001[Music] for [Music] for [Music] for [Music] for [Music] for [Music] for [Music] okay good morning I'd like to call the August uh Harnet Board of Education work session to order and before we uh follow the agenda move into our invocation and Pledge of Allegiance I'd like to recognize our Deputy superintendent Mr Brooks Matthews uh yes sir U Vice chairman pal and members of the board just wanted to make you aware that we lost one of our U uh grounds uh Keepers I guess say Le gr keeper uh this weekend with an unfortunate accident Mr Rashad wise 35 years old two children uh and I just like for us to maybe observe a moment of silence for him this morning he's very well liked excellent leader and it's been it's hit our guys down there pretty
002hard so if we could have them on the side please thank you so much thank you Mr Man Matthew's our thoughts and prayers with the family of Mr wise I knew Mr wise very sad to hear this news very fine young man and a good uh asset to our County board so our prayers is with the wise family okay if we would everyone please stand I'd like to call on Mr Don Godfrey to lead us in prayer yes sir I will please join me in prayer if you will our most rightous kind Heavenly Father we come to you this morning thanking you Lord for the privilege of being here and your presence Lord to do the work that we're supposed to do we pray God that there will be no barriers that Lord all of
003us are the same you look at everybody the same way dear Lord nobody is any better or any different than anybody else we pray for this family dear Lord that is going through this grief right now father we pray for this coworker bless his family dear Lord take care of them and guide them through this tragedy dear Lord and father be with us as we go about our business dear Lord today and Father we would keep you in mind Lord we know this world is full of apostasy and Abomination especially in this nation today and Lord we pray that somehow we could get back on the right track to the light of Your Love dear Lord and get off of this dark road that we've been going down I pray signs in the name of
004Jesus for his sake amen amen Mr V would you please please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance I PL Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all thank you may be seated okay this time I'll entertain a motion motion to motion to approve as presented Sor have a motion and second is there any discussion hearing none the chairman votes I AB I gy I motion is approved let's move on to uh number two on our agenda special presentation superintendent uh search firms uh first on the this is the firm of mcferson and Jacobson executive Recruitment and development uh so are they ready to go she yes we are if so they uh can
005present a presentation not to exceed 10 minutes thank you Jennifer is the presentation up it is thank you it's a pleasure to meet you all my name is Dr Candace finan can you hear me okay we're working on that he you yeah it should be on yeah you can go ahead and begin okay thank you very I appreciate your invitation and allowing me to present our protocols from our our um company today um whoever is advancing the slide I'm on slide two I just like to tell you what we believe in in mcferson and Jacobson we believe that every student is entitled to a high quality education we strongly believe that quality education is dependent upon quality leadership our mission is to ensure each search results in quality leadership for educational Excellence we've been established
006since we've done over a thousand searches we have between 120 and 135 uh Consultants Nationwide that work on searches and we are recruiters of talent the team that would be working with you you can see my name is first on the list but the lead would be Dr Barry Carroll he's not able to be here today he's in the air flying at this point but there would be five people assigned to your search and we would work with very closely with you I will give you a little bit of my background I'm a retired superintendent from Pennsylvania I spent 15 years as superintendent 14 as assistant superintendent in a very fast growing um School District on the Delaware River we were 75 miles west of New York City so after 911 we had a massive
007um growth in our school district and um one of my connections as I was reading about your District my doctoral dissertation was on yearr round education and year round schooling notice that you have a yearr round um School Pro program in your District um that's very impressive by the way little bit more about our search um as we work through the search we're very transparent with you and with the clients and and the U applicants we engage an authentic stakeholder um we we meet with your stakeholders we engage with them we gather information from them and then we prepare an executive report for you about what your community says is important to them about um the community the schools and what they'd like to see in their next superintendent and we have a track record
008of very successful placements so why engage a search form well you obviously are looking for a search firm but we believe it's a structured transparent and objective process from the beginning to the end um we set timelines for the search um can you advance to the next slide please uh we engage with stakeholders and developing the search criteria which is very important and we help design the with you designing the application interview forms postings brochures Graphics interview questions all of that is done for you that's what our firm will do for you and I'm sure all firms do that but why choose um mcferson and Jake ion well we have a three-step vetting process we believe it's very very robust we recruit and we bet candidates with a very objective process we verify resumés we
009conduct reference checks and background checks we communicate directly with all candidates throughout the process we navigate your open meeting requirements advertising posting rules ensuring confidentiality and we will do any kind of investigation and evaluation of appropriate salary and benefits if that's something important to you and we will um help with contracts if that's of of importance what's important about our vetting is we will go three deep we will um call the references that are listed and then we ask those references to give us other references and then we ask those references to give us other ref references we will do Google searches we will read board minutes if that person had been a commissioned officer in another state we will do whatever we can to ensure that we are putting forth the best candidate that
010meets your criteria next so as I mentioned we've conducted over a th000 superintendent searches in 45 States we stand on the strength of what I just said about our reference checking we also have about 120 to 135 Consultants working at various times throughout the 45 States and with that um oftentimes they know of great candidates that would be a good fit and so we network with our own Consultants to help find the right person for your particular School District we pride ourselves in being flexible and customized iable in our search protocols and work with your needs and your requests most of all we're very proud of our retention of candidates almost 85% of the candidates hired have remained in the same position after 5 years over 55% of the candidates hired have remained in the
011same position after 10 years and over 40% of the candidates hired remained in the same position I after 15 years we do know that leadership makes a difference in school districts we also know that sustainable leadership over time can make those changes and grow that District in the direction that the Board of Trustees wishes it to be in the community so we're very proud of our our results and we believe that has to do with our recruiting and vetting process so why hire us why hire mcferson and Jacobson we don't hire superintendent you hire the superintendent we are consultants and recruiters of talent we will bring that talent to your attention and then you as a board will choose who best fits your need in your school district at the time what's the timeline for
