001shortly. So, thank you so much for coming. Let's begin with our invocation. And uh chairman, I'd like to ask Mr. Don Godfrey to lead us in prayer, please. Before I pray, I would like to observe a moment of silence for the loved one that we lost this past week and his family, his wife, and his children. Such a tragedy. So, I'd like to reserve a moment of silence for Charlie Kirk's family at this time before I pray. Thank you. Our kind, gracious heavenly father, Lord, we come to you this morning thanking you for the privilege of being here to do the county's business, dear Lord, to look after our children, our faculty, our stakeholders, and help us to make the right decisions in everything that we do, Lord. That Father, we will please you and
002only you, Lord, because you are our God and Father. We thank you for everybody that's represented here this morning. We pray that you would keep us safe as we depart from this place, Lord. And as always, Father, we ask for your grace and mercy for everything that's done and will be done, Lord. For each thing we ask in the wonderful name of Jesus and for his sake. Amen. >> Amen. Mr. Hair, would you lead us in the pledge of allegiance? Pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you. And you may be seated. >> And I will entertain a motion. >> Mr. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment to the published agenda
003of a close session between uh opening of the meeting and special presentations to make a close session um agenda item B rather than special presentations. And with that amendment, I move that we approve the agenda as amended. I can't I didn't catch that first part. We only see when this be open session prior to just prior to special presentation. >> Okay, we have a motion on the floor. Is there >> we have a motion and a second. Is there further discussion? >> Hearing none. Chairman votes I >> abate I gain I >> hear no votes. The motion is carries and the amend agenda is amended as presented. >> Mr. Chairman, I move that we go into close session pursuant to general statute 143, 31811 A3 and A5 to prevent uh excuse me to consult with
004the board's attorney in order to preserve the attorney client privilege. >> Second. >> We have a motion and a second. Is there further discussion? Chairman votes I. Abate I. Gainy I hear no votes. The motion is approved. We're now in close session. Following a motion and a second, we're now back in open session. And we'll move along now to our special presentations. And these are individual school presentations uh where principles will give updates regarding their schools. So we have several we'll be hearing from this morning. And so we're going to begin with Hornet Central Middle and that will be Miss Jen Black. >> Good morning. >> All right. So, if I can get this to work, right? Oh, there we go. All right. So, I will be short and sweet. Um, we've kind of theme
005we're doing this year at school is called Level Up, Grow Strong. We would go further, be legendary. um to kind of take what we've been doing with the Raider Up theme over the last couple years uh and continue to get our students to move forward. So, that's our theme this year at school. Uh some celebrations, our growth performance grade increased by 7.1 points. Um our achievement in reading, math, uh also increased, reading, and all but one scrum group met growth um which was the most we've had in the last couple years. So, it's a lot of celebrations, a lot of good work going on. Um, some critical concerns. Our white student subgroup had a negative 3.98 growth. AIG students had a negative.13. They still met growth, but it's a negative side's not where I want
006it to be. And then our math did take a step back. Um, they were at a negative 2.46 growth. Um, and I think we're going to continue when we go to the next slide, we'll talk a little more how we're addressing some of these issues. All right. So, number one, um, our goals and objectives for this year, we are going to increase our rigor and student engagement in our core instruction and making sure we talk to our teacher about that engagement piece. Um, and making sure that we're looking at the depth of the questions we're asking and we're building on that rigor across the board in our core instructional time, but while maintaining effective intervention and small group instruction, we've done really well in growing um, some of our black students, Hispanic students in those
007subgroups. Uh, and a lot of our EC students, our EC students were positive on the growth side. I think 1.31 this year. So, we've got a lot of good things in place. Now, we just got to clean up that core instruction piece a little bit and get everybody contining moving forward. Um, increase our depth at PLC's uh to enhance teacher contact knowledge and deepen data analysis to make real-time adjustments. Uh, one of my assistant principal actually has created a spreadsheet um where teachers are going to put in, we're going to determine where our cut is and where we want our students to be. And as they put in, it's going to automatically tell those teachers without just putting the numbers in and what students have met that criteria, what kids need to be pulled right
008away for small group, what kids and what percentage of our students. So, it's real time that we're going to make those adjustments during our PLC's. Um, we're going to increase our enrichment extension for on grade 11 and AIG students. So, we're looking at doing some pull out during our Excel um where our EC and Hispanic students uh get EL services, but also our dual language program, but some of these students that are not being pulled, finding some extension enrichment activities to continue to push those students um using our media center and different resources in the building. And the thing I'm excited about is the Golden Leaf grant. Um as you guys know, that's a five-year grant. We've already met I've already met with uh Marzanos with the high reliability schools framework implementation strategic planning. we've
009already laid out the groundwork. Um, a survey is coming out uh to parents to stakeholders come October that's going to steer line where we're going to focus on. So, I'm excited about working with them and then open up math. Um, we are all in 100% on that. Um, it's a very clear program and how it's going to work. They're actually coming on Friday to model lessons for not Friday, Thursday to model lessons for our teachers. So that I'm hoping is going to support our international teachers who are mostly our math teachers and address those deficits we're seeing with math with us moving in the right direction um and moving towards a positive growth model. I think this clear ideal math was a lot of um collaboration, high order thinking and rigor um laid out very
010clearly I think will support our math growth um for what we've already been doing. And that's all I had. Okay, thank you very much, Miss Black. >> Congratulations on being named principal of the year. >> Thank you, Miss G. Appreciate it. >> Okay, next we'll have uh Miss Jamie West from Coats Elementary. >> Good morning, members of the board. >> Good morning, >> Chairman Powell and senior cabinet. So, this year our theme is sting with excellence. This is something we talk about every morning with our students that is showing respect, taking responsibility, inspiring excellence, never giving up and growing together. And this is these five components are things that we talk about every single day with our students and our staff. We have very important conversations with our students and our staff on how we
011can grow together and be excellent. That is the ultimate goal by the end of the school year this year. So according to our data at the moment, we have met growth in fourth grade reading and fourth grade math. And our ECIG and our EL students have met growth. We had our highest growth this past year with our EC department. Our EC department has worked extremely hard to make sure our students are meeting their necessary growth scores. So when I take a look at the concerns that I see in our building at the current moment, I'm looking at attendance, our datadriven instruction, building relationships, and establishing procedures. Coming in from January, I noticed that our students had a 26% chronic absenteeism issue. And so we are having continuous conversations with students. It's even got to the
