school content. >> For them, their math score doesn't count in the high schools, >> right? >> In the high school's data because they're not taking it at high school. So instead, they're the ones that count towards the math 3 proficiency. >> Um, so what what does end up happening there? Um and and you do see this as again that's why it's one of those things that you see as a trend across the state is math one scores are typically lagging behind other scores because you've taken a chunk of your kids who normally would score very very very well out of the equation for those math one scores and what what
108you have left are typically those kids who have struggled a little bit more in that sort of thing. Um so again it's it's not something that's insurmountable but it is a it is a >> it does make a difference there. Um, your math scores are also when we're talking about predictive versus the gains. Math uh eight and reading eight are two of the predictors that go into math one. But they are both not gains based, they are predictionbased because so many kids take math one in eighth grade that when they ran the formulas that they typically use to do the gainsbased figuring out where you're supposed to be Yeah. um the formula couldn't compensate for it and it was it was skewing the data for reading and for math. So both of our eighth grade
109scores which go to predict math one >> are themselves predictions. >> Okay, thank you for that because I know it kind of puts the school districts at a hard it's not an accurate view of what our math one scores would be because when you have a very high sixth and seventh grade math score obviously those kids are then going to be taking that math one and eighth grade. So, I just think they're doing an awesome job and the numbers don't always say exactly what we're seeing, but thank you so much because you explained it great. >> Thank you. Yeah. >> Any other questions that I know it's late and if you're like me, you're at or else wear now. So, >> thank you, sir. >> Thank you. >> Next, Dr. Belchure, the state health plan
110health care changes. >> Yes, sir. Thank you. So, it's that time of year um when we have open enrollment. Um this year there's some key differences. That's why I pulled this out separately. I want the board to be aware of and our employees to be aware of some of the changes with the state health plan. Of course, this doesn't just impact um Davy County school employees. This impacts all state employees. This is not a Davyy County schools decision. Um this is a decision that comes from the state and the state treasurer's office in looking at some of these state health plan changes. there's a $500 million shortfall. And so that necess necess that has made some changes necessary um to address those. And so the state health plan is moving to a salarybased um premium
111system for all of its employees. And so what that means is you um you have tiers. Those tiers are under 50,000. Um a salary band of 50,000 to 65,000. 65,000 to 90,000 is the third band. and in 90,000 and over. And so those premiums are going to be based on those different salary bands. And just to give you an idea of what those premiums could look like at the low end, um under $50,000 for a single subscriber, that's $35. And then if you go up to the um 8020 plan, um that could be, you know, for a um under $50,66. So there's some some real changes with that. And it's important that our employees know that whenever that mail comes to look at that envelope, to open it up and take a look at that
112just to to know how you're impacted. If if you're like me, you get busy and you sometimes see that that envelope come through and you set it aside. There's only this time a a small window of um October 13th through October 31st for open enrollment. So just being aware of that will be really important. We will be communicating this out to all of our employees as well. But in case you have questions, I wanted to make sure that you all were aware of that and could communicate that that's, you know, that's not a Davy County schools decision. That is a state decision. With that, >> okay, any questions for that? Thank you very much, Dr. Belure. Miss Haynes, school calendar update. try to get moving here. Do they have Let me see if I can
113slide through the Oh, here we go. Okay. So, thank you, Chairman Pototts, board members, um staff, and if there are any guests left. Um, normally we don't really talk about school calendar until December, but I thought it was important in this situation to go ahead and meet with you and give a little bit of status update as to where we are. So as an overview, I do want to review calendar legislation, some other considerations, review the survey results from last year, and also talk about process and timeline for developing the 2026 27 school calendar. So that's kind of quick overview and I will promise not to talk any longer than necessary. Um, this first slide is a slide that is very similar to one that I usually use with the calendar committee. And this one
114reflects our current school legislation, school calendar legislation, which is 115 C-84.2. And so when I explain this to the school calendar committee, give them this visual to help them understand that the legislation provides bookends as we develop a calendar. And so the legislation says that we cannot start any earlier than the Monday closest to August 26 and we cannot end any later than the Friday closest to June 11th. And then squeezed in between those book ends, we need to make everything work. Um, which again in legislation it's 185 instructional days or 1,025 hours. Um, I will say that we currently are meeting hours not days because we do 180 days, 90 in each semester. Um, this does leave us a little bit of cushion so that the board and you'll you'll see this on previous
