001[Music] The June meeting um work session rather of the Hornet County Board of Education is now in order. Good morning. Good morning. Good to see each of you this morning. And uh let's begin with uh an invocation followed by the uh pledge of allegiance. So uh uh Mr. Godfrey, would you lead us in prayer this morning, please? Yes, sir. All join me in prayer at will. Our gracious God and heavenly father, Lord, we thank you for this day. We thank you, Father, for all your blessings of life. We thank you, Lord, for this nation, Father. And we pray, Lord, that we would love one another. That we would look to you for peace and love and harmony. Father, I pray that you would protect our troops, protect our law enforcement, Lord, as they go about
002to do their job, Lord, because without them, we would not have the freedoms that we enjoy. And I pray that we would support them, Lord, in their comingings and goings. Lord, be with us in this meeting. Help us to do the things we need to do and say the things we need to say, Lord. But help us to refrain, Lord, from attacking anybody or each other, Lord. And I thank you, Father, again for everything. For it's in Jesus name I pray. Amen. Amen. Mr. Harris, you lead us in the pledge of allegiance. 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. Are there any adjustments to the agenda, Mr.
003Chairman? Uh, yes, sir. Mr. Godfrey, I'd like to add a discussion item to the agenda, please. Okay. Concerning and salute towards the schools county high school. Under discussion item. Yes, sir. Is okay. Under discussion. Okay. Are there any other adjustments? If not, I Yes, sir. Motion to approve the agenda as read. Mr. Chairman, have a motion and a second. Is there further discussion? Chairman votes I. Abate I for I hear no votes. The uh agenda as amended is approved. Okay, moving along. All right, we have a special presentation this morning and we have a resolution honoring coach Will Gage and we'll call on Mr. Pearson to make this presentation. Thank you, Chairman Pal, members of the board. Um Mr. Gage is here with us this morning and if you've had an opportunity over the last
00435 years to participate in the Hornet County Educators Tournament, you know that it is top-notch, first class, um and certainly something that has uh been a great event for many of our employees over the years. And so we want to recognize Mr. Gage with that. So we have this resolution. I'd like to read into the minutes. Yes, sir. So resolution honoring Mr. Will Gage for 35 years of service to the Hornet County Educator Golf Tournament. Whereas Mr. Will Gage has demonstrated exceptional dedication and leadership by organizing and chairing the Hornet County Educators Golf Tournament for the past 35 years. And whereas through his vision, commitment, and tireless efforts, Mr. Mr. Gage has established a meaningful tradition that brings together educators, staff, and community members in a spirit of fellowship and support. And whereas the tournament
005has served as a valued event that promotes unity among Hornet County Schools employees while strengthening connections within the educational community. And whereas Mr. Gage's sustained volunteer service exemplifies the values of leadership, service, and community engagement their Har County School strives to instill in all of its members. And whereas the board of education wishes to formally acknowledge and commend Mr. Gage for his outstanding contributions and lasting impact on the district. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Hornet County Board of Education extends his deepest appreciation to Mr. Will Gage for 35 years of exemplary service and leadership in coordinating the Hornet County Educators Golf Tournament. And be it further resolved that this resolution be entered in the official minutes of the Hornet County Board of Education and a copy presented to Mr. gade is the lasting
006symbol of the board's appreciation and esteem. Adopted the 16th day of June 2025 by the Hernick County Board of Education. Joe Joseph W. Pal chairman W. Brooks Matthews secretary Mr. Gage is here with us and certainly want to thank him for his time. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you, Mr. Gage. Thank you, Will. Thank you, Mr. Gage. Well, congratulations, Mr. Gage, and this is a big honor. We appreciate all your hard work on behalf of Hornet County Schools for the past 35 years or longer. Okay, moving along to discussion items and our first item is a golden leaf grant. Miss Ferguson. Um, good morning, Chairman Powell, members of the board. I just wanted to update you that we did receive word that Haret Central Middle and Dun Middle did receive the Golden Leaf
007Grant um, awards and I just want to give you a quick overview of those grants. This grant is funded by the Golden Leaf Foundation is to support educational transformation in rural economically distressed counties. It utilizes Marzano's high reliability schools. It's a framework to drive school improvement and it's based on research. It's not a shiny um new thing to try. It's based on research. It divides schools into two cohorts. The transformative schools and the personalized competency based schools. Central Middle was the transformative school and they're in that cohort. And just give you an idea, there were 230 schools eligible for this. They only selected 15 total of the two cohorts. Only 10 in this cohort with Hart Central. So I just want to say that the principal and the staff at both schools did a great
008job with this to be selected. So the transformative schools cohort it targets low performing rural middle schools in tier one in two counties. The school must have a letter grade of D or F or 23 24. It must have at least one certified math teacher per grade level and a less than 50% vacancy. So that's just to show where the improvement in our retention of teachers has helped us uh with this. The principal has to have three plus years experience and a proven turnaround capacity. The superintendent and the district imple implementation coordinator must be support. The key supports for transformative schools are it's a five-year implementation with Marso's high reliability schools framework levels one through five. It involves intensive coaching of the leadership and um and of the teachers and also math and formative assessment.