012point where kids are absent and they come to me the next like, "Miss West, I'm so sorry. I wasn't here, but now I'm here today. I'm ready to learn. So, it's just creating the opportunity for students to know that it's important for us to be here in the building. Um, this also goes for staff as well. We're talking a lot about staff attendance and we're discussing how it's important for us to be in those classrooms and giving that instruction while we're there. Datadriven instruction is one thing that I'm s I'm really focusing on in our PLC's and it's also driving every decision that we make. When we're sitting looking at our sit goals and we're looking at the growth of our students, we have to have the data behind it every single time. When I
013got there in January, that's one of the things that I really was concerned about was where is the data to prove where we're heading? And so now what we've done is we've created a master spreadsheet just like I heard Miss Black say a second ago where we can take a look at it in real time. Our um instructional coach takes a she inputs data. So we're collecting the data and we're working together on making sure that our students who need the services and the supports and the reteing moments and the interventions were able to get up with them immediately. building relationships is extremely important for me at this moment in my career with my staff and my students and the families and the communities that I serve. And so that is one of my um
014things that I saw when I came in that it was something that I really needed to harpet on immediately. And then establishing procedures as I walked in the first few couple weeks of school uh at the beginning of the year in January, I was like, man, I see some things that we could definitely improve on. I talked with a lot of staff members. They wanted it. They wanted structure. They wanted things to happen. And so we made that huge improvement over the summer to make sure that our students and staff have established procedures to make sure that we are focused and we're ready to learn and it's not crazy. So I've broken these down into three categories as well with our our achievement strategies. So with our attendance, we're tracking the data. I have a
015team that tracks the data weekly. um that comes and turns into conversations with parents to make sure we're supporting in the avenues of children are sick or if there's avenues we need to support with our social worker or our counselors to make sure that they are taken care of. We have a lot of family contacts going on to build the relationships with the staff members and the and the families at home. We also are celebrating growth those that are attending and either improving their attendance from last year or they are doing a great job of continuously trying to be there. We are celebrating those growths together. walkthroughs. Our staff have a walkthrough system right now where we are in the classrooms for every single teacher two to three times a week. We do that. We
016try to do check-ins in the morning. We also are doing walkthroughs with the frequent visits with the teachers. It's gotten so much to a point where they're like, "Hey, come on in. You know where to go." Um, it's really great. So, we try to also give timely feedback with our staff members, especially with the way that we're trying to move forward, really diving into what's going to create the biggest yield for us for this school year. And again, our data driven PD and our PLC's are completely data driven this year. We've tried to reset the way PLC is happening this school year and really put a focus on what is our data truly saying and how do we impact the students better building relationships. As I said earlier, we're having a lot of staff student
017talks, parent outreaches, and we're celebrating those successes. And then lastly, with establishing procedures, we have set extremely good procedures in place. Logistics is my thing, and there's clear expectations. They have maps for everything they need to go through. So everybody knows where they're going. It's created a very good fluid movement for the building. So everybody kind of knows exactly what's going on. We can always reference back to it. Someone new comes in, I'm able to hand them the documents and say, "Hey, this is our expectations." And they're able to go through it. Ultimately, it comes down to a safety focus for me. And as I have seen already, we are adjusting as needed as necessary. >> Okay. >> Thank you, Miss West. >> Thank you. >> Next, we'll have Dr. Calvetta Beard from Dun Elementary.
018Good morning everyone. Good morning, Chairman Powell, members of the board and cabinet. It is indeed an honor and a privilege to present to you this morning just a little bit about Dunn Elementary School where our theme this year is one team, one dream, unified in our mission and unstoppable in our progress as we are making great progress. One of the things that we're most proud of at our school is that we raised our composite score six total points. So, this is a great accomplishment for us. We are nine points away from a C. It may seem far, but we do believe that we can achieve that. This year, we are excited to have a grant um to be a community school in which we will provide a comprehensive program and comprehensive needs for our community
019that is very much so needed in our community. So, a huge thank you to Mr. White um and his team for that. Our math proficiencies on the rise. We're extremely proud of our third grade math proficiency. This year, they hit 55.28. 28% that does show promise for us as our cohorts continue to travel forward. Last year we did log 318 walkthroughs which was very very important. We are well on our way this year. Another thing that we're excited about is all of our subgroups except two met their growth. This has never happened in our school history. This year economically disadvantaged and students with disabilities did not meet. However, they did improve. So out of historically all of our subgroups have never met. Um this year we only had two to not meet. In our overall
020growth we did meet in math and we miss meeting overall by a negative.85. So not even an entire point. Um every subject and grade level is up from the previous years except reading grade three. And once we get to that slide we will talk about that being our concern. As we look at our historical data, we will notice that we are definitely on a two-year upward trend and a three-year upward trend. So, slow and steady wins the race. We are definitely making progress. Parental engagement and involvement is continuous. We have a lot of things in place, a lot of things for our parents and our community to be involved in. So, that's a celebration for us as well. We could go on and on about celebrations, but we'll talk a little bit about our critical
021concerns. One of our critical concerns is third grade reading. That is a concern and an area that we do struggle. So reading across the board is a concern, but in particular our third grade reading is a concern. Our students with disabilities again as we talked about are not meeting growth. We're working to come up with some ways to increase their achievement and increase their growth. That is one of our focal points for the year. maintaining our math proficiency, maintaining and improving, and maintaining the momentum that we're on. These are all critical concerns for us because we do not want to slip back. Not a little bit. We want to continue going forward. So, our goals for the year, again, we do need those nine points to get to AC, but we will continue to utilize
022our feedback platform. We will continue to go through and give feedback. Every administrator in our building must see two grades every single day. So that is the focal point that we use to provide that timely feedback. Hopefully that will help us continue inching up data driven instruction, data driven meetings and team meetings. We've also included daily readalouds. We've scheduled it for to increase that vocabulary and give them access to that complex text. We are also looking at hosting again family literacy nights. Another thing that we started this year is ensuring that every student has the data notebook and that real- time data sheet that everyone in the building has access to. So it's not just a third grade data sheet, not just a fourth grade data sheet sheet. We are all looking at the data
