001welcome you. Tonight is Monday, February 9th, and it's always such a pleasure to see so many people in the crowd, and obviously we've had our hallways packed with students and parents from our art show tonight. So, thank you all for being here. And at this time, I would like to ask Miss Denise McCormack for our invocation. >> Would you pray with me, please? Heavenly Father, we gather here tonight with grateful hearts, thankful for the opportunity to serve our students, our families, and community. As we welcome our new superintendent, we ask for your guidance, wisdom, and blessing upon his leadership. Grant him clarity and vision, courage in decisionmaking, and compassion in every interaction. May his work inspire unity, foster growth, and create an environment where every child can thrive. Bless this board with understanding, respect, and
002collaboration, so that together we may build a future filled with hope and opportunity. Let our words be thoughtful, our actions be just, and our hearts remain focused on the well-being of those we serve. We place this meeting, our plans, and our shared vision in your hands. In your most holy name we pray. Amen. >> Amen. >> Thank you. And at this time, I would like to ask Mr. Gavin Parker to lead us in the pledge of >> allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. and Gavin is a student at West Oak High School. So, thank you for leading us. At this time, I would like to ask for approval of our agenda. >> I make a
003motion that that we approve the agenda for the February 9th, 2026 board meeting. >> Second. >> Motion a second. All in favor? All right. Thank you. And at this time, I would like to ask our board to join me down front. We have a special recognition for Dr. Mercer and Miss Toby. Dr. Mercer, on behalf of our school board, Um we want to tell you thank you for uh sharing Dr. Mercer with us this week of bringing him out of retirement. Um this was a difficult and challenging process that he helped guide us through and certainly uh provided stability and compassion through all of our schools and I know the one thing that I always heard uh from our community and a lot of our schools during his time here was you know he just
004sits down and talks to the kids and and is uh eat lunch with the students. So, you know, that was really important to us to have have you come in and be here. So, on behalf of your your leadership over the past several months, we would like to present to you a cool little gift. And so, what this is is a farm collective box of local Okone County Farm uh goodies. So, it's from the Okone County Farm Collective. You can look them up. And so in this there are little goodies from Katon Farms, Tatuga Ridge Honey Farm, Birchwood Farm, Mack Family Legacy Farm, The Farmhouse Coffee Exchange, Tatuga Bell Farm, Flipflop Farm, and there's some yummy uh baked goodies in there from Itty Bitty Farm. So we hope you guys enjoy this. >> Thank you
005very much. Thank you. I'm glad to have you back. >> That's awesome. >> Oh, I'm sorry. >> Appreciate it. >> See y'all. >> Thank you. >> See y'all. Okay, at this time um I would like to offer our school highlights and we're very excited to have uh two of our schools here with us tonight. West Oak Middle School and West Oak High School. So, first up, I would like to ask Miss April Gamrell. >> Good evening everybody. Tonight we have um a highlight from our robotics team. Our teacher of the year, Mr. Barl Franklin, and our teacher of the year last year, Miss Meredith Evans. She assists Mr. Franklin with the robotics team. So, we have asked them to come and show you a little bit of their expertise with the robotics team that we
006have. Um it had been a few years when I got to West Oak Middle School and Mr. Franklin took it upon himself to to try to get it back at going. So, we're very excited because they did a really good job placing uh top 20 in the state. >> Yes. >> So, he'll give you some more details and talk about what their goals are and hopefully we can get a drone team going too. >> Mr. Franklin, >> Thank you board members and Superintendent Smith for having us today. We brought with us four of our team members. Cooper Tally, Claire Martin, Riley May, and Savannah Cox. Uh they are currently on our team this year. We started the program last year with two teams. Um [clears throat] kind of starting from scratch since the team since
