001[Music] I hope so. Think after a close session and then a recess, we're now back in open session. I will entertain a motion. Mr. Chairman, I move uh to update the agenda by removing policy number 17254357236 from the consent agenda, which is uh consent agenda N6. Okay. Do we have a second? Second. Okay. Is there anything else on the agenda, consent agenda? I'll have another motion once we vote on this one. Okay. Okay. Chairman votes I. Abate I. Gy I motion carries. Uh anything else on the agenda? Mr. Chairman, I move that we remove policy uh 17254357236 from discussion and place it on uh place it as an update to action item number nine. Action item number nine. Okay, have a motion in a second. Any further discussion? Chairman votes I. Abate I. Gainy I.
002I. Motion carries. Mr. Chairman, I move that we approve the agenda as amended. Second. Any further discussion? Chairman votes I I can hearing no votes. The motion carries and the agenda is amended. All right, moving along to special recognition. And is Mr. Spears? Yes. Uh he was not able to make it this evening. So, um we were trying to coordinate for him and his coach to be here, but he could not make it. So, I will get your signature on his certificate and go out to the school and present it to him uh sometime tomorrow or the next day. There there's Kevin there, but he was not able to be with us this evening. So, I'll make sure we do an inerson presentation. Well, thank you very much. And we're very proud of Kevin. Kevin
003Spears, uh who has won the actual state championship and that gives us and his principal, Miss Katherine Jones, was here with us tonight. And congratulations uh to your good school, Miss Jones, on that. But, uh that's a great honor, you know, great honor. We've had what, a couple of uh state champions this year, have we not? That's a big deal. That's a big honor. Great honor. So, congratulations to Kevin and his family. It's great accomplishment. Okay. [Applause] If I recall correctly, a few years ago at Hornet Central, his dad is pretty good football player and track star as well. So, uh has good jeans, I guess. So, that's good. Okay. Thank you. Okay, we'll now move along to uh public comment. And each month at least a at least a part of at least one
004regularly scheduled board meeting will be set aside for citizens to address the board through public comment. A signup sheet is available for any group or individual to indicate their desire to address the board. The chairperson will decide the amount uh by time and uh which is uh three minutes uh total of 30 minutes total. Uh the established rules for public comment. Each speaker must complete each section of the signup sheet. Each speaker may speak only for three minutes. No balance of time may be yielded to another speaker. A maximum of 30 minutes is allotted for public comments. This allows for approximately 10 speakers at three minutes per speaker. The speaker signup sheet is removed at the beginning of the board meeting. Okay. And we have a new system here. We're trying to get you used
005to. It's pretty hard to read, so I'm working off both. So, my apologies for the confusion there. We'll learn it as we go along. And we have one speaker this evening. That is Rebecca Brock. So, Miss Brock. Good evening board and commissioner Matthews and superintendent uh assistant superintendent and staff. I'm here tonight to basically express the concern that I have about Superintendent Matthews holding two county positions. I've said this at the county commissioners meeting. I'm saying it to you. Parents don't know across the county that Mr. Matthews holds two jobs. He has two different constituencies. One's 25,000. The one that you have action over is 20,000. It's a difficult task to run a school system. Very difficult. And I'm sure you hired him due to his competency to do so. However, he also attends four
006meetings for the county commissioners. He sits on, I find out, six commissions, uh, six committees. Those are the Transportation Advisory Board, the Mid Carolina Regional Board, the Mid Carolina Board of Directors, the Hick County Economic Development Partnership. He's a Campo alternative after Eddie Jaggers and he sits on the park and Rex advisory committee. Those also take time away. I don't know how in the contract that you approved he is either given time off or take it. He takes time off to do that. But if I I know you all must know the thing is when you think about all of the job requirements and the current situation where we're going to end of year school testing and the competency is going to be tested of those students. It directly comes right up to Mr. Matthews
007the results of that. And I'm asking I just want you to realize that he's holding two jobs. I know you know that. However, I know there's four very competent assistant superintendent who probably could step into this role. But the fact is he's holding two extremely big jobs. and I would like the students and the staff of this school system to get the fullest attention from their superintendent as possible. Thank you. This this concludes our public comments. We'll move along now to the superintendent update. So, Mr. Matthews, Chairman Pal, members of the board, just a few items I'd like to share with you and um make sure you're aware of if you're not already as we u head into this uh legislative session. There is a school calendar bill in the Senate which Senator Burgerer is
008one of the primary sponsors of uh the bill number 754. Uh, and it's intended to strike a compromise, I believe, between school folks and, uh, those who would like to begin school early enough to be able to give exams, high school exams on the block schedule prior to the Christmas break in order to facilitate early graduation and those students being able to uh, attend community college, those who would like to do so on the community college schedule that starts shortly after the new year. Uh between them and the uh tourist industry who really drove the uh bill, the current calendar bill we operate under anyway uh many years ago. And uh this bill would actually give approximately a week uh in addition to what our current calendar bill does. In other words, allow school to
009start a week earlier than it does now. However, there is a U which would be good be a good thing, but there is a um contingency in the bill that says that we would have to have the same number of days first seme second semester as we have first semester. And so what that does is put the uh constraints back on uh to where it would be virtually impossible during some of those years to be able to have exams before the Christmas break. Uh so I have uh talked with Senator Bergen about this u and he is going to uh uh follow up with some of the sponsors but we it's a bill I think we need to track and and and see what's happen what happens going forward. Uh however, there's another Senate bill
010number 470 uh which uh is titled end block scheduling that has been introduced and that would mandate that class high school classes could not be any longer than 50 minutes. Uh the effective date should that bill pass would be for the 26 27 school year. So not for this upcoming school year. Uh if that bill were to pass and the calendar bill all of a sudden is uh moot uh because there would be no block schedules anymore. Uh all of your classes would be year-long classes which would eliminate that mid-year graduation and it would eliminate uh uh enrolling in community college for second semester. I've also talked with Senator Bergen about this as well and he's he is aware of the uh concern that that that um that I and other school folks have with
011that. But just wanted to make you aware of that. Also, I uh wanted to ask your consideration in our last meeting of the year to wrap up year end uh concerns is June the 26, the morning of June 26. Schedule for the morning June 26. Uh, I wanted to check to see if it would be possible to move that to the morning of June 30th. Uh, I will have Miss Tammy Johnson touch base with you via email uh at later on this week. Um, and if it's not, that's fine. Uh, there's simply a superintendent uh conference that uh is on the 26 that that conflicts with, but uh if you are if you folks have another conflict, I would understand that as well. Uh, also the uh the last thing I'll mention is at the
012conclusion of the uh commissioner's meeting this morning, county manager Brent Trout reached out to me to ask if there could be a meeting arranged uh between the chair and vice chair of the board of education, the chair and vice chair of the board of elections, and the chair and vice chair of the county commissioners to discuss the ongoing dispute of using schools for early voting sites. Uh I told him I would share that with you folks tonight and you can uh uh think about that and get back with me and I'll relay what you decide uh on to Mr. Trap. And unless you have some specific questions for me, that concludes my uh information to share with you tonight. Are there additional questions for Mr. Matthews? Thank you, Mr. Matthews. Thank you for your updates
013and your commitment to the community. Yes, sir. Thank you. Next, we have auxiliary services update and Mr. Pearson. Chairman Pal, members of the board, thank you. Uh, a couple of updates for you. Uh, Mr. White is sharing a sheet of paper that'll be kind of on the back end of my updates, but I want you to have that in your hands. Construction updates. Um, we do have tomorrow a pre-construction meeting for Flatwoods. Um the bonds have been sold from the county and so that everything is on in place with the timeline. Those bonds should close here in a couple of weeks which will allow us to start signing contracts and again we are still on the the uh schedule for that flatwoods project. Dirt should be moving out there within the next couple of months.