023for every single student. So again, every grade level does have their targeted goal and we're making sure that we utilize data driven instruction. So these are our goals for the year and just a little bit about Dun Elementary. >> Okay. Thank you, Dr. beard. >> Thank you. >> Next, we have Mr. Nick Weekes of Coach SW Middle. >> Good morning. It's good to see everybody this morning. The kind before I get my presentation, I want to give you a back story about Coach Sur Middle School last year. We had four at the end of the year that were out the last half of the year with new children. We had a baby boom at Coach Sin. Uh after the halfway point through the year, we had a teacher pass away unexpectedly. First half of the
024year, we had eighth grade math teacher that we could not fill a position for. We also had an EC position that we uh couldn't fill the last half of the year as well. So with that being said, it sounds like a lot of bad things, but we have a lot to celebrate. Coart Middle School for the first time since 2022 is no longer an F school. Uh we grew nine points from 39F to a 48D. So we're now a D school. We are seven points away from being a C school. Uh with one year given what we've what we had that I mentioned earlier here. Our growth index score improved to 0.77 from a negative 4.51. Reading exceeded growth. math met growth. AIG students exceeded growth. Another subgroup, another point I'm really proud of is
025that all of our subgroups met or exceeded their growth targets. Um that means that we did not focus on just one individual group. We focused on every child in the building. Uh major incidents, which is one of my goals for last year, were reduced by 44%. We had over a thousand the year prior and we were down to 591 last year. Some concerns that we do have is our math index score went down which kind of preface to is one of the teachers that we had a hard time find filling a position for the first half of the year and then we had the other one out of maternity leave for the last half of the year. So our overall math index did go down and then eighth grade science 46% of our students were
026proficient and then students with disability performance score of an F23. Teacher retention eight positions of field including excluding one retirement and one who passed away which I mentioned earlier. So our first goal here is what I what I kind of focused on as well last year was getting back to the basics here. Uh we're going to increase our math and ELA and eighth grade science proficiency by 25% ensuring that students meet exceeded expected growth benchmarks by the end of academic year. Uh these are a lot of the same things that we had last year going on. We're continuing because we found out they worked. Uh we're meeting with the teachers regularly. We're having those data conversations. Um our Falcon Core intervention planning period for our students who need the extra early interventions. Uh we have
027a number of things here that we're trying to do to improve our student proficiency. So we did nine points of growth overall for one year. Uh we can do that last uh seven this year I believe to get to see. Our second goal is something new here too as well for me which is improving the recruitment and retention of highly qualified staff. Uh you know it's every school probably having the same problem here. We're having a lot of teacher turnover rates. And so I made a big emphasis here is not just the recruitment but also retention. Uh we can also attest that uh losing some people is not always the hardest thing or the most beneficial thing for children. However, if they're not benefiting the child, then they need to find another profession. That's the
028honest point there too. We our focus is to coach them up the best that we possibly can. We give them multiple uh mentors and I work with them personally during Tuesdays and Wednesdays during our data conversations and planning times. Um but here's some extra things that we've done this year as well to try to help uh keep the good staff that we've got because I really want to keep the good high quality staff. That's one of my focal points here. Uh my wife and myself, we spent a lot of money this summer building a new staff lounge. We keep it stocked with coffee and sugar and all the necessities here to keep them caffeinated throughout the day and kind of give them a comfortable place to step away when they need a moment right during
029their planning times. Um recruitment here. I've also partnered locally with Campbell University again with the middle grades with Dr. Roma trying to get them back in our building to uh hopefully persuade some people to come to Hornet County Schools um get a get a job here and let's uh continue building our legacy which is our theme for this year for Coach Middle School. Honor the past, impact the present, inspire the future, living the legacy. One of the first things I did last year, continuation on a bit, is we're rebranding Cozar Middle School. Cozar Middle School over the past couple years has been a F school and I don't like that. Uh we want to get it back to what it was prior to it. And we want to inspire others to come back and be
030a part of this community and give back to the community. Uh we want to give them something to be proud of. And so that's our focal point for this year is to improve student proficiency and all of our subjects as well. Get to that C for this year and also recruit and retain good, high qualified staff. Sounds good. All right. Thank you'all so much for your time. >> Okay. >> Thank you, Mr. Weeks. >> Now, we have Mr. Marshall Jones from Triton High School. >> Good morning, Chairman Powell. Members of the board, cabinet members, uh glad to be with you this morning. Our mantra, our charge this year is ignite the flight for all students and staff. We've got a really positive thing going and we want to continue that growth and that progress. Uh
031one of the things we're celebrating this year is our 40th anniversary. Uh we partnered with our local uh chambers of commerce to have some banners made. We're going to be celebrating it during our homecoming week. So, we're really excited about that this year. Uh some more celebrations. I'm proud to announce that we exceeded growth and increased our school performance grade by one point last year. Uh all students met or exceeded growth. Um I don't like to say subgroups, I like to say student groups. Um but that is a huge achievement for us. our uh multilingual learners had the hugest uh the largest achievement gain. They went from an F to a D. And then our ACT composite score increased by 10.4 points over the previous school year. So, we're really excited about those things. Um
032just kind of showing where we're headed. Uh we went our growth increased four times over the previous year. So, we're definitely headed in the right direction and we want to continue to see more growth. So, there's always some things we can work on. Uh, one of my laser focuses this year is our biology, uh, EOCC PLT. I meet with them weekly, uh, in our new PLT room. Um, but we've got a plan to turn it around. Um, but our goal is to hit 40% student proficiency this year. That's a large goal, but I believe that we can make that goal. Our EC students growth decreased by 52.2 points, which is not good. However, their performance grade increased by two points. Um, so one of the things that does help us is our growth, but you
033know, with these achievement gaps, it's making it where we're not able to move out of the C range, but we're trying to get better each and every day. Um, and then finally, um, part of our goals, we have a lot of things going on this year. U, one good thing is that all of our EOCC's have common planning. We see major, um, progress with that with our English 2 so far. And we have a dedicated space upstairs in the media center to track progress with the progress checks. Um kind of like a competition really but not you know as an embarrassment. It's to build collaboration amongst the teachers. Uh we have that continued focus on our bullseye walkthroughs and feedback. This year we're also challenging each student, teacher and administrator as well as PLT to
034set a smart goal. You know where do you want to see yourself? Be specific. How is it measured? you know, and you have to announce those things. You have to put them at the forefront. And this year, we're also one of our challenges to be uh more data driven as a as a school. So, we're looking at our data daily with our EVOS teacher diagnostics. We're waiting on that data, our student projections data, check-ins, school net data, and of course, our atrisisk students. So, two of our goals uh is to make sure that all students will be in a C range or higher next year. and then to be our graduation rate is to be at a 90% or higher. So, we're well on our way and we appreciate your time this morning. Thank you.