012us generally next slide please generally the timeline is from our first meeting to the final candidate um meeting is about 8 to 12 weeks but that timeline can vary with whatever your needs are in your school district next slide will show you the five phases of our superintendent search I will not read these but I will just explain what those phases are the first phase is we identify what you're looking for what characteristics you're looking for in a candidate we identify whatever stakeholder groups you'd like us to meet with we establish the timeline we establish the advertising venues we determine a salary range that's important for advertising the job and then we craft and post the vacancy that's our first phase our second phase is we will come into your district and meet with stakeholder
013group gather data that will help you hear what your community is saying and and perhaps develop uh your interview questions eventually around some of the those criteria we'll develop promotional materials about your District we'll send out and receive um applications by the way our um our company's website gets about 225 ,000 hits a month from candidates looking for for positions we will also actively recruit candidates and again I mentioned we have a um a wide array of Consultants across the United States based on your student population based on your countywide school district you have different needs than smaller or uh just Urban school districts so we will meet with our consultants and we will find um potential applicants for you for your particular needs in your District phase three we'll read for you and evaluate
014all applicant files wherever applies we'll conduct reference checks and background investigations as I mentioned we do a lot of newspaper readings we do board minutes we do Google searches and we will invite selected candidates to produce videos and through the these videos you will get to meet the candidate um and decide if you wish to um interview those candidates for your position in phase four we will review the remaining short list so after the videos um we'll have a short list of candidates for you we'll assist you in identifying who those candidates are that you might want to interview will I'll prepare you for the interview process we'll schedule the interviews if you wish and we will keep all candidates informed of their status and I think that's really important to do phase five is
015we will meet with you and the select a candidate and establish performance objectives if you choose to work with us on establishing those project those performance objectives we will provide a 2-year guarantee and what does that mean it means that if the person that you have selected does not stay for whatever reason it doesn't matter um if that person does not stay for two years we will come back and redo the search for you for free but as you can see we have a pretty good track record of people staying in their position so um but we' like to give that guarantee in the event that for some reason somebody leaves okay you've exceeded your time limit and Jacobson for this the proposed cost is not to exceed $ 38,3 se5 thank you moving on
016to our second uh presentation uh we're honored to have uh Mr uh excuse me the North Carolina School boards Association and Mr Sam Thorp Mr Thorp welcome and uh you have the floor for a period not of time not to exceed 10 minutes thank you yes sir uh thank you Mr chair Dr Fleming members of the board cabinet members thank you on behalf of ncsba for inviting me to present to you um this morning uh very briefly so just so you have a little bit of background information about myself my name is Sam um I'm an attorney at the North Carolina School boards Association I've been at ncsba for about seven and a half years during that time I've done a lot of both legal and policy work as well as superintendent search work in
017districts all over North Carolina including some work on your your District's last search in 2017 reason I'm here this morning very obviously you're beginning to look for a new superintendent toward that end I've had a couple of conversations with your board attorney in follow up to my most recent conversation with him I sent him an email that included as attachments several draft documents as well as a memo explaining each of them my understanding is he has shared those documents with you I brought hard copies of those same documents with me this morning you should have a folder in front of you that has those as well we refer to those as initial search documents without going into too much detail we would need you the board to vote on and approve those documents in order
018to get your search officially started I just wanted you to have those as a frame of reference as I walk through this PowerPoint where I'll give you a little bit of detailed information about our search service I'll answer any questions that you have about our search service or what it would look like if we did another search for your board I'm obviously available at any point moving forward to come back or to answer any calls or emails that you have with inquiries about our search service we have a team of folks uh five folks that work on superintendent searches three attorneys and two administrative Specialists we have a lot of experience we've done at least one search for 84 of the state's 115 school districts and we've done we have completed or in the process
019of completing over 200 uh total searches first step in our process involves deciding whether or not even want to do a search some boards depending on their circumstances have an internal or external candidate that the board knows they're going to hire or they know they're very very likely going to hire and for pretty obvious reasons it does not always make sense to do a search in those situations if that's not the case with you you do want to do a search you want to do it with us first step involves approving those draft documents that I've shared copies of with you first of those is a draft timeline it includes Target dates for all of the significant steps in the search process one thing to keep in mind about the timeline the only fixed date
020the only hard and fast date is the application deadline you have to set a date and time certain when the applications have to be submitted by all of the other dates are flexible though we would want to Hue somewhat closely to it to land on the same projected or close to those projected announcement and beginning employment dates the um forgive me the next initial documents is a vacancy announcement which includes clud some general information about your school system and your community it also explains to applicants who to contact with any questions about the search process about the application Etc um the application um that you have a copy of is mostly generic in terms of of getting candidates education experience work experience superintendent lure Etc uh when it comes to advertising we have several places
021that we always advertise because it's free there are also several paid places that we offer to advertise it is entirely up to you to decide whether or not you want to spend any money on advertising and if so where you want to spend those dollars when it comes to recruitment as a general rule we do not actively recruit unless you the board specifically ask us to go and Target a particular candidate or we happen to know that there are candidates that are looking and may be a good fit uh for your board uh next step in our process is entirely optional forgive me um but it's but it's one we're happy to facilitate for you if you're interested it involves getting feedback from your community and staff about what sorts of things are most important
022to them in a new superintendent we've done this a million different ways we have found that the way to get the most feedback and the most candid feedback is through online surveys that folks can fill out privately on their own time anonymously we would handle if you wanted to do this step all of the logistics of setting those surveys up with your communication folks pushing those out we would come and present the results of those surveys to you at a called meeting and generally at that meeting we would also develop a leadership profile that includes some of the top characteristics traits and experience identified by your community and staff and possibly your board as being most important in a new superintendent again entirely optional sta one we're happy to facilitate for you if you're interested