009It provides a comprehensive math curriculum under open up resources. It provides professional development, on-site coaching and resource banks for our teachers. It also includes incentives. It offers teacher stipens for professional development, travel funds for um conferences. It also offers a principal retention bonus and also performance bonus. The award value of the transformative schools cohort is up to 1.8 million per school for those five years. Done middle school, they received the personalized competency based education cohort. It targets non uh low performing middle schools in tier one and two counties and it must demonstrate readiness in level um one and two. So they begin at level three of Marso's HRS high reliability high reliability schools model. The principal has to have three plus years experience and a long-term commitment and we all know that is true of
010the principal. The district level implementation and leadership support again is also required. The key supports of this um cohort is a three-year core implementation. We have the option to extend it to five years. It's shared PD sessions, leadership, coaching and success to a platform to help the um teachers. It's 3 has 33,000 of flexible resource bank for customized support for certification. It's really about customizing. Okay, you create a safe culture. you've got good instruction going on in every room for levels three through five. How can point grow and support your teacher capacity? Um they'll also participate in Marzano events, data tracking and collaborative PD. And the award value is 390,000 per school over the five years. We have our convening um conference July 9th through 11th that the schools will attend. Um I will also
011attend and some uh district staff support will attend. Um, and that is an update on the two models. We're very excited for the schools. Again, a lot of work on the principles and the staff to get this awarded to them. We're appreciative of it and we're excited to see what happen. Okay. Well, thank you, Miss Ferguson. Does anyone have any questions or comments from Miss Ferguson? I got one, M. That money will go to school director will come to the county. It'll it'll probably more than likely how it typically works, we will put in for reimbursements. So, it's not like it will really come anywhere like a long summer anywhere. We will put in for reimbursements for travel, for PD, they'll pay for the onsite coaching, those things. So, typically we um submit reimbursement. Mr.
012costs. Do you have any From what I understand, that'll be the case. Like you said, it'll be reimbursement. We'll we'll pay the teachers or whatever the program um is, and then we'll have to seek reimbursement from the Golden Leaf Foundation for those expenditures. And we've done several Golden Leaf grants. You know, the Barnet, the Golden Leaf grant, we had a CTE one before that also. And it's always a good organization to work with um and very positive for the schools they support. Any others? This sounds like a really good thing and congratulations to both Dun Middle and Hornet Central Middle. We look forward to great things coming from this. Thank you, Miss Ferguson. Next, we have our community schools grant, and that would be Mr. White. Thank you, Chairman Powell, and members of the board.