014Uh the gym at Lington Shawtown is underway. We are we have block is going up. So we're about 10 feet out of the ground with block and continue that. They are still on schedule. Their target date is November 30th. So again, our hope is that those students will be able to begin using that facility prior to Christmas break of next year and they're excited about that. Um do want to share that I've had a lot of positive conversations rely recently with the county folks in regards to capital improvement needs and capital funding and um just uh some good help and and agreements on some flexibility that we needed for some uns unexpected projects. For instance, we had some roof damage out at Western Hornet High School that was going to be pretty pricey and they
015then been very flexible and willing to help us on that. So, I do appreciate um their willingness there. I've recently been involved in uh some meetings with FEMA in regards to Northwest Hornet and Northwest Hornet, as you know, is in Sharon Harris emergency planning zone. And so, that requires every couple years us to do some updates and some uh meetings with FEMA. So, we've had that meeting at the school last week and then at the end of this month, we'll do a mock drill in which I'll be a part of the emergency operations center representing the school so that we would know how to do evacuations and other planning related to uh that school being inside the Sharon Harris emergency zone. Uh have met with Miss Brown and we are looking at the possibility of
016increasing the number of C schools for next year. So, those are the schools where all students can eat free lunch. Um so, we're studying what those numbers would look like. Preliminarily, it definitely looks like we will be able to add some more of those schools. Um, I don't know if we'll be able to get to a 100% of our schools, but we will be in a in a good spot to add a few and I think we will continue to see a positive impact of that. Our schools who have gone to that have seen an increased participation in the school lunch program and so we're definitely studying to maximize that where we can. Um on the athletics front, I do want to let you know as you've been sharing about new conferences have been forming
017and those types of things. Um in our area across our region uh involving Lee County, Mora County, Johnston County, Cumberland County, it is pretty much a move where uh athletic gate prices are going to increase in the coming uh with this new set of conferences. So I do want to give you guys a heads up about that. Um officiating costs have gone up, a number of other costs have gone up. So most of these conferences, not just the ones that our schools are in, but multiple conferences are looking at a a $10 admission for athletic events next year. And so really trying to encourage our schools to talk about their booster club, all sports pass, and other avenues that's kind of a family family- based path to try to really make that a more manageable.
018And one of the conversations I've had with these conferences is that it is imperative that we are honoring employee badges across districts. So, for instance, when our staff go to a more county game involving our schools, they're going to allow our employees to get in for free. So, a little perk we're trying to maintain there. And then the final thing for me is the sheet of paper there that Mr. White shared. You know that over the last several years, um, both occasions at Haret Central, we we had a request to name the track after a longtime coach and and staff member there. And then recently, we just named the court after coach Gage as he's approaching 30 plus years of serving there in his retirement. So this is becoming a more popular thing and we
019wanted to put a little bit of guidelines on it, a little bit of parameters. Certainly the folks who we've u honored with this currently have been very deserving but we want to make sure that those who are seeking that in the future are um equally as deserving with numerous years of contributions to our athletic program. So just kind of came up with a set of guidelines. Just want you guys to see that. uh not necessarily anything we're putting in policy here, but just so that you all know is if we bring you a request to name uh recognition of of a coach or an athletic director, that's kind of our guidelines that we're using to even bring that to you. Um we do have one other one who has recently come up that I I
020believe is also very deserving and Mr. Matthews will have some continued conversations with you about that. So unless you have any questions for me, that concludes my updates. Other questions for Mr. Pearson? Okay. Uh, one I hear one. No. Okay. One question I had of the $10 ticket price or possibly. So that's set by the conference. That's not set by the county. That's each individual conference. That's correct. Yeah. Um, you have most conferences cross over multiple counties. Yes, sir. And so the conference is kind of voting on that together. And I like your idea about if there's some way we could do some season passes, family passes, and so forth. uh kind of see both sides of this because uh I know being a coach former coach myself uh we depend on this revenue to
021pay for officials. Officials costs have gone up and pay for other things too. So it's very important but on the other hand it's usually particularly in our non- big revenue sports too. It's mostly family that comes to watch the games and so forth. It gets pretty expensive if you have several children particularly uh and several events and so forth. It gets pretty expensive as well. So, if we can maybe strike a balance here somehow if you could encourage some way to uh do the season passes or family passes, I think that'd be a worthy idea. Yeah. Yeah. I'll continue to to press that. Most of our booster clubs at our high schools do have that pass in place. Um and you know, it varies in price, but roughly $200 for a family, which at a
022$10 per person doesn't take you long to generate a positive uh you know, positive mo move there. Um because you're right, you you have a child that's playing volleyball, they might have three games a week and so um definitely need to try to help uh understand a where the money goes and b how we can help people uh with it. Thank you. Regarding uh tickets and such, um are have we gone to a cashless system or are we still accepting cash? Uh we have all of our schools are still accepting cash. Okay. Um, for a little while there we had one high school that was only digital. Uh, but right now they're all accepting cash. There is proposals within the state legislature that we must accept cash, right? Um, but right now we have a
023a hybrid at most of our sites. I got uh had some backlash over the years of u not accepting cash. Yes. So, thank you. Yep. Are there other questions? Thank you, Mr. Pearson. Miss Ferguson's next. the curriculum and instruction. Uh good evening, Chairman Pal and members of the board. It's the busy time of year. Our focus is on instruction and we maintain that focus on instruction and completing this year. Um being prepared for our end of grade, end of course testing, but at the same time we have to begin planning our summer programs, our summer PD, and next year's resources and materials. So, we have a lot of things going on from co uh teacher committees to teacher teams to uh work here in the district for next year. We continue to hold our monthly
024instructional focus meetings with our principles, our APs, and our coaches. Those have been great this year. As you know, the principal instructional focus takes place during our principal meeting. So, all principles with their coaches are in attendance and so is Mr. Matthews and the cabinet, and it's been a great learning experience every month with that focus on instruction. Um, we also continue to hold our monthly PLC's for middle school math and ELA for our EC teachers and our ESL teachers as well. Another layer of support. We held our ECPD for APS and principles that was led by Miss Eva Dwison. This PD focused on the role of the LEA representative in an IEP meeting and all of our administrators had that training. We also continue to hold our CPI and crisis intervention training every month
025for school administrators and school teams. We completed our golden leaf grant application for Haret Central and Dun Middle. The next step will be our district interviews. Uh Mr. Matthews, the principles, and myself will have to participate in those interviews. We received word that we did not that we did receive the grant from the Southern Regional Education Board. This grant is a professional development model for enhancing math teacher effectiveness. We will use that with our seventh and eighth grade math teachers. It's a model to provide professional development and coaching support. We have completed another round of NC check-ins in grades three through eight. We had mid-year meetings with the principles to review this data. Um and most recently, Mr. Matthews met with the entire K12 instructional team um for an update. We have posted our DODIA
026grant positions, ordered materials and supplies needed and have planned PD for that grant. We had our battle of the books for elementary, middle, and high school this year. Went very well as always. Miss Bird and her her uh staff do a phenomenal job. We had our elementary school Lego robot rally at Irwin Elementary School on March the 21st. First place winner was Boone Trail Elementary. Second place was Irwin Elementary. Third place was Northwest Elementary. and Johnsonville Elementary won the spirit award. The CTE world is very busy this time of year. Triton and Over Hills FBLA have first place finishes at the state leadership conference and they will advance to the nationals in Anaheim, California. Triton and Over Hills DECA have first place finishes um and they at the state leadership conference and they will go
027to the nationals in Orlando. Triton FCCLA had a first place finish at the state leadership conference and they will also advance to the nationals in Orlando. The Hornet County um Hornet Central High School Fire Academy competes this week at Skills USA state conference in Greensboro. Build Haret 2025 will kick off Friday morning at CCC with a partner breast. Competitive events begin Monday, April the 14th at CCC's Hornet main campus. And I invite you to please come by for a few minutes. It is amazing to watch those teams work. Coming up, we have elementary honors course tomorrow night at Triton High School at 700 p.m. We have the EC very special prom this Saturday, April the 12th from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at Gentry. And again, I invite you just drop by for a few
028minutes if you just need a pickme up. That will do it. And then finally, Special Olympics is April the 30th at Campbell University on the track. Open ceremonies are at 9:00 am and we hope you can come by for a few minutes that day as well. Again, very busy time in the IC world, but um it's been a good spring. Okay, other additional questions for Miss Ferguson. Sounds like we've got a lot going on, Miss Ferguson. We do. We do. And our teachers are working very hard and our school coaches are working very hard. So, I want to give a shout out to them. Yes, they are. Thank you. Thank you. Moving along, we have our human resources update and that would be Miss Thompson. Good evening, um, Chairman Pal and members of the board.