023once the application deadline has passed we collect organize prepare and share with you all of those um materials in a very neat and digestible format we do it through an online secure platform we're going to share everything with you during the search electronically two reasons for this one is applicants to your school system you probably already know this are entitled to complete confidentiality that includes superintendent applicants we found that the best way to guard and maintain that confidentiality is by using symbl so each of you would have a unique login ID and password for accessing the materials um also there's just a lot of paper um that we share with you throughout the search process and we found that the the cheapest and most effective way to do that is through assmbly U once you've
024had enough time to review the applications I would come and meet with you in a called meeting a special called meeting rather uh where I would facilitate a discussion with you and you the board would decide who you want to have a first round sit down inperson interview with one point I want to make abundantly clear about this step in our process and our entire process um because it distinguishes us from other firms not all firms but many firms and not necessarily in a good or bad way but in a significant way and that is is we do not screen applicants I'm never going to tell you which application to look at or not look at who to interview or who to not interview who to hire or not hire North Carolina law makes very
025very clear it's locally elected Boards of Education exclusively who hire superintendents we don't get in the way of that we give you as much information as possible as good of information and we help you process it but when it comes to deciding who to interview and who to hire that's going to be entirely up to you once you've picked your first round interview e we do internet and social media searches and we pull um test data achievement data um depending on whether or not it's relevant and applicable to the applicants we share all of that with you on assembly before the interviews we would handle all of the logistics of setting up those interviews and I would come in person to facilitate them to make sure that they run smoothly get you in and out
026of open and closed session um uh record the minutes um and then at the end of those first round interviews generally boards are ready to narrow their list to finalists once you've done that we would do very thorough due diligence checking on each of them including criminal credit degree verification checks reference checking copies of their contracts past evaluations uh Etc we would post all of that information to assembly so you had plenty of time to review it before you had that sitdown interview most boards we would handle all of the logistics of the second round just like with the first round interview uh first round interviews forgive me most boards after that second round of interviews already I would say more than 90% maybe even 95% are ready to make an offer uh to the
027board's selected finalist if that's the case with you I would hand the Baton off so to speak to your board attorney the board attorney in concert with the candidates attorney most of them do hire a lawyer uh they would handle the contract negotiations the final step in our process involves finalizing the minutes that I will have kept at all of the special call meetings that I've had with your board uh open and close session minutes as well as um helping draft a press release with your communication folks surrounding the announcement of the the board selected superintendent um I won't spend a ton of time on this but we have a lot of experience and expertise and we hold ourselves to a very high standard uh this slide shows all of the um searches that we've
028recently completed over the past few years uh in North Carolina left side is the search that I'm currently working on um with Chan um we have a lot of expertise in the HR administ cretive aspects of doing a search which is a lot of what superintendent search work involves we also have a lot of expertise in the legal um issues that sometimes arise during a search and we feel like that twofold expertise serves us really well in providing you with a professional and thorough search process as well as a legally compliant one um the most important decision you make is who your superintendent is going to be you deserve nothing short of a very very thorough professional excellent process I would of course strive to provide you with that and our team would every step
029of the way if you you were to hire us um that concludes my presentation I try to leave a little bit of time for questions but obviously as I've already said you have my contact information you're more than welcome to follow up with any questions are there any questions from Mr Thor okay hearing none thank you Mr Thor thank you sir okay moving along our third presentation will be from Hazard young and AA Associates are also known as hya so uh is anyone here prepared from h 2 a to make a presentation okay okay hello there's anyone from hya you can proceed Dr Smith can you hear me Dr Johnson oh yeah you guys are good to start uh you've got 10 minutes and uh and this is Aaron Fleming by the way but here's
030this you should be able to see the board there yeah and uh so you've got 10 minutes to yes sir good morning you have a time not to exceed 10 minutes all right thank you very much we appreciate uh the chance to visit with you today um Dr Henry Johnson and I are here to talk about our proposal to coordinate and facilitate the superintendent search for Harnet County Public Schools uh I'll ask Dr Henry Johnson to tell a little bit about who he is and then I'll talk a little bit briefly about who I am then we're going to walk through uh some introductory remarks about what we do and the four stages of the search and the flexibility that we offer and then hopefully leave a chance for questions uh at the end uh
031of the 10 minutes or before the end of the 10 minutes so Dr Johnson you want to share a little bit about your background hello Dr Smith thank you I've been um working with h for the last two years with Dr Smith we have a history together um we first started our work at the Maryland State Department of Education where I served as the assistant State superintendent and then later on as the interim depy State superintendent under his leadership I was the principal for 17 years I then went on to Montgomery County County and uh became Dr Smith's chief of staff and have been working um back in Montgomery County since I retired again as the acting Chief of Staff as an interim Acting Superintendent on a several occasions when the interim wasn't present so
032uh I've worked in small districts large districts and I've had an opportunity to do searches for both small and large districts I'm looking forward to working with you um if you choose us Dr Smith yes thanks Henry uh as Henry shared uh we first met more than a decade ago when we worked for the Maryland State Department of Education prior to that I was a local superintendent with about 16,500 students in southern Maryland uh prior to that I was a teacher a principal a curriculum director in Washington state in Tokyo Japan and in Maryland and so we both spent more than 40 years working in all facets of public education and I did spend about seven years in private education in Asia uh we have worked for a variety of different uh searches for principales
033financial uh Chief Financial officers superintendents and we also did uh literally and I don't exaggerate hundreds of searches in our jobs together as the Maryland state at the Maryland state department and at McGary County public schools in Maryland uh because it's a very large system so we hired a lot of people uh we want to talk if we can go to page five uh we want to talk about um the tentative calendar that's up there just so that uh we make the point very clearly that this whole process starts uh with the the Board of Education with the leadership whoever is going to be responsible for the search generally it's the board sometimes it's a search committee sometimes it's a combination but whoever it is we want to meet and plan the search because it