035>> Thank you, Mr. Jones. >> It's just hard to believe that Triton is almost 40 years old. I can well remember when there was just a wooden sign up there said area 3 school site. And so, it's kind of hard to believe it's been 40 years. Thank you. Next, we have Mr. Tom Bakis from South Hornet Elementary. >> Good morning. some of our celebrations. We lost the low performing label. Uh that was kind of one of our our greatest. We had the top academic growth of any elementary school in Harik County, which we're very proud of. Uh our overall performance grade increased by five points uh from 49 to 54. And if you're real familiar with the the grades, 54 is one below a C school. So we just missed that mark. uh which gives
036us an excellent goal for next year. Uh also we're nearly fully staffed for this school year. Only a few positions left. Our growth co cohort trajectory, this is uh students that were in third grade last year, how they did in fourth grade this year. Um they're all showing an increase in proficiency significantly. Those were in double digits. I thought we would just highlight the 14% from third to fourth grade reading. and uh 12.3 my percent got erased there but it's 12.3% in math fourth to fifth grade. Uh we are continuing to implement our leader and me school which I think contributed a lot to some of our success this year. Uh and then our school organizations we have this year a drama club and we're continuing the second year for our junior beta club. critical
037concerns are overall proficiency levels especially in third grade that growth that I spoke of was carried a lot by fourth and fifth grade so our focus is going to be in third grade uh and our especially our subgroups the ELEL's and the students with disabilities uh see action steps for this year our goal is to meet 50% overall proficiency uh it's a lofty goal but I think we're well on our way um and that's for overall all tested subjects we're providing documented instruction instructional feedback, um setting goals for classes, teachers, and then individual students, which is part of our our leader and me implementation. And we're actively setting aside time to track their progress as well. Uh to address our ELS and students with disabilities, we're uh we've innovated our schedule. We've changed some things
038around with how we're going to do PLC and blocked off some time for uh following up with teachers on feedback. Uh let's see. Oh, and our our tutoring, we've switched a model to both push in and pull out tutoring. Uh, and we're monitoring progress and adjustments to be made based on all of the data collected. Like everybody else, we're basing a lot of our next steps on what the data shows for us. >> Okay. >> Thank you, Mr. Bakus. >> We now have Mr. Brian Graham from Buoys Creek Elementary. >> Good morning, Chairman Fowl. Vice Chairman Abate, board members, cabinet, Dr. um Mr. Matthews, sorry about that. Oh, the clicker. I am really excited to be here this morning. Lots of celebrations at our school. Our growth index moved from 80.3 to 80.5 and we've
039sustaining that. Uh very, very excited. We met expected growth. Our fifth grade science was 68.8 proficient. All of our subgroups met with the exception of black. And that's one of our goals that you'll see up here. Uh we do share a wonderful relationship with Campbell University and we have a lot of our PBIS celebrations directly uh with them on the football field and the baseball field. Our kids get to lots of interesting awesome stuff. Uh and we're thankful for that um collaboration. Our uh student our school population growth, we're we're growing in leaps and bounds. We've gained two teachers over the past two years. So, uh, we are barely fitting in our building and we're growing at the at the seams. Whoops. Our critical concern, uh, of course is to per improve our school performance
040grade to a B, uh, and exceeds growth. Our African-American subgroup again was the only one that did not meet in 242. Uh, we have some instructional planning, intentional planning that I can discuss in the next slide. uh our pacing of instruction is a concern and we're work working well uh this year toward uh staying on pace regular of core instruction continuous improvement through bullseye walkthrough and the important part of that is the specific uh feedback through our walkthroughs and our observations goal one improve math achievement and I made a couple notes of things that aren't on the slide so I'll kind of end with those uh but our intentional planning this year we're watching videos at the uh instructional coaches at the county level uh made for us and we're having discussions about that. Uh
041we're doing that prior to the lessons. We're also doing that with math uh for our Eureka modules uh every uh rotation every two weeks, every 3 weeks. Uh we are meeting with teachers. We're watching those together. Uh used to think that uh they were doing that and this year we're making sure uh that they're doing the planning ahead of time. um we are purchasing manipulatives. I' I've found a lot of teachers spend their money on certain things and sort of uh run the risk there that they're not and we want to make sure that we are ahead of the ahead of the schedule uh in terms of what is coming for Eureka module 2 or Eureka module 3. We're getting that together for them so they don't have to do that on their own. Again,
042the subgroup that we're most uh devoted to helping this year is the African-American subgroup. One of the things to be able to do that is to uh know who those students are. Uh to make sure that they're actively engaged in class, that we're calling on them. Uh one of the other issues that all schools face is that we want to make sure they're at school. uh we have a lot of absenteeism and we find that of course that students that are at school uh with teachers that are at school uh learn and those uh missing uh school for whatever reason is an issue that we are working to address. Um let me go back one second. Sorry about that. I am clicker. Uh hang on Emily. I know you're coming. I'm sorry. I wanted to
043uh add add some of the exciting things that we're doing also to support that our third grade reading scores weren't uh what we wanted them to be. So this year we're doing a book brawl and a book brawl is similar to the uh version of the battle I mean I'm sorry uh battle of the books that our EBA uh teams do which is mostly gifted students. Uh our book brawl is to get all students excited, especially the boys because they're a little competitive. Uh and those that aren't real excited about reading, we're we're getting to be excited as as we have a regular uh ed uh book battle competition. We also have a student PLC. Uh I used to do this at South Hornet where Mr. Galloway and I meet with our students once a
044week. Uh it's him and I and them. Uh no teachers allowed. Uh we do communicate with teachers afterwards what our message is but during the PLC we talk about one academic goal. We do a vocabulary uh video and uh we're working hard with students. They have to they seem to enjoy it. Uh we also have fifth grade leadership group. Every single fifth grader is part of leadership at our school whether that be on a bus or in the cafeteria some area of our school which they are uh truly excited about. It especially helps the students that we uh not struggle to make a connection with, but a few that in particular that we're really uh building a strong relationship when they uh when you give them a leadership role. They're at school, they're on time.