007the school hadn't had a team in a few years. Um robotics at this level is a little bit different. It's called a V5 competition where the middle schools also compete against high schools. So, we were kind of under manned to begin with last year, but still had some success with Cooper's team finishing 18th uh in skills competitions out of 600 teams in the state. So, we're very pleased with that. Because of the success of the two teams last year, we've added two more teams this school year. With the Vex, the game changes every year. This game is a little more of a challenge. Uh so, we haven't seen the same success, but we have one more competition. before we find out if we qualify for a state state event. So, I'll let these kids come
008around and show you the robots a little bit and show you what they do. Ladies and gentlemen, that opens that up on It does it by itself. >> And then this up and down >> actually robot can move anywhere like a container >> and then a little more. We've been practicing. >> I'll try to dodge it. >> Right there. I got you. a lot harder than last year as well. >> So, you like the competition? >> Yeah, I like >> you like the challenge. >> It's good. >> So, when they compete, they form an alliance with another team. Sometimes that's a high school team, sometimes it's a middle school team. Um, and then they go head-to-head against two other teams to try to score points. Because we have less experience in some of these high
009school teams and most of our robots are kind of u we call them pusher bots. They do a good job of interfering with the other high schools. [laughter] >> Yeah, we we prevent them by annoying them, preventing them from scoring points. Uh, but hopefully as we get more experience, our robots can become more offensive than defensive. One thing I really love when we go to a high school, middle school competition is seeing the high school students um kind of mentor these young teams. U really nice to see that. Last year JL man did a great job getting these guys going and helping them with some of the autonomous part of the program. >> So just seeing that interaction >> and we have to be completely hands off. So we get penalized if we even if
010we're even seen carrying these at all. Um, so everything that you see before you, the kids have created, they've designed, they've come up with. He's the professional SAR and filer and all the things. And I dry some of his tears when he gets upset. [laughter] Um, but everything that you see like the kids themselves have done it. Like we we are very kind of hands hands off and let them kind of >> if it doesn't work, you'll figure it out. >> But we've we've seen enough success out of this group that we definitely want to expand next year. So now we're thinking about doing some drones. I know I think the high school is going to offer some drones. I just want to be sure that as these kids move up, they have the opportunity
011to continue to compete in an engineering format, whether it be robotics or or drone type technology. And if you've watched the Olympics, they're using drones now to follow the races down the track. I've been impressed with that as well. >> And y'all will be excited to know that first year we didn't see many girls teams. So, the fact that we are one of the only schools that has an all girls team, we're seeing more and more representation. Um, so that's why we've opened it up and to have more teams, but we really want to try to, you know, lean in to try to get more female influence. >> So, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Good job. Boy, what a time it is to be in school and building robots. So, thank you guys for that.
012Now, uh Dr. Brandon Blackwell with West Oak High School. >> Thanks for giving us the opportunity to be here tonight. Um, so obviously one of the most important things that that we do at the high school level is is to prepare students for life after high school, career paths and things like that. Um, he just mentioned drones and you know drones are used in all kinds of business and industry, you know, surveying, mapping, uh, they're used in agriculture to monitor your fields. Um, they're used to inspect bridges and roofs. And there's and there's just so many opportunities for students to to go into a career path where they're they're doing something they enjoy by using a drone. And one way that we have started to expose students to that idea is our drone competition team.