029If you remember, I said that we would no longer be talking about the vacancies because, you know, those are being filled and and not really true to date at this time, but I do want to share some good news with you. There's a lot to celebrate in HR this this week. So, as far as the schools go, I want to talk about the niece's completion rate. Mr. Matthews has helped us set really high expectations as far as um principles completing their observations on the assigned timeline and that really um in the end involves giving teachers quality feedback as it relates to their work with students. And so I want to tell you that um most of our schools have 100% or 90 to 99% completion rate. 90 to 99% Anderson Creek Andrew Boon Trail Coats
030Coats are a middle Dun Elementary Irwin Haret Central Highland Elementary Highland Middletown North Hornet Northwest Hornet Over Hills Elementary over Hills Middle and Triton 100% which is the coveted spot and sometimes they might not quite make it in this arena because somebody's been out like on a maternity leave or something like that that causes them not to quite make the final list of 100% but Ben Haven, Dun Middle, Haret County Early College, Haret Central Middle School, Johnsonville Elementary, Lafayette Elementary School, and Western Hart Middle School 100% completion rate of their evaluations and that's really a lot to celebrate. In that same vein of celebration, I think I am most I'm ecstatic about this. So, I want to share this with you. the state of the teaching profession report with teaching uh attrition or the old
031term teacher turnover data was released and we are so excited to announce that the LEA attrition rate has dropped. In 2023 we were at 21.8% and in 2024 we went down to 17.6%. We are now doing better than several districts in our region including Warren, Nash, Parson, Chadam, Granville, Edgecom, and in district four, the Sand Hills, we're now doing better than Columbus, Moore, Scotland, Montgomery, and Hope. And we plan to have the RNRS present on this in the future to kind of give a more in-depth look at this. But this is certainly good news and it speaks to the hard work that schools are doing and that our recruitment and retention folks are doing to keep people here in Haret County. We are I want to use this just for a moment. We have to
032you know we have agreements with teachers who are working on completing their their lure requirements and this year is no different. We plan on um offering those that are so everybody has a teacher license. There's a little bit of a misconception I think sometimes around people who are not licensed to teach or whatever they're not u credential to teach. If people are uh teaching under an alternative license uh license, then they've met some requirements to teach in that area, they have the credentials like they might have an English degree and they or a journalism degree and they're teaching English or they may have an engineering degree and they're teaching math. So, they have to meet certain requirements and many times we have to uh work with folks because of the semester. The semesters in colleges
033don't really line up with how we offer contracts here. So we have to make provisions for folks um that that happens for. So we try to do that. We going to have an agreement and tries to outline everything because we don't want there to be any surprises like when the pay date will be and things like that if they have to change until they complete or until they're until their grade report comes in or whatever has to happen for that. So we're working on that. We've been to multiple job fairs over the past month and we uh share that list of we compile a list of interested candidates and send that out to the schools to share with principles and so far we have attended Campbell Universities, East Carolina, Appalachin, NC State, and UNCC Wilmington.
034And we have one final one to attend at UNC Pinbrook on April the 9th. We will host our annual job fair. I know you might think I've already said this, but I did, but the weather put us out of business last week. And um so we're having our job fair tomorrow at the Hornet County Resource Library and I believe we have 90 folks pre-registered to attend and that's really phenomenal. Um based on some of our previous years a lot of hard work goes in that from our RNRs and so we're work we are very excited about that. Please don't forget we're also hiring from international teachers. We've worked with EPI and participate and we have a hiring pool that we're working to hire for them for the 2526 school year that is on a website.
035They've been pre-screened and it gets regular updated for new hires that are recommended. Um last year we offered inspiring teacher leaders half day conference at the end of the year and it was a hit. So we're going to bring that back by popular demand. Our international staff continue to receive ongoing professional development and a weekly newsletter and in speaking with principles at our meetings. That's been a real good support for our international teachers and we're glad about that. I want to talk a few minutes about bus driver training so we can keep that at the forefront. I have big hopes that with changes in DMV that maybe there'll be some progress made here that our folks can get licensed a little faster. But we still are in the mode that we've been in. Bus driver
036training continues with two employees trained each week and we have 20 people ready who could be trained that are waiting. Just that gives you an idea. Uh there are 12 additional employees from the January class who are working to complete their DOT physical and bus permits. And the deadline for this is April 28th. And so we c we continue to follow up with them to make sure they don't get kind of lost in the weeds of that. They're scheduled to have their training over the summer. We have another class planned for May, but we'll have to work around the testing schedule for that class. Of course, that's the priority. But just so you know, since January 1, 2025, we've trained 11 people, but we've also had 11 people to retire or resign. So, this is
037an ongoing effort to make sure we have enough licensed drivers that are assigned a regular route and a good list of subs uh for our regular routes. So, there are approximately nine drivers across the district without a permanent route. That tells you what kind of shape we're in for subs, but not because we don't have them because we got 20 waiting over here in the rings. That if we could get them trained, we could have them done. Uh, we have completed our work with the um teacher equity sites. If you remember, those were sites that we wor with about the teacher equity at their sites. And um Virginia Taylor hosted those sessions and we did a lot of that work based on the I love it here text in hopes to increase morale and intentional
038work to retain our most effective and valuable assets, the teachers. And the goal of those meetings was to engage in conversations around the tenant of um to ensure that all teachers have equitable access to experienced teachers no matter what school they're assigned. Prelim preliminary aotments have been provided to principles in advance of the job fair and many quality candidates have already been recommended. I've been fire feverishly approving them all afternoon. So we hope this is our most fruitful hiring season in recent years. Another thing that we are very excited about this week, the educator banquet is um Thursday night. it promises to be. We've sought out um just so you know, we did seek out outside sponsorships. Um and I think this will be probably the best educator of the uh year banquet to date.