034is first and foremost your search not ours and we work for you and we're very clear about that and so we would use this uh as a tentative schedule but in any way that you wanted adjusted things you wanted added to it or taken away from it or changed in any way we would we would make sure that that happened uh because our single goal is to do the work well so that you end up with a superintendent who serves your system well is a good match for you and that you have selected uh with confidence um we have four stages if we can look at the next page in our search process and I'm going to turn over to Dr johnon and he's going to talk about a couple of those stages and I'll
035talk about a couple of them and then we'll be finished okay as you can see as Dr Smith said there are four stages to the um search process we begin with the engage uh process in which we uh plan a we do a planning meeting with the full Board of Education just to get an idea of what you're looking for and then we conduct um individual Board of Education uh member interviews we interview each one of you individually to get an idea of what you want I think our page got lost somewhere but anyway I'll I'll continue um did it on my screen anyway but um and then if you so desire we can do focus groups too with teachers with principes with students with community members those types of individuals within your community to
036get a full breath and scope of what the community would like to see in the next superintendent and then we also have uh an online survey that can be administered for the parents and and the community and um that's a product that hya will uh produce information for us that will give you a better idea of what the community with the focus groups what everybody else is is thinking as far as the super intended is concerned and then we move into the recruit phase which is We Gather we take all that information We Gather it together and then we do a POS a position description and we um yes thank you and then that's where we begin the um advertising process from that we from the information We Gather we do a leadership profile we
037do desire characteristics of the superintendent we put all that into to an advertisement um that we put out locally regionally nationally to start recruiting candidates um we speak with all possible candidates who may be ented in this position to to determine who are the best candidates in the best fit for Hartman County and then we screen all the applicants we do an extensive Google search as an initial um determination of which candidates we eventually would like to slate we do initial reference checks we identify those candidates we talk to those candidates and then we prepare a slate throughout this process if you would like we also have the opportunity to create a board portal which will give you access to the same information that we're using to determine which candidates are the best fit for
038your District Dr Smith will now talk about the selection process and transition the selection process uh for the interviews we present the slated candidates as well as all candidates we want you to be to see all of the candidates that have applied and one of the benefits of our organization is is Nationwide and you may hire someone from down the road you may hire someone from another part of your state another state near your state or someone from across the country but we do have the reach to attract candidates from across the country uh so that you can really look and make the decision who who's best and we will work closely with with your HR department and we will run the interviews we will run them with your HR department or we will support
039your HR department it's your choice and we certainly can offer Banks of questions we can give information about uh anything to do with superintendent contracts that's happening in your region or uh uh Across the Nation and finally we work with a a process in the interviews if you ask us to to make sure that every member of your uh your school board or your search committee however you want to uh organize it uh we make sure that every voice is heard and then work through an orderly process where you have a chance to compare the candidates against one another ultimately choosing the one that you think is the best fit and then we're available uh to support you as you announce your candidate and as you move through the transition to uh work with any
040aspect of the transition of bringing the new superintendent in that you would like and those are all the things that are included in that fee that we uh offered as well as the additional things like the survey and the advertising and the due diligence while we do a lot of due diligence in the search It's always important to do a very careful background check and we can help that process move forward if that's something you choose to uh do with us and so that's who we are that's what we do uh obviously there are lots and lots of details that we have not included because we don't need to include them right now in this 10 minutes but we certainly are prepared to answer any questions and provide any additional information that would be helpful
041to you as you make this critically important decision about the the leadership of your system to partner with you to make sure that all students learn all students have opportunity all students well-being is considered and uh that you can continue to move forward and and progress as a great learning institution okay well thank you for the your presentation and at this time are there any questions for the representatives from hya okay hearing none thank you very much Dr Smith and Dr Johnson we appreciate you uh giving us his presentation this morning thank you thank you have a good day thank you you as well I'll will now yield the uh chair to our chairman Mr Eddie jackers all right moving on to discussion items moving on to discussion items item a we're going to discuss
042it daily pay earn wage access thank you Mr chairman uh we're going to uh get Mr Hower up on the uh computer and uh daily pay is a company uh that both the Mr coxon I've talked to um I will say before they present I'm not sure if they can hear me he was on there um this is is a and and Mr Cox can fill in name blanks that I leave out this is a company uh we we get let me start with this we do get some requests I know uh Miss Thompson and her folks get requests as do Finance uh from employees asking can they get a cash forward or a pay check advance um which we're not really able to do we're not in a position to do this company that
043you're going to hear from offers this service for no charge to us or the employee it's not a paay a loan so to speak uh what the employee doeses is has their paycheck uh deposited into uh daily pay and then they are able then to uh pay those employees in advance in s and so a few days early or whenever Mr Cox anything you want to share and then we'll hand it over to Mr Hower are you there with us yes I'm here all right the floor is yours thank you m Mr chairman and members of the committee my name is Michael Hower I'm a contract lobbyist in Raleigh um here on behalf of my client daily pay and I'm GNA hand it over to uh Alicia Carr and Lindsay Castle from the from the
044company great thank you so much do you have our slides up on the screen uh no the board members have uh have a hand out in front of them uh on the computer but Jennifer do you have the slides we don't have any slides to show we we got it on our no worries if you can see it I'm happy with it it's no problem for me um and how much time do we have um maybe 10 minutes or less perfect I can work with that I am starting off on the agenda slide here I appreciate you having us here meeting today I can do it in 10 minutes or less no problem being efficient from me uh happy to to be able to talk to you a little bit about daily pay I heard
045a quick overview but effectively what we do is focus on employee Wellness by giving folks access to their earned wages earlier than payday and I'll get into some examples in a few minutes here my plan for our time together is to share a little more information about what on Dem demand Pay is about daily pay and how we can support your employees and therefore the students at the end of our time together we typically see things go one of two ways here so either the benefit is interesting and we agree to keep talking with whoever the relevant folks are that might be the finance or HR teams and then alternatively if you decide this isn't a good fit no big deal we go our separate ways or we can stay in touch for the future