013Um, you know, it's something that a lot of kids think it's cool and then they get in there and they're like, "Oh man, this I could do this for a living." So, at this time, I would like to bring up Colonel Smith and three of his cadets so they could talk a little bit more about that mission team. >> Thanks, Dr. Blackwell. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for the opportunity to be here tonight. I really appreciate it. Um, uh, this is some really interesting and neat stuff to watch these kids. For me, um, it this is all about watching these kids grow from a standpoint of critical thinking, organization, time management. Um and um these competitions are designed to make you use those every second of the day. Um we've all heard of organized chaos. That
014is exactly what happens at one of these competitions. And I'm sure Dr. Franklin and their team can attest to that as well. Uh because both platforms are very similar in how they're graded and how they're judged in regards to what the coaches can do, what the coaches can't do. and everything is up to the team members to manage how the day goes. Um, and it is a very long day. Uh, these guys will compete in seven alliances. Uh, depending upon the size of the of the competition that they're there, they'll be paired with seven other schools that they've never met before. And they'll only have a finite amount of time to synchronize with that team to decide, okay, how are we going to attack this course? because we want the most points possible and both
015teams get the same number of points. It's not based on what you score or what they score. It's what the team collectively scores when they do their alliances. That is one component of how the drone uh competition is judged. The second piece is a piloting scenario where you have the pilot that actually uses the remote uh that Gavin Parker has here and the drone itself to pilot through a standard course that they've established for that year's competition. and they'll have three opportunities to pilot over the course of um one minute time span to gain as many points to navigate as many obstacles as possible. Then you have the flip side of that which is a little bit more complex. It's the programming aspect. So we have a laptop computer that also has code that you
016can program in to navigate the drone as well so that you're not piling it. It's autonomous in the way it goes. And so the autopilot has three minutes to program and accomplish as many points as they can on the same course. And then the final uh part of the competition for the drone team, it's called communications, but it's a twofold process. Each member of the team goes through an interview process with the judges and the referees that are there talking everything from strategy to the components to the course to the time. Uh and then they also have what they call a log book inspection. So everything that they've done throughout the course of the year, they have to write down. They chart it. They log it just like a daily journal that that you might
017keep. And so that helps them understand and build their strategy for the event both post and and prior to to make sure that they're catching all of the ways that they can improve and taking notes from the other teams and they're actually graded and judged on that. And at the end of the day, um based on the rubric that they use, the team will get a score. What I'm proud about these guys is um our first competition was last no end of October, early early November. Um we've had the program uh a couple of years with the equipment. Uh last year it got off the ground uh with a few members that really got interested and this year we were able to kind of get it across the the hurdle in first semester. We actually
018had two teams that competed. So we had we had eight kids uh that went down to Riverbluff High School in Colombia and competed with 23 other teams uh respectively. They finished 11th and 17th overall out of the group um and did very well. But again, it was I think it was quite a learning experience for me for sure as my first competition, but theirs as well. And our goal obviously is to is to keep that momentum going. Uh we do have another competition uh that is scheduled for middle of March that we're looking for and just kind of like the robotics team seeing if we can score well enough to compete at the state level. Uh but the unique thing with the ROC program is is they run double competitions meaning that ROC has competitions
019in drone but we also can compete in the other platform uh like like the we're talking about with the other stu students that aren't necessarily in ROTC and uh and that part is doable because of the platform that we use. I'm just going to give a shout out to RECF, which is the robotics education um competition foundation that's out of Texas. They've been around since 2008 and they're the platform that makes all this really work. They're national and international and they are the ones that referee and judge whether it's the VEX robotics competitions or the drone competitions uh that make this possible and provide the training and the certifications uh for for these guys to be able to do this. And just like with robotics, there's online training and certifications that the team have to
020dedicate to to be able to get certified because all that paperwork and those certifications are part of their inspection. So if they don't have their certifications and they don't have their log books, then they're not going to allow them to compete. But anyway, it's been an honor to be here. I brought these guys. If there's any questions that you have, I don't know that we want to fly the drone around the room and buzz anybody. I don't think we want to do any flybys in here, but uh feel free for any questions that you might have. >> I'm curious, how much how much is a drone? One drone. >> Great question. So, the drone set, just that drone is $196. Um and and every year they change up the competition gaming set. So, to practice,