115calendars that we that you guys have approved. This leaves you the cushion so that you can automatically wave the first two days that we miss due to inclement weather. Um, and it keeps us from being so bound that we're not having to make up a delay for ice or um needing to leave early because of some snowflakes that fall or whatever. Um, I will say that because of sharing buses, CDA and Early College are the two schools that are really at risk of falling below that 1,025 hours. Um, early college is not so much a concern because they are a cooperative innovative high school and under that they have a calendar waiver which is what allows them to do an early start um and makes their calendar different. We can talk about that a little
116bit more if necessary. Um, there are some other options if schools or districts meet the definition either of a year-round school or if they qualify for a waiver because of missing too many days because of inclement weather, but that does not meet we we do not meet that waiver in Davy County. So, this is the current calendar legislation um that we have been operating under. Now, um I want to mention that there have been many calendar bills to monitor that are still out there. Um and a couple of important ones to note. First of all, um Senate Bill 754 is called the school calendar flexibility, a new alternative. And this is a bill that is associated with Phil Burgerer. And if you look at this bill, um it allows us, it would allow us to
117start a little bit earlier. um you'll see the second bullet. So the first bullet says we maintain the traditional requirements or the other alternative is that we could start on the Monday closest to August 19th and we must finish by the Friday before the last Monday in May. So we're talking a Memorial Day kind of finish. Um and we would we would have to have equal number of days in fall and spring semesters. The concern of course with this is starting August 19th isn't really quite early enough for us to get exams in before Christmas in a comfortable way. Um and we do not want students returning from Christmas break shot straight into exams without review time. Um this bill also is being monitored very carefully because it establishes sanctions for non-compliance. So, as you're
118aware, there are many school districts that have been breaking the the law as far as calendar legislation and starting earlier, but this bill says that they will withhold central office administrative aotment to the tune of for Davy County Schools this year, that would be $720,000 approximately. Um, it also means oversight and governance by the state and potential civil penalties against the board um up to $10,000 per case. So, putting some teeth potentially into some school calendar law. The other one that we have out there that we've um have hoped for um House Bill 33, this one is supported by Representative Julia Howard and this one specifically provides flexibility for Yadkin and Davey to align with the community college. Um, so you'll see again the traditional option there, but it also allows us the option to
119align with Davidson Davy Community College. There have been some other bills. There's a laundry list. I I couldn't even count how many calendar bills have been floated out there this year. Um, there's another one, House Bill 121, that really provides complete flexibility, which we would love. Um, there was a bill in the Senate that was called Make North Carolina School Calendars Great Again. I like that title. had to mention that one. Um, but as you'll recall, the previous plan from the board was to move forward with the development of the 2026-27 calendar at an earlier time. Um, but we pressed pause because of all of the calendar bills that were that were being proposed and we really wanted to see what happened and again concerned about still what could be slid into a um budget
120bill which sometimes does happen. That said, um there are lots of considerations as we build a calendar. Obviously, legislation being the first one and potential penalties. Now, um this one should be first and foremost. First and foremost, what is best for student learning? What do we need for student learning? That is why we exist. It is our our mission and vision. Another consideration as we build a calendar is what's best for teachers and the need for uh professional development opportunities because if we can support our teachers and improve what we do teaching that's going to ultimately improve learning as we're looking at the data tonight. The fourth one that I listed here is the community college calendar. We have a significant number of students at this point who are careering who are taking CCP or
121or college promise courses. Um again the alignment or the misalignment is a concern because of of our taking exams and finishing fall semester after Christmas. Um and there's just complete misalignment from the community college and starting and stopping those classes. And then the last one that is obviously important as well extracurricular opportunities and athletics. Um our athletics begin August 1st. we start and so students are starting athletics in fall semester long before they are starting classes. Our coaches are already, you know, things are up and running. We also need to consider with this as far as athletics are concerned our dismissal times because when we dismiss determines when we can start a competition. If we're traveling, what time are we getting home? What time are we getting students in bed and able to be back