039I'm very proud. It's going to be at John B. Farms. I believe I'm saying that correct. Am I John B. Thomas John B. Thomas gathering place? And um we will hopefully see you all there that night. If you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them about the you know where we're going to meet and all those things. And remember, we've changed it up. You know, we not only honored teachers that night, but we honor all staff at this event now, which is was such a big hit last year. And it was so touching to hear what folks had to say, especially about those folks sometimes are not recognized as often. We are I'm um equally excited about this year and what that will mean for our staff here. I think that concludes my
040report unless you have any questions for me. Our questions for Miss Thompson. Thank you, Miss Thompson. Next, we have our student services update. Mr. White. Good evening, Chairman Powell and members of the board. Inside of your board package, you will find the Star Academy report and the district release reassignment report through April the 2nd, 2025. Just a few quick updates from student services. Uh, the Hazel Health press conference. So the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services in partnership with Hornet County Schools will be holding a press conference at Littleton Shawtown Elementary School on May the 7th, 2025 to formally announce the district's partnership with Hazel Health mental teleaalth services. The event will clue will include media members and key stakeholders from across the state as well as United Healthc Care to discuss the
041launch of this partnership and the positive impact we will have on students and their families within our community. And so you all are certainly invited to participate in that event on the 7th and we look forward to launching our our Hazel Health teleaalth services within the next two weeks. Credit recovery changes. Um as you may be aware the state has approved changes to the credit recovery model in our districts across the state. For the 2526 school year for core graduation requirement courses, students who complete credit recovery must receive a numeric grade. This grade will be proportionately combined with their original incomplete or failing grade based on how much of the course they completed during recovery to produce a new passing final grade. The 2425 school year will be the last year credit recovery courses are
042graded as pass fail only for core classes. In addition to making the change outlined by the state, next year, Hornet County Schools will also institute a threshold of 50 or higher to be permitted for students to enroll in a credit recovery course. If a student scores below 50 in a class, they will have to return to the course face to face. In our case, instituting a threshold acts as a safety net, not to lower our standards, but to ensure the structure of the grading policy for credit recovery serves as core goal of helping students graduate by demonstrating that they've ultimately mastered the required content. And so, while this will be a bit of a stretch for our principles and for our teachers and counselors in our schools, in the long run, it's going to serve
043us well to be able to meet the needs um our students more efficiently in this area. potential expansion of our AVID program. As you are aware, we have a few AVID programs in the district that are thriving. AVID stands for advancement via individual determination and programs currently exist at Over Hills Middle School, Highland Middle School, Over Hills High School, and the Hornet County Early College. AVID students overcome obstacles and achieve success by being taught to think critically, collaborate, and set high expectations to confidently conquer the challenges that await them. We have budgeted funds to potentially expand to another site in the district and have had a few principles reach out about adding the program. More specifically, we've had a few elementary principles who have been interested. And so I will keep you posted about our
044next Abbott site soon, maybe in our May meeting um or the first meeting of the school year. And then finally, since April 23rd is administrative professionals day and we will be on spring break, I want to take the opportunity to thank my administrative assistant, Mrs. Amy Tuda, for all that she does. She means a lot to me and our department and I want to make sure she received her flowers publicly. This concludes my student support services report this evening unless there are any questions. Any questions for Mr. White? And a big thank you to Miss Tudtor and to all of our administrative assistants. We greatly appreciate it. We just couldn't do it without you. So, thank you very much, sir. Thank you, Mr. White. Moving along to financial services report and Mr. Cox. Thank you,
045Chair Pal, members of the board. I mentioned this last month, but got a couple updates, so I'm sharing it again. Um, the open enrollment for flexible benefits will take place April 28th through May 9th. Um, as I mentioned last month, mo most things remain unchanged. Um, one thing that has changed since that time, we're able to add a little additional value for our vision plan where our employees currently have a $200 frame allowance that'll increase to $220. It's not a significant amount, but still a little added value there for the the vision plan. We're waiting to hear back to find out if we'll be able to add any value on our dental plan for our employees. Uh, as a reminder, the the plan years from se will be September 25 to August 26. And as
046a reminder, board members are eligible to participate if they choose to. uh Miss Tammy Johnson will reach out um shortly after this meeting to let you know when enrollers will be on site in case you wish to have a conversation with them. And I'll also remind you that if you have an interest um in the TED do plan, that's the time to sign up for that as well. Um you may have heard on benefit keeping on benefits. You may have heard the state health plan is considering charging premiums based on salary tiers next year. While it hasn't been approved, the health plan seems to be working toward it becoming approved um as they're already reaching out to districts and agencies on how to collect salary data um for employees for next year. So, we've been
047having meetings with them working on how we can provide that data through a file upload process. Um historically, this has had to be a manual process. Any data that goes to the health plan for employers less than 4,000 employees have less than 4,000. So they have now included uh employers uh down as low as a thousand employees to have a uh automated process going forward. So we're we're trying to work to to do that. Um our PRC71 lowwealth teacher supplements, we're still making a few small tweaks, but we expect that uh amount to be paid in April to our teachers at $1,945. Last year it was $1,955. Um we have a few more teachers that um are eligible this year and we also received a little less funding from the state for that supplement. Thus
048the the change uh amount there. Um it may be slightly different as we run the full final analysis but it'll be close to that $1,945 and again that will be paid during the April payroll cycle. Uh our planning aotments from DPI came out last Friday. uh those aotments remain stable or a few slight increases based on our ADM increasing this year. Um a couple things to note uh we we do continue to lose a little bit more lowwealth money but not significantly like we did uh this year. Um and however other districts are now seeing the issue that we faced this year. So uh they are able to join the the party and uh have the struggles that we've had this year with that funding. Uh Mr. Mr. Matthews, myself have been working on the
049superintendent's recommended budget uh that we'll be presenting for your approval later on tonight to become the board of education budget pending any changes that you have. Regardless of whatever that budget is, just want to remind you that we will having a joint meeting with the commissioners on April 29th um to present uh your budget uh to them uh at that time. And that concludes my report unless you have any questions for me. Any questions? any update from our legislators about low wealth? Uh no, we don't have any uh updates from them. I know uh we have been in constant communication with them and remain hopeful that they'll come through with that. Thank you, Mr. Cobage. Yes, sir. All right. Next, we have our public information office update. That'd be Miss Frell. Chairman Powell, members of
050the board and community, good evening. Um, this past month has been filled with achievements and stories that showcase success with HCS. So, at first we had our read across America. Schools, libraries, and communities across the country host events and activities to promote the joy of reading. Dun Elementary School hosted their annual read across America. readers are leaders event and invited the community to join in. It was an excellent opportunity for our young leaders to enjoy stories from inspiring figures who are making a difference and you see them in the picture there. Our Anderson Creek Primary School Cubs were thrilled to welcome guest readers from Fort Braggs Dentac and Warmarmac units who joined in fostering the love of reading among our students. This special visit is a part of Anderson Creek Primary School's ongoing partnership with
051Fort Bragg through the Military School Partnership Program. So, since we're celebrating music in our schools, you know, my favorite event, Hornet Off Broadway. Well, everyone, that is a wrap. It was a huge congratulations to all of our performers and artists um and every participant who was in each attendance area. The dedication and passion for the arts have shined. We showcase the talents of our fine arts students whom shared their gifts vocally and instrumental and even theater arts. We also want to extend a heartfelt thank you to our teachers, our department, our staff, volunteer and judges and families, mainly our community who helped make this such a wonderful event. Speaking of music in our schools month, we have a student spotlight. Our musician George Doel is an outstanding trombonist from Hornet Central Middle School and he
052earned first chair at the North Carolina Allstate Band. So that is big and right on time for celebrating music in our schools month. We also celebrated youth art month. So let's talk about that. Let's go on back to off Broadway. So, let's check out our artistic excellence at Horned Off Broadway. The art exhibit featured student artists from all over each attendance area. From breathtaking paintings to innovative sculptures and mixed media pieces, our students have showcased their artistic brilliance. And I think that our students were very impressed with our student work. The community and families were very impressed with our student work. And we just want to keep that going through the years. Battle of the Books. Congratulations to all of our Battle of the Books winner. For elementary first place, we have Andrew Elementary School.