021you've got to have all the implements and the platforms to be able to do that. And this year, uh the competition set was about $1,300. um the initial set of drones cadet command uh resources and provides to us or our our brigade out of Fort Bragg that that falls under cadet command. Um and then and then they give us funds every year to be able to replenish and continue the program. >> Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Is this part of the regular school day or is this extracurricular after school? So these these are extracurriculars but in order to be able to gain the interest in the program we do incorporate it into the curriculum so that there there is a small familiarization piece throughout the um courses of the day but but most of
022the training is done in the afternoons after school. >> Thank you. >> Yes ma'am. >> That's phenomenal. Thank you guys so much. >> Thank you so much. Appreciate it. And now for our public comment part of the agenda. No one for public comment. All right. And now for approval of minutes. If I can have a approval for January 12th, January 13th, and January 16th. Um, one is a board meeting and two special call board meeting minutes. >> I make a motion we approve the minutes for the January 12th, 2026 board meeting, January 13, 2026 special call board meeting minutes, and January 16th, 2026 special call board meeting. >> All right, motion a second. All in favor? All right. Thank you. All right. And now for our discussion items, Dr. McDonald with our e-learning update. Um,
023so, uh, as we all know, we've had some weather, uh, the past couple of weeks that has interrupted our typical school week. And I know a lot of folks are super excited to be back and hopefully have a normal week this week. Um, but you know, the state of South Carolina does allow e-learning districts up to five days as e-learning days. And so at this time with the recent ice and snowstorm, we have utilized four of our e-learning days. And so we still have one more. Uh I know that I personally am praying we do not have to use it, [laughter] you know. Um but the e-learning designation does allow our district to continue learning in a time where learning could have been interrupted. And we do know that in our community there are some
024folks that may lose power. Um, but one of the benefits of our district's position with e-learning is we allow five days after students return to school for the e-learning work to be submitted. So, we're not asking five days after we've called e-learning. We're saying five days once we've returned to school and students have support at school to get that work done. They hopefully have power back on at home in order to get that work done and we've got some wraparound support to make sure we're working and partnering with families. One of the other things that I think uh is very just unique and interesting is as Mr. Smith led a conversation with our principles over the break, one of the things that he really leaned into, which I think all of our principles and our
025families would appreciate is just this idea of extending absolute grace with families as we continue to try to communicate. And so I know that I've seen um on my parent news feed with um Parent Square, you know, schools continuously saying, "Hey, this is the date that's coming up. we need the work turned in. We need work submitted um for those e-learning dates. And so we've done a really good job, I think, partnering with families, establishing some really clear communication of when that work is expected to be turned in. But he also still encouraged our principal leaders to extend grace. And so that's one of the things that we're really trying to do in this moment to make sure that a day like an e-learning day isn't a day that hinders a student in their ability
026to gain a high school credit or get too far behind or end up in a situation where we're looking at student truency. So thank you for that. Um, one of the things also just to mention is that each of these e-learning events presents an opportunity for us as a district to just be reflective in how we can get better. You know, these occurrences are so rare. Well, doesn't seem like that the past couple of weeks, but traditionally these occurrences are so rare. Um, and so one of the things that we'll do with this upcoming principles meeting later this week is talk with our elementary and our secondary principles about what what did you notice? You know, what's the feedback that you've gotten from students, from our teachers, and from our families, and how can we
027better partner with those folks as well as just get better at doing this, right? um you only get to do it, again, it didn't seem like that, but you only typically get to do it once in a blue moon, right? Um and how do we just continue to get better at this practice? And so, we're looking forward to this conversation this Wednesday. >> Awesome. Thank you. >> Yes. Thank you. >> And now, uh Mr. Shikling, um up for three things. Our January financial report, and then budget presentation, compensation, analysis, and then the 2025 procurement audit. >> Okay. Um yeah, this starts the time of year where my name shows up a lot more than I'd like on the agenda. So for the uh financial report, um it's the month of January, but the uh the
028local taxes that we receive are actually collections from the month of December. So those are um homeowners um paying taxes early before the due date. Um you can see the 11 million almost $12 million in local tax revenue. Um and then state aid payments are our monthly uh remittance from the state make up uh the majority of the rest of it. So we we're looking at about uh 18 million of inflow and the revenue side. Uh and then on the expenditures just a typical month uh primarily payroll and utilities. Um so you know we usually average between 10 and a half to 12 million and so right at 11 on the expenditure side. um check dispersement again aside from you see some Chromebook purchases in there from the capital fund um food service management utilities