045It's just really exciting thing uh to see. And the last thing I would say is that our school staff is awesome. Uh we have lost one teacher uh per year over the last two years. We have no residency teachers. So, we're lucky uh to be able to track the kind of teachers that we have, but we are fired up and we're all in uh at Buis Creek Elementary School. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Graham. >> Sorry. >> Next, we have Miss Emily McNeel from Ben Haven Elementary. >> Good morning, everyone. >> Good morning. Good morning. >> Um we have a lot of things. You'll be able to see through our data exactly what we're going to focus on because it's very clear. um successes for us. We maintained a C overall, which is what
046we've had in years past with a 62 performance score. And in math instruction, we were a grade of B with a 70 performance score. So, we're actually higher in proficiency in K2 and 35 as according to our K2 summitive assessments. They scored a lot higher in math proficiency, too, with some of them being at 80%. The educational experience, this is my biggest celebration, something I'm the most proud of at our school. The educational experience at our school is the same for all subgroups of students. So all of our subgroups are scoring at the same level which means we're providing the same type of experience for all groups of students which I was excited about. We met expected growth for EL students and then our growth measure for our students with disability was a score of
04765. We moved from a negative 5.2 index score to a negative 2.95 this year. Uh it's not exactly where we would like to be, but I'm glad that it's going in the upward tw trend. So, our critical concerns, which are pretty obvious, is we did not meet growth in every one of our subgroups except for our EL students last year. And overall, we have a negative 8.4 growth. So, that's something we're definitely going to target. Um, we have a C in literacy. So, our index score was actually a little bit higher, meaning we made more growth, but it's still at a neg3. And our math index score for our school overall is a negative six. So, it's easy to see that we need to focus on growth. Um, in years past, we've really hit with
048our teachers that they need to focus on proficiency. And I feel like our teachers did exactly that. We need to shift our mindset now to growth. That's something we really need to improve. So, what we're doing is we have a very specific plan that we've already started. We need the teachers to know what their individual growth index score is. How are they growing students? What types of students are they growing? What are they the best at? So that they can share. And then also one thing that was really a miss for us is we need to identify what a year's worth of growth looks like for everybody and that's a kindergarten student and a third grade student, a fifth grade student. So we're really unpacking that data and looking at like I Ready stretch growth
049for math. We're looking at MClass, what does one year of M-Class growth look like for students and what does EOG one year of growth because I feel like our teachers didn't really know their target. So that's something we really want them to understand. We also are going to look really closely at student projected scores. So, we figured out a way to get projected scores for everybody in our entire school and then holding those students accountable all year long on every assessment. So, if they're projected to get a level four, we need them to be getting a level four in their grades and their assessments and everything they do so that we know what the target is. And then we need we can intervene when they're not meeting those targets. And then we last year we
050shifted all of our PLC focus to math instruction, the pacing, um unpacking those standards. And this year we want to shift back to literacy just to get stronger growth. So our goals are big ones, but I really do feel like next year I'm going to come up here and celebrate with you guys. I'd like to bring our negative8 index score up to a zero. I know we only need a negative -2 to meet growth, but I'd like to not have any more negative growth in our school and then have a positive index score in every single subgroup of student. And then we would love through that to mean a grade of B overall in our school. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss McNeel. >> Next, we have Miss Britain Sullivan from Western Hornet High School.