122at school the next day functioning? And so the length of our school day um should also be a consideration as we talk about our school calendar. Now just to review the survey results for that 2026 27 calendar. If you will remember and I shared these with you earlier but it's been it's been a good while. We did go to the community and ask the same questions that we asked our our parents. And so you'll see the um the specific percentages aligned with the responses there. So note the specific questions that we drafted and used. So 73.8% of those who responded, parents and guardians in our community said that they preferred starting the school year near August 5th and ending near Memorial Day with first semester exams being completed before Christmas break at the high school
123level, what we call early calendar. Then when you look at the um at the next color, the orange piece of the pie there, 19.2% 2% prefer keeping the later start near that August 26 and then the gray slice 7% said no preference. So kind of hold that in your mind because we're going to compare that to the staff results. Okay. Staff input. You'll see the percentages are similar but a little bit more preference. A little bit more preference for the August 5th start. The 76.6% 6% prefer an early calendar, 16.1 the late calendar and 7.3 no preference. Now that said, again, note what we ask at the time. So, as we draft various calendar options and we consider these bills that are still out there and not a state budget that something could be slid
124into yet, we need to keep in mind what we did not ask on these surveys. So, one critical question we have not asked our staff or the community is the number of instructional days. Again, as I said, we have 180. Um, we're shooting for the 10,025 hours. If we need to reduce the number of days to make the calendar work, can we sufficiently teach and students sufficiently learn the standards with fewer instructional days? That's a question that we need to be able to answer. Would teachers and content coaches need to adjust pacing guides and how much time would they need to do that? Um, would we need to lengthen the instructional day? Would we need to closely monitor instructional time and potentially reduce the fun events? And I think about some of the things that
125Cheryl just talked about, but I think about pep rallies and house events and reward time and that sort of thing. At the high school level, could we manage um semesters that are drastically different in the number of instructional days? So, um, Dr. Belchure and I have been looking at some other calendars that are already out there for other districts, and one that we looked at, I think, had 88 days in in the spring semester and only 77 days in the fall semester. So, a lot of inequity there when you think about a high school student taking a class in the fall versus taking the same class in the spring. And then if the number of instructional days is reduced, how will it impact our classified staff and the retention of our classified staff? Because right
126now bus drivers are paid to drive 180 days. Another critical question to ask is what is the impact on child care? Families would need to secure and pay for additional child care if we reduce those instructional days and they would need to be prepared for that. So all of those are things just to consider as we move into this season of developing a calendar. So, let's talk quickly about process and timeline and I promise I will wrap up. As many of you are aware, we we have a calendar committee each year and that committee consists of school teams and each school has usually a principal or assistant principal, maybe sometimes both if they can both attend. The teacher of the year is invited to be part of that team and at least one parent representative.
127And then we have board representatives and some and some district leaders. Um, I want to thank the board members who have served as participants or representatives in the past. It is not fun work and we cannot make everyone happy. Um, but it is important work that we have to do and I have been told that Joe Codle and Michael Hunter are the lucky winners this year. So, thank you for your upcoming service. >> I know it is exciting. So, let's quickly look at the timeline. Usually we only have two meetings and we can pull together a couple of options, but with these bills that are still floating out there, we anticipate that we're going to need to to prepare more than a couple of options. Um so we have scheduled October 30th and November 13th
128as our traditional times, but we have also as a possibility um penciled in November 20th in case we need a third meeting date for that calendar committee. We will be bringing to you calendar options at the December board meeting and then turn around and and share those with staff for a vote um after you look at them and give at least initial approval and then we will look to approving a calendar on January 6. Now what questions do you have that I may or may not can answer or what discussion would you like to have? fun. >> You guys have questions and and you are correct and that Mr. Hunter and Mr. Cer have volunteered to serve on that board and we do thank you for representing us. Any questions for Miss H? Then we'll
129>> they're ready to go home. >> No, we'll just uh wait to hear your recommendations at a later point. And we're ready to go home. Okay. >> Thank you, Miss. >> Okay, Miss Wilson. Uh, public address to the board. >> You should have no trouble hearing me when I say that no one has signed up to address you because they do not want between you and >> Okay, that being said, we do we have a motion to adjourn. Michael makes a motion. Stephanie seconds. Any questions? All who agree, please rise. Thank you very much. [Music]