053For second place, we have Northwest Elementary School. And for third place, we have Lafayette Yearround Elementary School. In our middle school division, as you see on the screen, Western Hornet Middle School took home the prize. Second place was Hornet Central Middle School and third place was Coats Irwin Middle School. For a high school, first place was Western Hornet High School. Second place came in Triton High School and third place Hornet Central High School. for our CTE spotlight. The Coats Grove Fire and Rescue donation um of Engine 642 to the Hornet Central High School Fire Technology Academy led by Chief Jonathan Denton. Engine 642 will support this program by enabling students to complete practical requirements for their firefighter one certification. We would like to thank Coats Grove for their continued support for our CTE programs and
054their investment in the future of fire service. And we see some familiar faces in there, too. All right. Social worker appreciation month was in March. And so, we just want to take a moment to celebrate the heart and dedication of our amazing Hornet County Schools social workers. Each day, they show up with compassion and unwavering support for our students and families. um they are the bridge between our challenges and solutions, ensuring that every child has the resources and advocacy that they need to thrive in our schools. So, thank you all. All right, let's get ready to rumble. Hornet County Schools robot Rumble took place. It was so exciting with all the creativity that was going on. This is a district-wide robotics competition. We had six middle school and 13 elementary schools um participated. And we
055had some first, second, and third place winners. I do believe Miss Ferguson already mentioned that, but I'm going to name it again. Our middle school division winners for first place was Dun Middle School. Second place, Coach Irwin Middle, third place, Hornet Central Middle, and the Spirit Award went to Dun Middle School. And again, the Spirit Award is presented to the team that demonstrates gracious professionalism. outstanding enthusiasm and having a team spirit. And so our elementary division winners, Boone Trail Elementary came in first place, second place Irwin Elementary School, third place Northwest Hornet Elementary, and again that spirit award went to Johnsonville Elementary School. As we look ahead to this month, we have some exciting more things on the horizon. Um, National Assistant Principles Week beginning today, April 7th through the 11th, we acknowledge our assistant
056principles. Our assistant principles are the backbone in our schools, you guys. From dealing with the buses, school discipline, you name it, they're doing it and they are there to support the principal. So, when you see an assistant principal in the grocery store, in the school, please just give them a smile and wave and tell them thank you. As Miss um Thompson said earlier this evening, our job fair will take place tomorrow um um from 4 to 6 pm at the Hornet County Resource and Library Center that is at 455 McKini Parkway, Lilington. Um we are seeking donated professionals in various roles including teachers, support staff, and custodial. Meet our team, explore their career opportunities, and see where you can make a difference in our schools. Chairman Powell, members of the board, this concludes the public
057information report. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Miss Frell. Are there additional questions for Miss Frell? I just like to say I had the opportunity to attend two of the Hornet off Broadway presentations. Next year, I'm going to try to make it to all four. But I was really, really impressed. We have some really talented students and good teachers in our county as well. Some really talented students. I was really impressed with their performances, their artwork, just everything. It was very well done, by the way. So, my compliments you and your staff on a very successful endeavor. That concludes our reports. We're going to move along now to our discussion items. And first of all, we have schoolboard policy updates and that would be Miss Thompson who defers to attorney Duke. Mr. Chairman Pal
058and members of the board. Uh the discussion items, the recent changes uh in school policies are mandated actually by federal changes. So there have been significant changes in Washington about the uh the federal regulations about Title 9. uh those have resulted in a need to change our policies which previously uh were in in lock step with the federal regulations for grievance policies and procedures under the previous administration. And so u these are simply uh new a new policy uh which is 7237. uh it it simply outlines in our own policies to make it accessible to the people of Hornet County uh what the federal regulations are and what we're going to do to follow the federal regulations that are laid down uh from Washington. Thank you. So if there any questions be happy to answer
059any questions for Mr. Duke? We'll follow up with action items. Correct. That's right. And so um I can explain that very quickly in the discussion here and that is that um we are following what has been put out by the North County School Board Association's recommendations for model policies and so we uh had a 7236 which we are updating uh to be in compliance. However, the new model policies put out by the the North Carolina School Board Association have an additional 7237, which is the procedures uh for they've broken it out uh the new procedures uh to to file a formal grievance uh and complaint under Title 9. And so that'll be the new the new uh portion here. You see 7237 is a brand new uh policy um that addresses that. uh while uh
060what will be covered in action item 7236 is actually just an update of an existing 7236. And so we'll be able to go ahead and put in place what we can tonight. Uh and then we will according to our own policy updates and what's laid down as our ability to update policies, we'll have to wait until the next meeting to uh take up 7237. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Duke. Next, we have a bus patrol update and that would be Mr. Pearson. Yes, Chairman Pal. Uriah Parker here, our transportation director, is going to share with you an update on bus patrol. Uh, this is our program for um ticketing citations uh for stop sign violations. Um, we are kind of at the end of our contract with Bus Patrol, so we've been in some preliminary
061conversations with them about what would it look like to renew versus um, you know, other options. So, I'll let Mr. Parker share the statistics and then we can answer any questions you have. Chairman Mau, members of the board, um I didn't bring a bunch of videos this time, but if you want to see videos, I can provide those. But um I didn't get a report in, let's see, September. If you look, I got August and then it skips over to October. So that's why there's a gap there. If you look in the green, that's the approved citations. We had a really high month in October. Um, stop arm not fully deployed. It's in the yellow there. That's most of the time the stop arm still coming out as the vehicles go by. And improper activation,
062which has been a good training tool, and I wish the activations improper activations would go down, but it seems to fluctuate. So, um, we do try to at least have conversations with those drivers going pretty much throwing the stop sign out on the car, not giving them time to stop. Let's see. I'm trying to change it. And that will show you more visually of the trend there. towards the beginning of the school year, there's more citations than approved citations than throughout the year. And as you can see, it's starting to rise back up. I don't know why that is. Um I looked at last year's, but I didn't do a chart for last year. Around the same time frame, we had that peak. I'm not sure cuz you would think maybe travel through Thanksgiving or
063somewhere. I guess they're traveling for Halloween. I don't know. But hey, there's a there's a bunch of them on there October month. Now, the September I pulled I said I didn't get a report for I had to pull my own for the September. Um I couldn't get a pretty report for my bar graph there. And I know Miss Gayy asked about this last time. I want to say first time offenders between August till today to date we had 1,911 first time offenders offended more than twice. 28 offended at least three times. Two. And it's the same person that offended both. That means he's offended once, twice, and now three times. Three times. Twice. the um it goes four 400 for the first citation, 750 for the second, and a,000 for the third. So, he's received
064one for each and then two for the 1,000. So, he didn't go against his insurance, but I try to make it simple. You got any questions? Any questions for Mr. Parker? How is it on collections? That data I have to request from bus patrol. I know there's a bunch just what I can visually see. Um I wish I can export it to a spreadsheet. I have to go through line by line and count what's been collected. Um I think I can't remember it might be about 50 on one page maybe. I don't know about George Miller on on the alert brothers page there's about 50 per page I think 54 54 so you'll have to go line by line and go to each page count line by line so I don't know what's being collected
065now I do know we're never going to be in deposit they they charge us a $90,000 a month tech fee and our our portion of the citations never meets $90,000. Um 300 I think the most I've seen is probably close to 40 for the month. So yeah, that's what I would share is that we we've not been res revenue positive during these three years. Now we're not building a amount owed to them because part of the contract is that what we don't hit is um dismissed. However, that's been part of our conversations if we enter a new contract with them is where do we have to get to be res revenue positive. That tech fee um in initial conversations has come down from $300 a bus to $175 per bus. But um we still Mr.