013It's my honor this morning to be able to talk about the community schools grant that will be coming to Dun Elementary starting in January of 2026. Um our Sand Hills Resa which includes Blton County schools, Columbus County, Cumberland County, Hope County, Lee County, Moore County, Robeson County, Richmond, Samson, Scotland, Whiteville were all presented an opportunity to be able to participate um in this opportunity. Um and so what we have done is taken it a step further um and actually met with the uh North Carolina Community Schools Coalition to be able to implement this at Dunn Elementary School um which is the area that we identified. Now you all may be familiar with communities and schools or have heard of communities and schools before. This is not it. Um communities and schools actually kind of works
014with more targeted interventions at risk student support uh dropout prevention and support. What the North Carolina school community schools coalition does is they are more into a whole school transformation and so um they believe in the academics, health, family and community. They integrate that across the school and their funding comes from public, state and federal grants which is definitely a plus for us in this particular situation. Um, and so what they're going to do at Dunn Elementary, is implement their full service community school, which is a community- centered school model that will provide integrated supports and services, which focused on academic achievement, health and social services, and family engagement. As a result of receiving this grant, Dun Elementary will receive a community school coordinator to align services and assess needs, a family resource center to
015provide essentials like food, hygiene items, job support, and and other things for the community in that area, and they'll also have a school advisory board um that will be a part of the grant that'll be made up of students, parents, and staff. And they'll have a discretionary fund to be able to provide things for the school. And so it could be anything from computers or again those hygiene items. It could be anything that the community may necessarily say that the school needs that board will be able to meet um to assess that and pay for those things. And so it looks at right now that it's going to be about $100 per student um that the school will receive. And so that totals about $87,500 that'll go there um to be able to support the
016the Dunn elementary students in that community. And so again, we're we're excited about that. Uh based on the key features and and supports of this grant, uh the community school coordinator will be hired in January of 26. We'll start prepping for that through the summer and the fall um to be able to get ready for that timeline. We hope to open the family resource center around April of 2026 based on the um guidelines from the organization. And then we hope to launch the school advisory board in August of 2026 and provide training for those who will be uh on that board to support um the the actual students there at Dunn Elementary. And so there's a leadership summit that's happening this summer. And so uh Dr. Beard and her team will be a part of
017that. We'll do the fall 2025 January 2026 kind of on boarding again process for this particular grant. And again, we're excited about what it's going to do for that community and it can extend, right? And so we're talking about Dun Elementary, but what we do at Dun Elementary could certainly pour into Dun Middle. It could pour into the early college next door. It could pour into a lot of the other um community type things that are going on in in the Dunn area. And so this grant has actually demonstrated a lot of success um for the schools that have participated. Um there's been increased enrollment, higher family and community engagement and more access to health and academic support services. Um and actually in one county PW Moore Elementary rose from a F to a C
018um because of their involvement with regards to the whole child aspect of implementing this inside of their building. a community impactwise ensures that every student has access to supports that they need to thrive and strengthens the partnership between the school families and the broader community. And so what we really hope to do uh is is really take that block um and take that community and really do a lot of great things um with implementing this inside of the building. And so we're excited about it. Um they're excited to to partner with us. U Mr. Matthews, myself, Dr. Beard met with the uh community group uh about two weeks ago um to be able to discuss these logistics and they've probably been blowing up our emails um ever since because they're super excited about working with
019Dr. Beard and her team. And so they'll come to Dr. Beard's first staff meeting to be able to talk to the school about what's going to take place there um and then we'll move forward. And so if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer those at this time. Okay. Are there questions for Mr. White? Is Dun Elementary the only school that that got is involved in this for now? Yes, sir. So, they'll be the pilot. Um, and what our hope is based on conversations with the um with the coalition that they would look to expand to more schools inside of the district um once we see how successful this is going to be. So, what we've told them is this can't fail. Uh and they told us it won't fail. Um and so
020we're super excited about um seeing where this goes once we get it off the ground. And if this does work well, which I'm sure it will, uh does that mean we can expand throughout the district possible? Absolutely. And so what other eleas have done um especially on the eastern um side of the state um is they've broadened it to other schools within their district once they've piloted it one place. Um and so because of the momentum um that the superintendent observed at Dun Elementary at the end of the school year um and then after some continued conversations, we felt like this was the best place to be able to launch it in the district um and then see where that goes. Okay. Are there other questions? Well, thank you, Mr. White. Thank you. Okay, moving
021along. We have uh uh discussion about uh validictorian and saludiatorans in the Hornet County Schools. And I'll open the floor for discussion. Mr. Godfrey. Yes, sir. I know all of you have probably seen the emails, couple of them from students, you know, asking us to review the possibility of putting valuator and saludiatoran honors back in the schools and recognizing them. Uh, I'm 100% for it. Uh, I know when I was in school, which has been a long time ago, and I don't know when Hornet County stopped doing this, but I think that's an extreme honor that ought to be recognized because, you know, if you make valator and saludiator, and that means that you have had excellent grades all through your high school career. Uh, you've behaved yourself. You've done what you were supposed to