046as far as my background my name is Alicia Kerr I'm with daily pay I have been here for about a year now and I cover all of the East Coast public sector K through 12 Etc Lindsay works specifically with public sector in K through 12 so she's joining us today as well as far as who is daily pay we are the future of work for K to2 staff typically folks are seeing bi-weekly or monthly pay cycles and that's something that can be financially stressful depending on where you are and what you need to budget for when it comes to thinking about payday folks are typically you know struggling these days if you've been to the grocery store recently you know you walk out with fre bags and spend $100 and what we do here at
047Daily pay is give folks the option to access their pay as they earn it so if you have a salary employee whatever they make on a daily basis becomes available hourly employees punches or information we can gather and with that data we give folks access to their pay it doesn't change your payroll system there's nothing you have to do there we actually integrate excuse me sensitive Mouse we integrate with these systems you can see across the top row across the bottom row you see some examples of clients we work with that are notable or that might be in the area or you recognize we've been around since 2019 we're serving 5 million employees now we have over $6 billion in payments processed in 2023 alone and that makes us the number two user of Visa
048realtime payments in the United States as you heard earlier there is zero cost to Harnet County Schools the benefit will bring significant benefits for the employees fin finial Wellness is our main focus again meaning that if teachers are more financially comfortable and staff are feeling better with access to their funds students in turn will have a better experience so we see typically a pretty big boost in recruiting about double the applicant pool for folks who advertise daily pay is a benefit of their job 96% of employers who offer Ewa say that it helps attract Talent we did a study with the Harris poll to understand for teachers specifically how this kind of benefit would impact them and these next three stats relate to that 70% of teachers say it would be helpful to be paid
049more frequently than twice per month 61% of teachers in the US are stressed about their finances and 27% say they ran out of money between paychecks in the past year one in five so they were unable to pay a bill in the last year and that's one of the most common reasons we see people take funds from daily pay to walk you through an experience and what might happen for someone who's choosing to use an app like this let's say Harnet County decides to offer this benefit if you decide to go ahead and offer daily pay what would happen is the employees get an email imagine there's a teacher she's a mom school's done for the day heads to the grocery store she's in line she's got diapers she's got dinner ingredients in the car
050and she's getting ready to check out but it's Wednesday afternoon payday is not till Friday and she realizes she's going to overdraft her bank account if she swipes her debit card her options are to pay a $35 overdraft fee or to put the bill on a credit card which means that she'll acquire interest on that if she can't pay it off immediately and all kinds of personal finance complications with daily pay by the time she gets in line and waits for that person ahead of her she can download the App log in with her Harnet County Schools email address access her paycheck get signed up and everything and have money in her account by the time she swipes her credit card so she doesn't have to incur those kinds of fees these are the three
051ways you can use the app so for an employee they can track their funds a lot of folks don't necessarily access their pay every time they log into daily pay they just log in to see hey how much money did I make today and what does that mean for me at the end of the week how can I budget with that you can access your pay so of course you can take a transaction to have access to that money and then you can also save so you can a lot money to go to a savings account or you can set it aside to say hey don't let me touch that until payday I need that to pay rent or whatever it is for admins we have a payroll portal as well so they can check
052in and see what are the transfers look like that have happened so far or if folks have questions s they can help support and answer them we also offer 247 support it's free to make transfers if you are transferring money to a daily pay general purpose reloadable card which we offer it's free to make transfers if you're looking to get funds the next day or up to two three days from now if you're budgeting for rent or bills for example this is a great use of benefit if you need an instant transfer it costs 349 to move the money to any bank account instantly I went pretty fast there but any questions I don't think you have any any questions I don't think we have any I got one you got one um is it
053no cost for the district and no cost for the end user the only cost for the end user is if they look to take an instant transfer and then it's $3.49 to have money within seconds if they can wait for the next business day it's free and if they can use a daily pay card if they opt to have that option they can take instant transfers for free okay but no cost to the district or the user to sign up thank you anything further we appreciate you presenting to us thank you for having us thank thank Youk Item B discussion is character strong contract sure um and so good morning chairman Jaggers and members of the board this item was pulled from the last board meeting for discussion at today's work session and so I'm
054certainly open to answering any questions the board may have regarding the program can you tell us what it is what character strong is sure um character strong uh is a program that we utilize in the district to assist with students as far as their social and emotional Wellness um it assists with General statute 115c 8160 which is the board of education's um requirement to develop and Implement character education instruction um with the assistance of the local community and so our answer to that is character strong um along with some of the other programs that we have in the district leader and me um and some of the other individual programs that our school districts um that our schools are actually doing um that particular program is implemented through our school counseling staff um with the
055assistance of teachers and others um who have helped us Implement that over the last two years when did we start character strong so about 24 months ago approximately is when we rolled it out is it voluntary or is it or is does it cover everybody as it mandatory that's a great question um and so it is voluntary in the sense of um participation in the actual modules or whatever are the choice of the student um that is actually um working through those um we chose to take a tiered approach with our implementation and so at first when we did it um we we thought about trying to have every school counselor at every school work with that um and then what I asked my team to do was to scale back a little bit um
056because we did not have enough sufficient data to be able to determine if it was being effective or not and so what we've done over the last year and a half um is take some politic schools and really take a more centralized approach um to see if the program is actually being impacted and my understanding of character strong is it is just a straight social and emotional learning program is that accurate um and so character strong aligns with the social and emotional programming um but it walks lock in step with character education which is again our requirement to be able to provide um and so um character education provides the foundation uh character strong allows us to be able to deep dig a little bit deeper into the social and emotional Wellness of our students