066Cox and I reviewing it still don't feel like we'd quite be at the revenue positive. Um which that's not the goal of the program to make revenue. But um the number of citations as you see is still pretty high. And based on neutral based on the conversations we had, I was trying to find the data. Um so glad y'all kept talking there. Bus patrol said we have a 74% payment rate for the citations. And currently no blocking of tags or anything on the DMV. So, nothing to force them to What are they doing if they don't $100 $100 fee added on to it, but I know we've got some I mean, it just keeps adding up $100. I know I know the general statute states that we can block the tax, but with bus patrol
067being able to do so, it hasn't happened yet. So, so it actually it has to be bus patrol that requests the tags be blocked. From my understanding, yes. Interesting. And I know they don't have access to the DMV system. So, just curious, is it in the same place? Is this person violating the same place all the time or that one person? Yeah. I hadn't been able to look and see what place, you know, we've had one get one close to North Hornet and one day and one on 87 the same same morning. Same. So same same morning. Um I didn't look I just actually saw that one this afternoon. I said, "Man, that's the same person." So I hadn't looked yet. I can look in a minute. But um I think our biggest areas though
068are towards highway 87 210 and which I think is the biggest military population and I know stop arm laws vary from state to state just a little slightly. So I think that's one reason why our rates higher that way, but also we have bus stops and busy I mean four lanes of traffic and busy areas and there's nowhere else to put the bus stop where people live. I mean cross from the Walmart on 87 that's a that's the worst one and constantly. Any other questions? Well, I hope I made that as painful as possible. Thank you for being here. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Parker. Next, we have a school resource officer update. That would be Mr. Pearson as well as Captain David Miller with the Hornet County Sheriff's Department. Yes, Chairman Palmer, the board. So,
069Captain Miller is here and sheriff is here as well. Um, I just asked them to kind of give you guys an update on our SRO program. Um, and uh, Captain Miller and I work closely on a number of things. Um, I sent you an email just a little while ago, something we got to talk about after the meeting tonight. So, I'll let him give an update uh, and answer any questions. Uh, good evening, chairman, members. So, right now we have 22 SRO positions. We have three schools that are not filled. Uh, we just filled another one. We had four. We just filled another one. Um, with that said, it's kind of hard to fill the SRO position. For one, the state puts a requirement on what an officer can do to be an SRO. They
070have to have a year prior advancement and then they have up to a year to get certified. And I'm not counting the new school flat uh Flatwoods yet. So, when that one's built, then hopefully we'll just be down to one. Okay. Y'all any questions? Is Ben in Johnsonville still having a sheriff SRO? Yes, sir. Plus, let me let me also say that we do offer off duty. So, officers that are working patrol can come and work off duty at the schools that we have available if somebody's out or one that's doesn't have anybody there. I've voiced my concern several times about that. I don't have to tell you. You know what kind of an area that is out around Johnsonville in that area in there? And it's just not satisfactory to me to be sure
071as SRO officer. I especially think we need a full time Johnson. Are there other questions for Captain Miller? Okay. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. I'd also like to take this opportunity to recognize Sheriff Wayne Coats. Sheriff Coats, we're happy to have you with us tonight and thank you so much for coming and for your good work for the department, helping to keep our schools safe here. If I may. Yes, sir. The chair recognizes Sheriff Coats in reference to board member God that I want them in school. We had this meet when we put them in the school to start with, but you know, not everybody's made to be or wants to be SRO. Money is always a problem. And as Captain Miller said, you've got to the legislators and put a restriction on
072how they become an SRO. Now, to me, and I disagree with some of the legislators on this, when you're trained to be a deputy, you're trained in all situations. I don't really understand why they're saying you got to be on the road a year. If you go to Blet, you're put on the road in less than a year. Um, so it it's hard to get these folks to to want to be an SRO. And with the board, I graciously thank you for allowing more money to be give to them as as an um an incentive for them to want to do it. We've come a long ways with um where we were at before is other counties have lost officers. Off top of my head, Samson County was 30 officers down not long ago. Wow.
073Uh people are getting out of this profession, but my number one priority is filling up these schools. And we've done a real good job getting there. For safety reasons, I'm not going to go in and discuss which schools are getting part-time uh sharing because I don't want some of the folks out there to know which schools don't have one all day long. So hopefully we're getting to that that u getting them all filled. But then again, we're faced with all the new schools we're building. So at some point we may come back to you the commissioner and say hey we got to have more incentives or at least we don't need to that's that's topic for another another time but anyway thank y'all for what y'all did giving us the incentive money to get SRO
074to protect our students and our faculty. Thank you. Okay. Thank you Sheriff Coach. All right, moving along. We have our TA toteer partnership with Campbell University proposal. Miss Thompson and Miss Vonan, Chairman Powell and members of the board. Uh we just want to briefly talk about an opportunity that we've been working Campbell has talked with us over numerous years about the possibility. Um Miss Vancan, you can stay right up here. Have to sit down. Stay right up here with me. uh has talked about us for a number of years about trying to partner with them and Johnson County has a program similar to this where they help with tuition of their TAs to that are considering to be teachers. And in years past the number requirement has just been too big for us to be
075able to to do really realistically financially. And this past year uh when we met with them they said they would take as few as five um teachers out of our group. And so with this hope of seeing how it goes that maybe we can add to that and Mr. Cox and met with us and so um we will want this is just a way for us to expand our growing greatness program with a concentration on um trying to find EC teachers. So I'm going to let Miss Van just give a brief overview of what this is about. Sure. Absolutely. Um so again as as Miss Thompson mentioned Campbell University has approached us multiple times with this proposal um and so they are eager to um generate a partnership with us um through a TA toteer
076program that they offer. So the program would be entirely online for our current teacher assistance. Um and what we would like to do is mimic what Johnston County does. They have an internal um selection process within the district where they choose their best and brightest teacher assistants who want to become classroom teachers but don't have the necessary funding possibly to finish their bachelor's degree um or um whatever uh strengths may keep them from finishing up their degree. Um so what Johnson County does is they fully fund their tuition within limits. they are limited to the number of uh semester hours that they can take um and their additional fees and their textbooks. So, it's fully funded through Johnson County. They uh started with 20 TAs and they're up to 30. They're in their third year
077now. Um but like uh Miss Thompson was mentioning um they are willing to start with us with just a cohort of five if we're willing to do that. And um what they pitched to us is on page eight if you want to reference the budget and resources page. Um what they offered us was that u we would pay 100% of their tuition, $100 of their technology fee, and then they would um then cover the additional technology fee, which is $20, and any textbook fees. And Campbell did mention that some depending on the class, there may not be a textbook fee, but whatever textbook fees did arise, they would they would take care of that. Um, and so if you if you do the math on that, that would uh give that would put us Hornet
078County Schools paying $4,600 per student per year. Um, the the idea being that um we would send them again our best and brightest. We would also want to make sure that these candidates um have close to an associates or an associates degree in hours. Okay? So that way if they have if they have additional two years um they don't have that financial fee on them if that makes any sense. Um however if they do have additional classes that they need to take the understanding would be that they would cover those tuition costs. Okay. This is what we would pay. Um now the uh my understanding is that there is a teacher assistant tuition reimbursement grant program that the state offers um where districts that received uh lowwealth funding the previous fiscal year are able to
079recoup $4,600 per school year per teacher assistant. Those who that are pursuing their um teaching degree and license. So um again the way I'm understanding it, Mr. Cox, you correct me if I'm wrong here. Okay, is that um we would pay for these folks to get their to finish their degree and we would be able to recoup that money from the state. Okay, so at the end of the day it would be a zero for us. Um now in addition to that we uh talked about it and uh we would like to target um teacher teacher assistants that want to become EC teachers. Um and the idea is that in uh there's more information on this and there's been some research um within the proposal. Um it is on page five. There's a needs analysis
080there. The the special education teacher pipeline is extremely stressed. Of course we do have an alternative uh lensure pathway into the EC classroom. But oftentimes those teachers are um inundated with all of the learning that takes place in your first year or so as an EC teacher especially. Um and so the idea is that if we are um recruiting teacher assistants from our district who already want to be in Hornet County and they want to be EC teachers um that they already have an idea of what is going to be expected to them for when they get in the classroom and they're not completely blind to what um what this job entails. Okay, Miss Thompson, did I did I cover everything? Right. So, we bring that to you for you to review and and maybe