022do above and beyond. And like I told Mr. Bonte, I everybody don't get a trophy. I'm sorry. You know, everybody is not the same. Uh and I think the exemplary student should be recognized. Uh, you know, at our graduations, the class president, you know, gets up and makes the speech and does this and that. Okay, that's fine. But you all know as well as I do that the most popular kid in that class is going to be the class president. You know, whether they've got good grades or not, they're they're going to be voted the class president. So, I think this is something we need to reconsider. I don't know what year or when it was taken out, but you know, the validictorian used to get up and make their speech and then the saludiator
023and also a short speech about, you know, things that they did and things that the school did and everything. Talked to Mr. Bonnie a little bit and I understand his his concerns. He might can go into what he he told me and I understand that uh what he was saying. Uh but I think it's something we need to seriously look at. I think it would also boost the morale of of our high school kids to make them strive a little bit harder to maybe, hey, I got a chance to make that, you know, I'm I'm going to really work a little bit harder. I'm really going to try to get my grades up to where I'll be competitive for that. Uh, so it it's just something I'm 100% for and I I just wanted to
024bring it before the board and I think probably all the high school kids would be 100% for it. Most of them would anyway. Uh, so it's just something I wanted to to bring up and talk about. Okay, Mr. Bonte. So, Mr. Godfrey, I I had some of your same concerns previously before um ultimately looking into it and kind of seeing the the aspect of why we don't do that anymore. Um, part of my email back to those couple of students that sent to us, I said, "Currently, we have Kum Lau, Magna Kum Lau, and Sumakum Lau designations as well as other honors such as North Carolina academic scholar designation that we use to honor students with exemplary grades." said, "All too often top students GPA are often separated by thousands of one point and ultimately
025place undue stress on students, faculty and families. Um, whenever you have students who are say top five and their grades are only or their GPA is only separated by, you know, one, two, three, 1,000 of a single point, then you have families involved that are then um going and putting pressure on teachers to to change a grade or to give them that slight advantage. um the kum lau and magna kumlad sumakum lau ultimately give us the the recognition uh that they're looking for in fact I think one of our high schools only had I believe out of the entire 300 plus class um I think eight sigma kumlau designations so they are being recognized for their exemplary grades um just those top two are not set set aside. Ultimately, when they get their transcript, uh
026I'm pretty sure it still shows rank on the transcript. Um they'll know if they were able to to ultimately get that first or second designation. Um, but you know, this is kind of kind of where we're at. And you know, I would be in favor of leaving our current practice in place just so we don't put that that stress on our students, families, and uh, teachers and administrators. Well, I would come back with that and say that shame on an administrator or a teacher that would let theirel be pressured into the point of changing grades to benefit a certain student. I would say shame on them if they would do something like that. And I understand what you're saying 100%. But I I still have got my opinion that the saludiator and validictorian should be
027able to stand up and be recognized. That's just the way I feel about it. Is there further discussion? Okay. I'm sure we'll be discussing this further in more detail. So, uh, thank you very much. Moving along to action items and we have just one on the agenda today and that is uh review and consider approval of the AIG plan with Miss Ferguson. Good morning, Chairman Pal. Members of the board, you will see the U AIG plan for 25 through 2028. We have to revise it every three years. This revision is made with um our team, teachers and parents. And the changes that were made were very small changes, but we did list the major ones. Um and most of those uh boil down to pathways. There's more than one way for a child to be
028identified AIG. We also distinguish between AIG and intellectually gifted. We included the resources that we have for teachers and the uh PD we provided for teachers and we've also included the resources for parents. Um we do a newsletter now. We have a website and information for parents. And then we also included um any new partnerships we may have. We discuss we get a lot of questions about students skipping grades. We put um advisement in there for that process if a parent's interested in it. We talked about how children are grouped at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. We also made sure that we clarified resources for students at the elementary, middle, and high school level. If you have any questions about the plan, I'll be glad to answer it. Again, this is very similar
029to what we've had in the past. We made those few changes and I made you a cheat sheet so you can see those. and it was made with um district level staff, school level staff and parents this plan. I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Chairman, I move that we approve the plan as presented. Second. Have a motion and a second. Is there further discussion for questions from Miss Ferguson? Hearing none, the chairman votes I. Abate I. Godfrey I Gy I with a hearing no nay votes the motion is approved thank you thank you I entertain a motion Mr. 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 GS15C 321 to consider matters relating to initial employment
030of an individual employee and to consult with the board's attorney in order to preserve the attorney client privilege. Second. Have a motion and a second. Is there further discussion? Chairman votes I. Abot say I hear no nay votes. The motion is approved. We're now in close session. [Music] after a motion and a second. We're back in open session. Mr. Matthews, do we have anything else today? Uh, no, sir, Mr. Chair. Thank you. I will entertain a motion. Make a motion to adjourn, Mr. Chairman. Have a motion and a second. All in favor say I. I. I. We are adjourned. Thank you.