057there basically everything on this quote is Seal Seal Seal SE and I've I've got a I take issue with that and especially at $117,000 yes sir and so if you think about seal holistically is something that's already been integrated into our district um if you look at our teacher evaluation process or our school counselor evaluation process our school executive evaluation process more specifically standards 2 and four in our teacher evaluation process standard three in our school counselor process um and then you have one that's specifically towards that in our school executive process they all speak towards social emotional learning for our students in a culturally diverse and inclusive environment um and so therefore in order to become an accomplished and distinguished teacher in our district you have to be able to meet those particular man
058Ates in order to serve our students appropriately and so again it's an assistance tool in the classroom an assistance tool in our schools to be able to build culture and it's something seal wise that has been in our district uh forever um as far as our programming is concerned how many um schools are pilot in this program right now um and so we we scale back um to about four schools we believe this school year um that will be um our Target School what I asked um our team to do was to be able to find a principal and a staff that would be willing um to look at this as an opportunity for us to be able to gather data um and so what we did in preparation for this at the end of
059last year was we did complete a survey um among staff to be able to see if this particular program is something that they uh feel like is impactful for our students um and so I'll go over a little bit of that data if I could just to kind of this show the um impact of the program um the people who were surveyed had to rate the importance of teaching social and emotional skills 72.9 believe that it was very important how often do you teach seal skills um some days 49% most days 13.5 rarely 24% every day 12.5 um the greatest challenge faced in helping students develop strong social emotional skills uh most of the people who responded said lack of time and so what we're trying to do as a model um is to be
060able to not make it taxing or one more thing that teachers and administrators have to do but find ways that this type of programming can be seamlessly weaved into um their culture in order to support our students does it have anything to do with Dei Mr W so when you talk about Dei um the word inclusion is used um in the programming um it's also used uh m Godfrey and um all of our evaluation tools for teachers um as far as what we are attempting to do um with our students and integrating um them into a more positive social and emotional space um I think some of the concerns that I've read online with people about uh character strong or programs like leader imy and other social emotional type programs is that they feel like
061there's an indoctrination um of students when it comes to CRT and other things along those lines what I want to be very clear about is there's no evidence um that shows that CRT or anything that um provides any sort of indoctrination of students one way or another um is involved in this particular programming um we go through a tough vetting process with this um and so we want to make sure that we don't bring any sort of shame or embarrassment to the district but that we are meeting the needs of our students um holistically um which is our goal in student services and around the district my that was my concern because you know I don't want this school district to become like some of the rest of these school districts all over the country
062where all this off the- wall stuff is coming in and and being used or being taught if you understand what I'm saying we're not uh sonama County California or some County New York or whatever we're haret County North Carolina and we don't need you know all of this mess that they're doing all over the country you know like Granny's uh drag queen story time or you know if I want to be a girl and I'm a boy you know uh can I do it without my parents knowing and all that that's that's been my main concern the whole time I think I mentioned this at the last meeting yes sir and so as you go through the programming there there's no sort of uh information in that programming nor are there any lessons that you
063know send a student one way or the other this is more along the lines of making sure that we meet the general statute that talks about uh incorporating uh curriculum that teaches students courage good judgment Integrity kindness perseverance respect responsibility and self-discipline and when the rnrs were presenting um at one of our meetings and talking about the respect for teachers and those sorts of things this particular program allows us to do that as well because in that General statute it talks about respect for school Personnel responsibility for school safety service to others and good citizenship and so while it may have a negative connotation in some spaces with regards to um you know the the name itself and in those sorts of things we're not promoting anything one way or another outside of just producing
064good citizens for our school district and so um if at any point there's anybody who has an issue with um the programming itself and how it's being implemented across our district or if there any controversial things then I'm the first person folks can come talk to about that um to be able to discuss and go from there um we've had intimate conversations with the car strong folks about this uh we've talked about it at length and so therefore we feel very comfortable um that the way we're taking the approach to implement it in the district is the appropriate one at this time Mr why I I don't know about the program a whole lot other than what you know when it was on the thing I started researching and looking just can you elaborate just
065a little bit the internet reviews on it is terrible um as far as it not being effective of what is supposed to be for I mean I I I don't know cuz I've not seen the program in our school working I I just I'm just I have to research what I can research and what I see on the internet is not the reviews on it and of course you know you have to take those with a grain ass Sal also um my second question is simply is that you know usually when we we do things like this we we're able to get more than one source of the program you know what I'm saying like multiple and I see this as a sole source for this that concerns me just a little bit you know
066what I'm saying so I can you elaborate any as far as I don't I don't I'm just going based on what I review search and and the reviews on the internet are not good um and so I look at the the reviews on the internet and like you said you take them some with the grain of salt because a lot of times people throw things at something not really knowing about it it's similar to our Dallas Cowboys right we can't win a Super Bowl we have one one about 35 years and people decide exactly and we probably won't this year right but at the same time we stay encouraged that that's going to be the case the only people who know how that's going to work are the people who are on the ground doing
067the work um and so we conducted a group study at coats um Elementary last year just to be able to see kind of the effectiveness with the counselor that was there at the time as well as the administration that was there at the time and in grades 3 through five um we had a 72% decrease in major referrals and in minor referrals we had a 75% decrease by incorporating car strong in small group settings which means the counselor takes a few students we take our high flyer kids we get them together we have discussions about citizenship uh being responsible and respecting School personnel and we saw a decrease there for our K2 students we saw um a major referral decrease of 78% and a minor referral decrease of 58% which again shows Pride progress um
068but at the same time we're nowhere that we need to be um and so one thing that I've done since kind of taking the assistant superintendent chair was to really look at from a social emotional learning perspective the things that we were responsible for in my department we've had several programs and some of you have been around long enough to remember positivity project and kind of the Fallout we had from positivity project as well as capturing kids hearts and some of these other things and so if we're going to spend the money we want to make sure that we're going to get the best bang for our bug and so we've actually gone away from some program because we didn't have the data to support its Effectiveness with this we have some data to show