081at a later time we will come back to that and ask for approval around that. But, um, we are excited about the possibilities. We feel like this is a way for us to build our own pipeline, so to speak, and added that growing greatness program that we already have and with Campbell, we're grateful uh Campbell has stuck in here with us and tried to make it work for us and so we're excited about the possibilities on that. Thank you. Thank you. Can I ask question? Absolutely. Would there be some kind of um requirement for the teachers to stay with us for so many years? Yes. Or whatever. Yes, ma'am. Three years. Three years. That's correct. Thank you, Miss County. We should have said that. Yes. Any other questions? And Miss Mon did a lot of
082work on this and I thank her for her hard work along with her colleagues and recruitment. Okay. I think this has excellent potential. We have several uh good resources among our teacher assistants. I know in the past we've had several that have worked pretty much on their own. I assume uh and pursuing this pathway to become an actual four-year teacher. And I know we have a lot of success stories. I know we have several others. Maybe it's a little extra boost. This is a good deal, you know, for both of us. I think it's a good deal for both of us. The uh perspective you students and uh for us as well. So I definitely think this is an idea worth pursuing. So, thank you, Miss Vancan, for your excellent presentation and Miss Thompson for
083all your work on this. We'll definitely be taking a look at it. Consent agenda items. I will entertain a motion. Move that we approve the consent agenda as amended previously. Second. Have a motion and a second. Is there further discussion? Hearing none, the chairman votes I. Abate, I gain I hear no votes. The motion carries. Moving on to action items. Uh, review and consider approval of the 2025 2026 local appropriate appropriations and facility needs funding request and that would be Mr. Matthews and Mr. Cox. Chairman Pal me members of the board. As you'll remember, we discussed uh the proposed um budget request at our work at our last work session. And so uh I I ask if you had uh any thoughts on anything that uh you would like to revisit. Uh and so I
084would just uh hand it off to Mr. Cox to have uh the comments that he would like to make and any discussion that you would like to have going forward. Mr. Cox. Thank you, Mr. Matthews. as uh from last month, there were a couple of uh suggested changes that you'd like to see based on the proposal. We did put those into the superintendent's recommended budget. One of those was um we had put forward a 4% uh supplement increase based on feedback from the board. The board uh would like um to see that be a percentbased increase for everybody to get to 12%. So, we added that um into the budget. Um slight increase cost from a little over 4 million to 5 million. Another uh increase uh uh is on the facility needs and I'll
085talk about that in just a minute. Um but just to recap, uh local appropriation for this year was 30.8 million. Um there's a the uncertainty of the low wealth funding. the commissioners have agreed to provide what we need on lowwealth funding based on what we lost. If the state doesn't come through so that's just a contingency. We don't have that in the request right now. Again, uh my response to Mr. Abate there, we hadn't heard anything back from our delegation or the general assembly, but we're still remain hopeful that uh something will change on that, especially with some of the new data for lowwealth coming out with other districts losing money. Maybe that'll catch their eye and make them uh um take some action there. As part of the um request uh is growing charter
086schools and growing funding from the county would be roughly $800,000. Uh second year of increasing coaching supplements would be $66,000. Adding four curriculum specialists for additional curriculum work um just under 400,000. And for increased supplements, in addition to increased salaries and benefits, we factored in a 3% salary increase uh that we're anticipating the state um provide to employees. I faced in a 6% hospitalization increase and a 1% retirement rate increase. Um again, we have to wait for the budget to come out to know what those truly are, but that's what this budget is based on. And then also factored in uh we did a classified salary study the prior year that was not funded. We're going back and asking for a portion of that money for our classified staff. So total for uh staff salaries
087and updates increase of 7,947,000 total expansion request of 9,90,000. Um on the capital side uh we have a few items in there. visitor management software uh to for safety to be uniform throughout the whole district, everybody on the same system. Um and then uh our regular capital needs uh based on from uh maintenance uh roughly 1.2 million of capital needs there broken down in the different uh areas. Total tier one or short-term capital needs is 191 million. And I'll talk a little more about the majority of those on the capital needs side. Capital outlay equipment, which is category two, um on the proposal, nothing changed from there. Roughly $400,000 for the items that you saw last uh month. And same thing, capital out capital outlay vehicles, which is category three. Um roughly 900,000 there. Total
088uh current expense and continuation and expansion requests is $39,995,293. I'm on the capital side 193 million there. Specific on the capital needs uh as uh Mr. Pearson mentioned in his update, we currently have Flatwoods uh uh beginning stages of that. The bond sold uh last week, so we'll be seeing some action more on that. Loomington Shawtown gym is currently uh going up now. Um and the school nutrition freezer cooler project is something that uh we we bid out. We didn't bid out. We went through uh uh procurement process. We weren't able to utilize some of the school nutrition funds based on DPI's guidance. So, we've taken a step back and now going forward with uh in the bidding process uh uh to get that back out there as your your you've already approved that process,
089but that's just uh short-term uh project. We did move up uh Buoys Creek on our short-term tier one projects. Um and we uh the Triton auxiliary gym remained there. Uh those are two uh concerns or questions that the board had last month. So that makes up that 190 million that I mentioned um of tier one capital projects. Tier 2 projects are Lafayette year round um school gym renovations got uh high school renovations um on that list as well. Tier three projects five to five to six years out. um northern another northern elementary school, southwest elementary school, north haret primary renovations and then the tier 4 projects which are 7 to 8 years out which is a northwest haret middle school. We already have the land for that a western area middle school and then some
090other school renovations um as needed. Uh so that's the uh local uh request, budget request and the capital needs uh that um is recommended by the superintendent and we uh appreciate your consideration and recommend that you approve that at to become the board's budget that we can share with the commissioners on April 29th. Happy to take any questions or answer any concerns that you may have. Thank you. Further questions for Mr. Cox. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Cox. I will entertain a motion. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to recommend that we approve the 202526 school facility needs request. Okay. At this time, thank you. Second, we have a motion and a second. Is there further discussion? Hearing none, the chairman votes I. Habate I gain I hearing no nay votes the motion carries. Thank you Mr.
091Cox. Do we need a motion for the local request? I don't think so. I think be all inclusive. Would that be all inclusive? Yeah, that'd be all it. Next, we have review and consider renewal of a joint use agreement with Hick County Schools for the athletic and park amenities at Neil's Creek Park. Mr. Matthews, Mr. Chairman and uh members of the board, I I told staff that I would take this one since this just came before the commissioners uh at the last board and I'm very familiar with that. But basically we have a agreement with uh the county with parks and recre recreation facilities uh department specifically uh in sharing of some facilities out at Hornet Central Middle School, Hornet Central High School area and the Neils Creek Park area. Um several years ago, uh
092we allowed the uh county to utilize those fields, uh as long as the school system had first choice, uh or or first privilege of use if needed. And in in return, they agreed to upkeep the fields and everything for us. So, it kind of took that maintenance off of our hands. Uh and we also came to an agreement on some sharing of uh facilities that are out there as well. and uh some facilities that they may may well add. Uh they are actually wanting to go out for some grant funds that need them to have at least if they don't own the facility to have a lease agreement uh that is in excess of is 25 years or more. Right now that lease is at 24 years and so they've come back and asked if
093we would u agree to uh extend that lease back to the 30 years we did six years ago so that they could go out for these grant funds. And I would I would recommend approval of both the uh agreement for uh the lease and for the use of the uh facilities at the park at at the at the park and the school. Yes. Okay. Have we not, if I remember correctly, have we not had some sort of agreement with them ever since the school was built? We have that and that was at that time if you remember uh at uh out at Western Hornet High School and at Hart Central High School part of the federal grant funds that were used to build those parks. Part of the language to go along with that was
094that it would be used in uh cooperation with both the school and the community. And so that way you didn't have school fields that in the example of baseball and softball were used basically two or three months a year and and go unused let's say through the summer. Uh now community recreation can use those. So uh that was true with the tennis courts and uh softball fields and uh baseball. We pretty much kept our own baseball field just for since recreational baseball is not a big thing at that 90 foot base level. So anyway, that is a good point. Yeah. Okay. Yes, sir. Any questions for Mr. Matthews? Mr. Chairman, I move that we approve the joint use agreement as presented. Second. Have a motion and a second. Is there additional discussion? Chairman votes I.