051>> Mr. Pal, um Miss Sullivan is on the way. She was dealing with some juniors and seniors in Justins and got held up with the time. So, she'll just when she gets here, she'll do hers after move her Yes. >> down the list. She can speak when she comes in. >> Thank you. That'd be Miss Megan West will be next from Dun Middle School. >> Good morning, chairman and members of the board and our senior cabinet. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this morning. I am extremely elated and excited to share with you that Dun Middle School's growth continues to soar. We are now ranked 27th overall in the state of North Carolina. We are ranked among middle schools at 13th and we are ranked 19th in the state for overall math growth, placing
052us in the top 5%. As the chart the chart shows, our growth index has rose for three years from 2.49 to a astonishing 9.84 for 2425 with a huge increase. We have maintained an A growth rating for the second consecutive year and our composite score has increased by seven over three years moving us closer to a C performance grade. Um, as you see, our proficiency is increasing. Not as fast as we would like it to, but and and has increased and not decreased. What excites me most is we did meet in one subgroup and exceeded in the rest with our economically disadvantaged students, our Hispanic learners, and our overall math and ELA results all exceeding and showing growth and significant gains. Uh last year when I provided an update to the board, I identified that
053our ELA performance and our growth among Hispanic and English learners was a area of concern. I'm here this morning and proud to report that those very subgroups exceeded growth this year. I feel like it was a direct result of hard work. We had to think outside the box, high quality PLC collaborations, and looking beyond programs to the core of just simply good teaching. Looking ahead, we are focusing on key areas of concerns. Our students with disability subgroup, recruiting athletes and coaches, and of course our low enrollment numbers, which do affect the recruiting of athletes. First, we were working to strengthen um support for our students with disability subgroup, which showed a decline in growth measures. We hope to do this by reinforcing our co-eing model, consistent data analysis, more co-planning with our regular education teachers
054along with the students with disabilities, those that serve on their case load. And also, we need to increase our differentiated instruction in our core classes to move this growth back to exceeding growth. At the same time, we are expanding extracurricular opportu opportunities with hopes to increase student participation in athletics, clubs, and the arts by 10%. Helping students build confidence, a sense of belonging, and increasing that engagement piece with the hopes of easing those challenges of filling our athletic teams, but also our academic teams. By addressing these issues, we hope to improve overall performance and in turn increase enrollment numbers, which remain a critical concern for us considering that we are already a small school. Low enrollment numbers have presented us with challenges this school year and various aspects. Therefore, our staff identified this as an
055area needing improvement. Our school has come together to ensure another great start to our school year for our students and our community. And I thank you for your time this morning. And as always, go green waves. >> Thank you, Miss West. We now have Miss Elizabeth Hodgej from Lafayette Year round school. >> Good morning, Chairman Pal and members of the board. Uh before we begin, real quickly, I would like to acknowledge that today is International Dot Day. And you may be like me. I was unaware of what international dot day was until I went to the Lafayette year round school. So this day is inspired by Peter H. Reynolds book the dot and it reminds us that with courage and creativity small beginnings can grow into great accomplishments. So what we're hoping to do is
056we're going to make a mark and we're going to see where it takes us for our celebrations this year. Our achievement score was 57% which went up from 49% the previous year. Our EVOS growth score 76 that was up from 71% and we came out of low performing status and our report card grade went from a D to a C. So, we're all very very excited about that. Um, and our ELA achievement was 10% above the state average and our math was one. Maybe next year it'll be a little bit higher. So our critical concerns, our proficiency levels, we had 58.2% of our students proficient, but only a third of those scored in the fours and the five, the level fours and fives, which means that they are college and career ready. And our reading
057growth decreased from 76.6 to 75. um a possibility for that was um I think the students that the new cohort had a lower baseline with the reading skills. So um and we have some subgroup gaps. Our male students are significantly behind our female subgroup subgroup. Um there might be a possibility of engaging lessons. I know my little boy does not like to read. So, we're just going to have to find some ways to get that um that reading engaging for them. Also, our students with disabilities, we previously have not had a subgroup, but uh we are tracking our numbers and we may have a a a subgroup for that. So, we are going to also begin tracking their progress. So our testing data is our dot. Just as Vosi, and that's the little girl from
058the book, she turned her single dot into a gallery of work, we can turn our starting point into a story of growth. Each percentage point gained represents a student making their mark. And with encouragement, creativity, and persistence, we will continue to grow our proficiency. So, our goals this year, we are going to have strong data discussions with our teachers. We're going to work on that in school improvement team and with our coaches. We're going to determine the disconnect between achievement and growth from year to year. We are continuing to show an increase in proficiency with reading and math, but our growth are showing a 3% loss. So, you know, we always, like Emily said, we are always pushing that proficiency, proficiency, proficiency, but we can't leave the growth behind as well. So, we're also going
059to take a deep dive into our individual subgroups, especially the AIG students and our males to see if they are making adequate growth and we don't want them to remain stagnant. So, we're going to come up with some things for them to do. And during our PLC's, we're going to focus on the unit assessment data in math and reading. Um, and we're going to look at the priority standards. We're going to keep core instructions as our focus. Whoops. So, International DOT day encourages us to make our mark. And that's exactly what we're going to do. We're supporting students so that each one can leave their mark through higher achievement, greater readiness for the future, and continued growth. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Miss Hajj. Okay, next we have Dr. Jasmine Nixon of the
060Hornet County Early College. >> Good morning, Chairman Powell. Good morning, board members. Hornet County Early College is pleased to announce that our in we have increased student enrollment from 186 students to this year we have and this is a correction because we just had a transfer 213 students. Um, our school EVOS growth status has improved from met to exceed and our growth index improved from 1.98 to 6.18. So, we are super excited about the wonderful work our teachers have done. Our critical concerns um so we are so excited that we have a wonderful grade level proficiency in the 90 percentile, but we would love to improve our college and career ready performance. Um, we did improve it from 67.8 to 73.3 and that's our level fours and fives. But being that we are an early
061college, we do think that it's important for our college and career readiness performance to be higher than this. So that's something we're going to continue to work on. Uh we're going to improve our a ACT work keys performance. That has dropped from 81 to 71%. Um so on the next slide I'll tell you how we'll do that. Um continue to improve our ACT math and science subtest scores. We noticed that those while they are increasing that they are not where we want those to be. Um, we continue to lag behind in our English and reading scores with the ACT as well. So, we want to make sure that we get those up. Um, and continue to educate the community about our early college program. Although the early college program has been around for quite some