069that we are making some progress if in a year or two years um this is not doing what we needed to do we'll scrap it and we'll figure out something different of course with the appropriate input from our schools our school board not Community um but again there's nothing um in this particular program um that gives us pause um that it doesn't coordinate with the general statute of providing the appropriate level of character education and social emotional programming for our students sir but I guess my and so the sole source as far as the quotes are that provides it I know but what I don't know what are they providing you know what I'm saying is it curriculum yes sir so they're providing us curriculum and so how it works for example at the elementary
070School level is that um as I'm sure our board knows our school counselors go into classrooms and provide lessons um for students um and so when our school counselors go into classrooms and provide lessons they're using character strong as an opportunity or a template to uh present those lessons they also make suggestions to teachers um to be able to kind of use these types of things when we leave the classroom to be able to support the whole child um again similar to what leader in me does at the schools where um it currently is um you have a more of a leadership focus on the leader and me side character strong um and crosswalking with that provides some of the more social emotional things that kids may need to be able to help them uh
071be supported one of the things that I look at is um you know we have a lot of children in our district who have parents um in households that care about them but there are other children in our district who don't have those things um and other otherwise if it was not for the school district to be able to at least plant a seed we wouldn't have the ability for them to be able to understand how to be able to conduct themselves in in a um in the appropriate way and so my biggest piece of this is um to look at and make sure that we're supporting the school discipline that is given by our um School administrators and supporting our teachers in a way to where um there's not a revolving door um of
072continuing suspensions or discipline issues with our students in addition to helping them grow um holistically um with these things that we talk about in the general statute so is this just T once a week um and so whenever the councilors and I'm not sure about the schedule this year to be completely transparent with you whenever the counselors go into these classrooms they're probably taking about 30 minutes or so during the time that they're in there to be able to discuss these things it's not an every day situation um it's just something where again um when the the character strong lesson presents itself during that week they talk about the appropriate character trait and make sure that everybody who's involved is on board with make um implementing that well I mean just to be transparent with
073you and and the staff I I just I would like to see the lessons I I can't I can't evaluate this as far as looking at it simply by what we will give you know what I'm saying yes sir is there any way we could get the lessons that will be taught for the for the period time or anything oh yes sir I can absolutely provide I would just like to see that before I would make a decision my me personally but as the rest of the board what they would like to do but I'd like to see the actual lessons Mr chairman a question or a comment and a question and one of these has to do with actual lessons and uh I tried since we knew this was going to be on the
074agenda from our past uh meeting but continued on I tried to look into that to look at some of these sample lessons and I just discovered there are a lot of Hoops to jump through was hard to access as so I was unable to access any of the particular lessons but what I could find where as I couldn't find out much about character strong I did find that on their website uh they really brag about being a designated Castle select program I'm assume that's the way that's pronounced and character strong is proud to be a castle select program and to learn more about our prestigious Castle select uh highlighted part designation but I did look into Castle quite to Bild about it and a collaborative for social and emotional uh learning and they are tied
075with many left-wing very liberal organizations there's a lot of affiliations with whom they have I'm just not comfortable with for Harnet County Schools maybe Durham County Orange County some of our more liberal places would be fine with this I'm sure but haret County no so my question is if we do not act on this Dr Fleming if we do not act on this does that mean it is automatically not renewed what yeah so what you can there's a couple options um yes if you just leave it there um and direct us as staff to go out and find something else that's a possibility uh and then bring something to the board um the other option is um you could amend the agenda move it to action vote up or down my recommendation would be if
076this is something the board doesn't feel like it will approve then we can uh direct Mr White to go out and find some other character Ed programs and bring them back to the board as well the reason why you see Soul Source on there is because the company only sells or the if for character strong you have to go to the company to get it so there's not like sales reps out there where if you were going to buy a computer you might have two or three companies that can provide the same computer so that's what that soulle source is about um but yeah so if this is something the board is not going to move forward with I think the easiest thing would be just to direct Mr White to go out and his
077staff to go out and find uh some Alternatives but um that's completely up to the board on that thank you one thing I'd like to ask um you said we approved it about two years ago um I went through all of our uh previous agendas and minutes and what have you and I couldn't find it anywhere in there so was this something that um County Administration did or did it come through through this board and so I'll go back and research to see exactly when we actually started or got the first particular contract approved and I'll make sure um that that particular information is communicated to the board appr I've been on here 6 and A2 years and I don't remember voting up far down on on this on this issue uh I just can't
078I can't remember voting up or down on it so Mr White I at this point in time I cannot move forward on this until I would know more about because what I read on it I'm only getting I'm not getting factual so I would if if I would like that as one board member I'd like to instruct you to find us some other options and and also get us the lesson plans for this particular program so that when we making a judgment on it we're making a fair judgment on it you know what I'm saying um just by what I read here I can't pass that judgment you know what I'm saying so if you could maybe work on getting some other options lined up and then also get us the lesson plans that are
079actually taught so that we can see those and then we might understand more about what's going on but right now on the surface I would not be able to support it right now if I'm ask a clarifying question does the board have any criteria with regards to um what types of programs they would support just so I know not to um look in certain Realms of um programming at all um if if that's the case I I like the sound I I like to know that our children our kids are getting something to build their character uh to make them better citizens to have them show more respect for their peers uh teachers and everything I'm all for that don't get me wrong oh I'm all for that this certain program we're using now does
080Lee County or Johnson County Implement it do they have the same program or do you know or I'm not aware if if Lee or Justin uses car strong um I do know um that we do have some surround the districts that participate in leader and me um and some of the other social emotional learning programs that are in the school districts but um not quite sure about car is strong anything further for me thank you Mr W thank you moving on to action items a review and consider approval amended budget resolution for quarter physical year 24 thank you chair Jaggers a couple things I want to point out it's in your packet what this is is uh uh government governmental Accounting Standards Board issued a new statement 96 for subscription-based internet technology agreements that we