095Abate I. Gainy I. Josh I. Hearing no votes. The motion is approved. Mr. Chairman, I move that we approve the Neils Creek Park lease agreement as presented. Second. Have a motion and a second. Is there additional discussion? Chairman votes I. Abate I. Gany. I. The motion is approved. Thank you, Mr. Matthews. Thank you. Next, we have a review and cons consider approval of expanding year-round school to include grade six. Miss Ferguson, Chairman Pal, members of the board, um as you know, we asked Miss Elizabeth Hodgej, the principal of the year- round school to do a survey of her parents and the community. So, she did this um twice on Facebook page and social media and the web page. And so currently she has 169 students at a K at her K5 year round school. We
096received interest for 248 students next year. So that's an increase of 79 students which is very positive. We're excited over that. And that does include enough students to have one sixth grade self-contained classroom. So we would like to propose tonight and ask that um the Lafayette year round be a K6 school for next year. and we'll continue building to add the middle school. Okay. Any discussion? Mr. Chairman, I'll make a motion to approve expanding the year round school to include sixth grade as presented. Second. Have a motion and a second. Is there further discussion? Hearing none. The chairman votes I. Abate I. Ky I hearing no nay votes. The motion is approved. Thank you, Miss Ferguson. Thank you. I'd like to thank Miss Hodgej and her staff for all the work. So, thank you. Thank
097you. And I think we'll come right back to you, Miss Ferguson. Review and consider approval of AMN Allied Services Limited Liability Corporation. Yes, sir. Chairman Pal, members of the board, this is a contract for related services for EC. Okay. Any questions for Mr. Ferguson? If not, I'll entertain a motion. Motion. Mr. Chairman, I move that we approve the AMN Allied Service LLC as presented. Second. Have a motion and a second. Is there additional discussion? Chairman votes I gain. I The motion is approved. Thank you. Next, we have review and consider approval of vape detectors. Mr. Pearson. Yes, Chairman Palmer, the board. Um, as you recall, we received some grant money uh from the state from school safety grant and uh designated to use a good portion of that for this. Um, we've tried three different
098vape detectors across multiple schools and this is the one we feel like gives us the best combination of performance and price. Uh, so bringing this to you tonight because of the cost being over the threshold. Uh, this would provide um 80 detectors. So, uh, putting these in restrooms that are, you know, male, female next to each other. Uh so this would cover 40 sets of restrooms which would give us 100% coverage at high schools and um about 70% coverage at middle schools with the idea to get the rest of the middle schools. All middle schools would have some coverage. Um and we would target probably working our way at upper grade levels and then kind of down towards the lower grade levels. Um so just looking for your approval based on the cost but certainly
099have happy to answer any questions you have about these devices as well. Your recommendation is bright light technology. Correct. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I move that we approve the contract with Bright Light Technology in the amount of $100,320 for vape detectors. Second. Have a motion and I have a second. Is there additional discussion or questions for Mr. Pearson? Hearing none. Chairman votes I. Abate I. Gay I. The motion is approved. Mr. Chairman. Yes sir. request. Sure. As far as our cell phones is concerned, the pouches. Mhm. How many schools are using those now? Uh, so Mr. White has been overseeing that. We have three schools. I believe he can correct me if I'm wrong there. Western Hornet High, Highland Middle, and Star Academy. Okay. What's the hold up? What's the hold up on something? Money. Yes,
100sir. We're waiting for the folks to write the check. We'll be ready to go. Okay. And if I if I might interject here, uh Mr. Godfrey, um I I have uh been in conversations uh with some of our legislative de delegation who has u um who have made the statement that they are going to find us the money that we have already spent to outfit those three schools so that we can continue to phase schools in as much as possible. And of course, uh, Mr. White and his folks are always looking at grant possibilities, which is how they funded these. And, uh, so anyway, we're, uh, we we hear you loud and clear, and we are in total agreement. We're working in that direction as hard as we can go. And res, I bring that
101up not to as a point of argument, but I have questions from people asking why over here and not over there. Yes, sir. Okay, I understand. Okay, we'll move back to U Mr. Pearson. Uh item seven, review and consider approval of bus planner. So, one of the items that Mr. Parker did not share in his bus patrol presentation was that at the beginning of this school year, we were informed that they would no longer cover Bus Planner, which is our routing software, or our GPS software to track our buses. Um, bus planner was very gracious and allowed us some time to um, figure out the funding and figure out moving forward. Um, so we have actually operated off of bus planner since of July. This approval is based again on the price um, of the
102contract requires board approval, but this is for the current school year in which Bus Planner has been allowing us to use without charge up to this point. And so we we do need to kind of square up with them. Um, but also that is a part of our conversation with bus patrol is that not only have we not been res revenue positive, we have a couple hundred,000 in cost that has been passed on to us that we now have to find the money for this routing software being one of them. Okay, I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Chairman, I move that we approve the bus planner as have a motion and a second. Is there additional discussion or questions for Mr. Pearson? Hearing none. Chairman votes I. Abate I. Yay. I say I. Hearing none. They
103votes. The motion carries. Action item eight. Review and consider tolling agreement for Northwest Hornet Pond Duke easement. Once again, Mr. Pearson. Thank you, Chairman Pal. Uh, as you all know, we've kind of been in engaged in a back and forth conversation with Duke about the retention pond which was built in their easement at Northwest Hornet. uh this agreement um when you read the name you would maybe assume money is changing hands. This there's no money changing hands in this. This is simply an agreement a mutual agreement not to seek legal action us against them or them against us while we continue to seek resolution to this. Um so while we don't have permanent resolution yet, we are much closer. Um, and so Duke and us have kind of both said, you know, we'll continue to
104work through this over the next couple of months to a a final resolution and we'll avoid legal uh action until we can get there. Okay, I'll entertain a motion motion approvement as presented. Second, we have a motion and a second. Is there additional discussion? Chairman vote. Mr. Duke, has this been approved um reviewed and I would put that to Mr. Pearson. I believe it has, but that that's being handled by Yes. So, Therington Smith, our legal council and their construction team have reviewed. Perfect. Any other questions? Chairman votes I. Abate I. Gay. I hearing no native votes. The motion is approved. Action item nine, review and consider approval of schoolboard policy 40357236. Mr. Duke, thank you. Uh, Chairman Pal, members of the board, and we also have, uh, Miss Courtney Blackburn who is the title
105N coordinator and the resident expert. She's here as well through additional questions. But this as uh stated earlier is to comply it's to update our current uh policy to comply with the new title nine regulations that are again federal regulations that have changed. Okay. Are the questions for the Mr. Duke or Miss Blackburn? If not, I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Chairman, I move that we approve the policy update as presented. Second. Have a motion and a second. Is there additional discussion? Hearing none, the chairman votes I. Abate I. Yay. I hearing no nay votes. The motion is approved. 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
106consider matters relating to the initial employment of 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 additional discussion? Chairman votes I. Abate I. Gay I. The motion carries. We're now in close session. [Music] Following a motion and a second, we are now back in open session. Mr. Matthews, anything else tonight? Yes, Mr. Pal, I have uh one recommendation. I would recommend uh uh personnel action. Miss Emily McNeel as the uh principal for Ben Haven Elementary School beginning with the 2526 school year personnel item chairman of vote eye motion first. Oh yeah, we do need a motion. I'll entertain a motion. My apologies. Mr. Chairman, I'll make a motion that we move as chair as principal of Hagen
107Elementary School. I'll second. We have a motion and a second. Now personnel item chairman votes I. Avant I gy I hearing no nay votes the motion is approved. Anything else Mr. Matthews? That's it Mr. Chairman. Okay I'll entertain a motion. Motion adjourn Mr. Chair. Second. Have emotion and