062time, you will be amazed at the people who still do not know that we exist. So our targets for this year um is to implement the HCEC compass compass seminar which compass stands for cultivating opportunity and mindset for personal achievement uh support and success at Central Carolina Community College. And this is to help us provide direct support to our juniors and seniors and super seniors that are at the uh CCCCC. So, not only are we doing the work in Dun and at Ben Haven, but we are also in Lilington doing the work on Central Carolina Community College campus with our juniors and seniors to make sure they have the support that they need. And this is also should help us impact our ACT work key scores as well as our ACT scores by using that
063time to provide some test taking strategies and support to them in that area. Uh we're going to implement an advisory period on in our master schedule for our students where we're going to have our AVID strategies, conduct speakers uh series with our community members and have ACT prep on campus as well. And finally, we are going to develop partnerships with our elementary and middle schools to ensure that our stakeholders know about our program. So we want our we want students and families talking about the early college program as soon as they are in the first grade. Where are you going when you leave middle school? They're going to the early college. That's what we want. So that is our presentation from Haretick County Early College and as always thank you for your support. >> Thank
064you Dr. Nixon. >> Next we have Dr. Benika Thompson from Over Hills Middle. >> Good morning over um Over Hills. No, that's for me and the kids. Board of Education members. Um I will be with you shortly this morning for some celebrations of Over Hills. Um first I want to talk about EVOS uh growth. We did meet in reading and exceeded in math. All of our subgroups um had met or exceeded with exceeded in our black, white, EDS, and ELS students. We met our participation targets and we increased our scholastic and student leadership opportunities. We are leader in these school. We're excited that we along with I think Coats mil middle coats Irwin Middle School, we received the trail trailblazers grant as well as we are doing more things to make school fun again. And
065I know that's kind of weird, but that's kind of my jam is making school fun for kids because in turn they will do what they need to do. Our concerns, we have not met our long-term goals in math, reading, or long-term goals with students with disabilities and EL students. Um, I know long-term goals is not something that most people talk about, but if you look at your long-term goals, it does kind of help you with the trajectory of understanding, hey, the bigger picture is making sure we're on par for meeting uh our expectations for school improvement over time. Another concern that we have is our curricular and resource al um alignment. What we know is that our our teachers are they're doing like the little girl says, I'm doing my best, honey. Some of them
066are doing their best, but one of the things we learned is they don't really know what it looks like as far as mastery of the standard. And so making sure that they have a strong efficacy on understanding what the standard says and how to use the resource. So our focus continues to be there two tweaks from last year. Implementing a comprehensive standardsbased progress monitoring pro protocols and that includes our kids too. So not only just testing our kids but saying hey this is the the piece that you need support in so the kids can have more efficacy when they engage in learning training instructional and instructional support staff on the differentiated instruction specifically on alignment and the purpose of resources. So there's an abundance of things that we have. We've got to be able to
067say if my child is showing me that they need this, this is what I need to do with that and this is the resource I need to pull and being okay with being a teacher leader and saying hey that's not what we need to use right now because the standard and what my children's data says is this is what we need to apply implementing the high yield strategies to include student data analysis. CTS is curriculum topic study professional development. And what that means is not only do you unpack the standards, not only do you look at the pacing, but you look at what does it really look like in the classroom. What are some pieces that you can diagnose? Here are some what research says is a student behavior and this is how you respond
068with prescription to help that student. Also, peerreview instructional resources. We want to teach our teachers to look at things and say, "Hey, this is a I need to I need to have something." It's like they're instructionally shopping, showing them how to be good connoisseurs and consumers of the resources and knowing when to use the resources. Increasing our two-way communication with our parents and guardians. We do have a strong military. We call a little bit of country, a little bit of rock and roll over there in Ray Road. And making sure that we are in partnership and and so part of that is communicating. And sometimes they don't like the communication, but the fact that we are communicating is what our focus is going to be. Hosting curriculum nights. We did that last year. We had
069mixed bag of participation but also making sure that our parentformational our parent guardianformational sessions are specific. So we have an AIG learning night for our parents coming up to talk about this is what it means for this identification but this is not like because I think sometimes kids get these the categories but then they're not understanding what does this mean and what kind of resources or what kind of support will my child need and then continue activities that promote student collaboration and leadership. I can tell you kids at Overg Hills Middle School are the best in Hornet County. They are amazing. They're leaders. They have a student government in place. They have a leader in me team. They know how to come and say, "Hey, this is not working for us. Can you please address
070this?" So, we're proud of them and this is our focus for this year and we appreciate your support. I do need to say that one one thing that changed the lever for us, I'll say as me, is Mr. Matthews said, "Hey, man, you're chosen to lead for this season. I believe you can do it." And I want to thank you publicly, Mr. Matthews, for you I mean, you set the bar high. You didn't play any games. You gave strategic feedback and then you followed up with support with your expectations and I do appreciate you sir and I wanted to tell you we appreciate you at Over Hills. >> Thank you all for your support. >> Thank you Dr. Thompson. And next we'll have Miss Don Young with STAR. >> Good morning. Good morning. Good morning.
071>> Good morning Chairman Powell and to all of our board members and also to Superintendent Matthews and all of your senior cabinet members. uh we are on fire at star uh regardless of of what the uh outcome may be. We are putting in the work and it was uh much of uh a collaborative effort. But I do want to also um acknowledge my peers and colleagues and congratulate you all on successes that you had at your schools uh for the work that you all put in. But uh even at uh our star academy um I must say that I'm very proud of the school uh the work that we've done. Um as I read my morning devotional this morning it said that the best is yet to come and uh at Star Academy I say
072that we're not out of the race but we are uh putting in the work. Uh I closed out our year last year with each staff member uh giving them my appreciation about the committed and hard work that they put in. Uh as you all might recall we had maybe a 85% uh teacher turnover where we had uh replaced uh the current previous administration with not only myself but we also had a very strong um international teacher uh staff come in. So, we were more in a survival mode at the time. I'm not making excuses. I'm just explaining where we were and where we're going from there. Um, I will say that even in a dark place, there can be some sparks of light. And although we are aren't in the big spotlight this from last
073year's data, we do have some things to celebrate. And first, we'd like to know celebrate that we met all participation targets in our both of our EOGs and EOCC's. uh it's very difficult to get the students in the buildings uh and and we did a very good job well enough to get uh met all those targets. Uh we saw grade level growth in the subgroups for students with disabilities and the e economically disadvantaged students. Uh we're proud of our scores. Uh we saw some growth in the biology and three through eight uh reading and math. Uh one of our most proudest moments is the fact that we had a 45% increase in our graduation rate. Uh so we are getting them in and we're getting our seniors through uh not by giving them anything. They