081had to implement last year it only applies to multi-year agreements um when we brought the budget resolution to the last meeting we had left one off so this uh budget uh amended resolution takes care of us budgeting for the whole threeyear multi-year deal based on the new government Accounting Standards although we're only paying one year so it's just a uh um a technicality on that this brings that uh budget amendment to you which is a $200,000 uh adjustment and then also takes care of our uh utility bills that came in in July for June uh make sure we cover the budget on that um so it does amend uh the total budget by2 200,00 ,000 for that subscription based internet technology agreement um so total budget is$ 287 m349 1858 motion to approve budget amendment
082as presented by Finance I'll second that motion in the second any further discussion chairman vot I how will vot I a i g i i he no nay votes the motion carries Item B review and consider approval Schoolboard policy update board policy 7500 work day and overtime chairman jagers and members of the board this is the policy we discussed last time it um lines us up with what the salary study recommendations were based on the school day um I think we've been clear Mr Cox and I that teacher the teacher day can remain at seven and a half hours as it is however this will be the new basis to um compute hourly time for all of our staff that way it unifies the staff across the board we don't have some people whose day
083is 7 and a half and some people's day who's based on eight it unifies us to all have an 8 hour day Mr cost if you want to add anything certainly yeah and I think the question was around cost most people that're already uh hourly employees already work eight hours anyway so there's really not a cost uh to this change so this pertains strictly to the hourly employees it does not affect the salaried employees we not it not impact their salary or their dollar amounts that they make no sir okay and would it provide the hourly employees a chance to make little additional income each most of those are already working 8 hours anyway um although the policy said you s and a half hours are already working 8 hours so they really won't be
084working anymore most likely won't be working anymore but if they weren't they could potentially yes motion to approve board policy 7500 update as presume second motion is second to have any discussion your name chairman votes I how votes I AB I ky I for hearing no n votes the motion carries item C review and consider approval of EC related Services contracts for the 2425 school year that's two two 20,000 in 25 school year chairman Jag M of board this is an EC related service de harded hearing need that will be provided through this contract M Ferguson is this a group with whom we've worked previously or is this any new rment is and would satisfactory results yes sir we're like they're just like us everyone is um limited on resources available but they have been
085to work with so far yes thank you motion to approve Mr chairman there no other questions second Motion in second any further discussion he chairman votes I how votes i a i G God hearing no n votes the motion carries item d review and consider approval approval of educational Partners International renewal agreement chairman jagers I present this for approval for the board it's our agreement with the um International teachers and we have two firms one is participate one is educational Partners we've already approved particip this is the second gr that's submit there motion to approve Mr chairman second motion is second any further discussion hearing n chairman votes I power votes i i g i hearing n votes motion carries item e review and consider approval of County and municip municipality SRO 2425 nou uh
086chairman Jers members of the board this uh coming to you today asking for your approval of the mou uh between Harnet County schools and haret County Sheriff's department and municipalities of dun Andrew coach serving in lington for uh SRO uh placement within our schools uh you'll note uh in the attachment the uhou will be the same as has previously been uh with the uh slight amendment to article 7 uh which we have uh been discussing for many years here the sheriff has always worked very well with us as far as uh if we were to have any concerns uh about an SRO which was technically his employee but what this does is just kind of uh make sure that that is a part of the mou and I would recommend its approval motion to approve
087Mr chairman second motion second any further discussion thank you for that addition yes and everyone's on the same page with it everybody's supportive of the amendment I guess uh everybody will see if the signatures come but I I'm expecting okay yeah any further discussion chairman votes I how votes I I I Hear n votes motion carries item review and consider approval of Performance Services as the design build Services firm for the school nutrition freezer flash cor chairman Jers members of the board I'm going to allow Mr Steve Matthews to uh share the process that um he he led the selection committee for the design Bill firm uh so I'm going to let allow him to share that and answer any questions you may have with this if if you remembers the project to build the
088uh freezer cooler for our Child Nutrition uh Department which uh will eliminate the need for us to seek out outside uh rent outside freezer storage which has become increasingly difficult F to find if you remember um The Firm we did use in Benson uh basically said that they didn't have room for us anymore uh and the facility that has um worked with us uh in Sanford is um our time is running out on them and our next closest spot would be Greensboro which would be a tremendous amount of Transportation so I really feel like this is the the the way we need to move and so we're working in that direction Mr Matthews yes we uh we brought we did a RFQ uh we actually had to read vertise it we didn't get enough responses
089the first time but we did have plenty of responses after we put it back out I think we either have four or five companies and uh we in we actually ended up bringing all of them in and just interviewing them having us sit down with them and decided uh did a rubric based grade system and decided that Performance Services was the U highest rated among the group so uh I think they feel like that it'll be about a 12 to 14 month Bill maybe even sooner uh once they get to go ahead on doing the breez or cooler so so unless you have some questions I would recommend appr of Performance Services to do this project motion to approve oh second I like there no change order guarantee big that was big with the group
090that no change order guarantee is that what set Performance Services apart from Gil Bang Yeah that and I I felt like they had all their uh engineers and designers in house okay so but that that was that was big having a no no change order guarantee we we asked all companies about that and some of them they they kind of hemmed and hauled on it a little but especially based on our past recent performances we're experiences the change order yes sir to get burn again yes sir me either so I have a motion in a second any further discussion chairman votes I how votes I I gy I he no n votes motion carries Mr chairman I moveed to we go into close session pursu General statute 1433 181 A1 A3 and A6 to prevent
091the disclosure of confidential Personnel files under gs15 C 321 to consider matters relating to initial employment of an individual employee and to consult with the board's attorney in order to preserve their attorney client privilege second I have a motion and second any further discussion going to close session hear none chairman votes I power votes i a i g he no nay votes motion carries we're going to close session for e e e e for e e that the 2024 25 school year is upon us I hope you had a e right after a motion in close session we return back to open session is any further business before this board Hear n I entertain a motion motion toour motion to say y'all want to discuss it no chairman votes I power votes i i g
092i