074earned every bit of what they graduated with. So we're proud of that. Um and another summitive conversation I had with each staff member was the fact that uh the 2425 school year was going to be our benchmark year. uh we didn't know where we were going, we didn't know what we were going into. So we used that as our drive for this year. Uh so what we found was that there was a decline in the proficiency scores in both middle school and high school and all sub uh subjects. And we also saw a decrease in the eighth grade college and career readiness. That is also a concern uh and ones that we're addressing in our instructional focus. uh listening to my colleagues I can say that uh they gave a confirmation that the work that
075we are being done although it's not posted here a lot of the work that we are doing is very symbolic and s resembles the work that they're doing at their schools so that tells me that we are on the right track. Um our goal this year is to collect and analyze um the di diagnostic data as soon as a student comes into our building. Yes, there are information that comes to over uh when they transfer in with the infinite campus, but we definitely want to concentrate on the EDS and SWD groups of students. We are also driving ourselves to improve our achievement score from 5.8 to try to double that to a 10%. And we are always going to focus on our uh graduation rate. So this year we're trying to move from uh the
07648 45% uh that we earn uh increase from last year uh we're going to go for 70%. Uh again it's a great day to be at STAR and you know we just are doing the best that we can but we're we're also being very supportive and we appreciate all the support that we've gotten from uh not only the cabinet but also from again most of my colleagues are here whose students I've been we've been getting. So, we thank you very much. >> Thank you, Miss Young. >> Oops. >> Okay. And I would like to recognize Miss Britain Sullivan from Western Hornet High School. >> I apologize. Um, so my name is Britain Sullivan and I am new at Western Haret High School this year. Apologize for my tardiness this morning. Um, high school is a
077whole new thing. So, um, so as I'm learning lots of things, um, moving from middle school to high school, one thing I can tell you is that Western has got a great culture. Um, the staff there is amazing. they have welcomed um welcomed me with open arms and are just I didn't realize high school had so many acronyms but I I'll get there at some point um in discussing u some of the celebrations and Mr. McNeel and I actually worked on this together because he he has some background there and and I'm learning from him. Um, but I think one of the biggest things that the staff was u most proud of was the graduation rate increasing from 82.7 to 89.1 with the four-year co cohort. In addition, our school performance grade increased four points
078from a 55 to a 59. Um, we did show improved growth in all of our student subgroups. Um and then our CTE program was top in the county having the highest number of students that scored proficient which is 70 or above on those CTE um tests and also the most students that earn um credentials from those classes as well. Some of the concerns um that we have um noticed and are focusing on is really the increased rigor and growth with our EOCC classes. uh we have not met as a school growth in those areas. Um which says to me we really kind of need to step up. We need to take kids from where they are and move them higher. And if that's not happening that's going to come down to looking at those individual
079students and making sure that we are targeting them, looking at their data and increasing that rigor in the classrooms. Um we are looking at the improved proficiency for our EEL students. that is an increasing population. Um and also some of the areas that we did not meet uh the growth was our white economically disadvantage in our AIG cohorts and that typically is not the case. Um that's kind of the opposite of what we normally would see. Um, so there's definitely a reason for that and having um regular PLC's uh with our EOCC classes and actually all of our um teachers at some point every month we are going into this data um and making sure that everybody in the school is aware of what our goals are, where we're going, and how they can support
080them. Whether they're a PE teacher um or a CTE teacher, we all factor into the the success of our school. So with that, our school priorities um are going to focus on improving the individual student progress. So looking at that data tracking um in our PLC's, having collaboration and common expectations um across our classes. Um and as a result, we're looking for our proficiency and student growth to improve and increase. Um our second priority is focusing on the rigor within the classrooms by providing um the consistent and timely feedback uh through walkthroughs, professional development and our our regular scheduled observations. I think at this point we're up to we've we've really been targeting the walkthroughs. We've done about 250 or so um between just the administrators and that is something that the teachers have become
081and the students have become used to is just seeing us in those classrooms and providing that feedback. Um our goal in the end is to meet growth as a school and to continue to improve growth in all of our subgroups. Any questions? >> Okay. >> Thank goodness. Thank you, Miss Svin. >> Thank you all. >> Thank you, Miss Svin. >> Well, that will conclude our principal's presentations. Uh, first of all, I'd like to thank you for all the excellent presentations we've heard this morning. And also, I'd like to thank you individually and collectively as a group, but thank you uh for your leadership, you're displaying, and for the fine work you're doing. Uh, and once again, making Hornet County Schools the very best in the state of North Carolina. And for that, we thank you
082and appreciate your hard work. and uh you know you have our support. So thank you very much. Next on our agenda we have uh discussion items and I only have one this morning and that is our virtual healthc care bank account and that is Mr. Cox. >> Thank you uh chair pal board members. We're looking to open a new flexible benefit account for virtual health care, which is TEDOC, that the district covers for employees and their families that enroll during flexible benefits, open enrollment. Um, we think it's a better it' be better to start tracking these funds separately than comingling with other benefits, similar to how we do with our Delta Dental and our flexible spending accounts. General statute requires that the board approve the official depository of the district, which you did last July,
083but was actually before July when we made our switch over to First Bank. Um there's no specific requirement that you actually approve the accounts within the official depository, but we think you should be aware um of those accounts. So, we'd like to open that account. If you feel like you want to vote on it, we're happy to bring it back at a later meeting. Um if not um if you're happy with just being um advised of the account, we'll go forward opening it. Um but wanted to give you that option and bring it bring it to you. >> Thank you. Are there any questions for Mr. Cox? >> U Mr. Cox, thank you for bringing it to us. Um and I think it would be probably appropriate to put it on the consent agenda for
084next meeting. Okay. >> Any other discussion or questions for Mr. Okay. Thank you, Mr. >> Thank you. >> Okay. I will entertain a motion. >> Mr. Chairman, I move that we go into close session pursuant to general statute 143, 31811, A1, A3, and A6 to prevent the disclosure of confidential personnel files under GS115C 321 to consider matters relating to initial employment of an individual employee and to consult with the board's attorney in order to preserve the attorney client privilege. Second. >> We have a motion and a second. Is there further discussion? >> Hearing none. Chairman votes I. >> Abate I. >> Gain I >> hear no votes. The motion is approved. We are now in close session. again. Do we have signatures? Me and Miss Gy have signatures on there. Me and Miss Gy have
085signatures in there today. Okay. Now, following a motion and a second, we're have return to open session. Is there any further business come before this board this morning? >> None for me, Mr. Chair. >> Okay. Okay. Hearing none, I will entertain a motion. >> Motion, Mr. Chairman. Second. >> We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say I. >> I. We are nowjourned. Thank you.