029um equate for the majority of the spending there um or the check dispersements uh and then the uh capital projects report is also provided with their current status um you can see that there are the majority of the pro projects have been finished and have come in and in many cases under budget um with some still slated to start at the end of this year moving into the summer, but we're working our way well through the uh first phase of that capital plan and addressing some of the needs that were identified in our building condition study. Uh any questions that I can answer for anybody? >> Mind if I jump in just for a minute hopefully to set the table for uh the next uh conversation? I asked Mr. Shikling if he would uh begin
030by doing a compensation analysis for us tonight. It's hard to believe it's February and yet here we are talking about building the budget uh for next year. And that's uh those conversations are well underway. And really the challenge is as in most things balance, right? On the one side uh we want to come forward with a budget that ensures that we allocate the resources needed for really a worldclass experience to be provided for for our children. And on the other hand, we also want to put forth a budget uh that's an efficient budget that honors the taxpaying families in our county. Uh and so with that in mind, uh we begin by recognizing that over 80% of our budget is personnel. We're in a service industry, if you want to call it an industry. And
031so, uh it's important really that uh shouldn't be a surprise that we would start uh as our very first topic in terms of budget presentations on this compensation analysis. And really uh we come into this uh work with a goal to be competitive in every single job category within our organization. And that that's going to hopefully allow us to attract and retain the very best educators and really all job categories for our organization. And so tonight I think that the presentation will be delivered through two lenses. The first lens is a compensation review with respect to uh comparison from some of our neighboring and regional districts. And secondly, uh a comparison between each teaching uh spot on the teaching salary scale and uh the the comparison to the state minimum in that category. And so
032hopefully uh this tonight's presentation is going to set the table for uh the board's discussion uh around compensation and budget for the year. So with that, I'll ask Mr. Shikling to come forward with that presentation. >> Yeah. Thank you. Um so getting started um we've got a table of contents here that um you know will will show the different positions we're going to take a look at. Um to Mr. Smith's point, we're going to try to compare as many positions as we can. Um, a couple of caveats. The teaching scale is uh is state promulgated out to school districts and so every school district puts up their teaching scale. Those are fairly simple to compare. Um, same thing with bus drivers. Those are the only two scales that the state sets a minimum. And so
033um districts in some instances may have different titles that we don't have or in certain classified positions they may use uh a grid or steps in a in a mechanism that we don't match. And so that's where it becomes a little bit more difficult to compare. Um have had some success in having some of our counterparts in the region fill out some questionnaires. We'll share spreadsheets amongst one another. So, I feel like we're in a better place than we have been in the past couple years in terms of some of those classified positions. Um, but again, nomenclature responsibilities might not be the same for all of those. Um, so we'll start looking at teachers um to begin with. And for each one of these charts that that's going to be displayed on here, um, I
034I've taken off the legend to anonymize who the districts are. um just because you know people may not want it to be advertised if they're the high or the low you know certain perspectives there from our counterparts. So um what you'll see is that there will be a plot of uh where the district different districts fall and in all cases the uh royal blue star will be the school district of Aone County. um for the teachers in particular uh rather than just looking at a low a maximum and a minimum or a low and a high we're going to look at every five years of experience across the 28 years that the state scale um puts together. So um for the bachelors you can see that um we we were uh right in the pack
035um last year and then in the current year um we are um still above substantially above one local district um but starting to separate ourselves from the pack um on the on the bottom there or trailing the pack in terms of a bachelor especially as we get into the years 15 2025. Um, we did make a concerted effort last year to add to the uh bottom of the scale for a bachelor's to get to that $50,000 mark. We felt like that was a big landmark that a lot of people would be looking for um as they came out of college. But that also then came at the expense of um compression where you you didn't see a lot of growth between year zero and year five. So the step of experience is where the the
036teachers really made their money, not the incoming point. Um so we made that aggressive action. Um but what we did across the scale last year was the state was increasing the minimum for all cells 1500 and so we increased our cells by 1500 and we expected or anticipated that many of our counterparts would do the same. And I think what this data is going to show us is that they were a little bit more aggressive maybe than we anticipated. And so that's where why we're seeing this the blue star where it is for the bachelors. Um moving to the masters. Um I think this one is where it becomes the most um illustrative of our our need to um try to be a little bit more competitive. Last year um again we were right in
037the middle of the pack all the way up on that master scale added 1500 per cell um you know per the state's movement um but you can see that that blue star has dropped in comparison uh to our regional counterparts. So, um, you know, if we're going to talk about trying to increase our our position there, uh, to maintain competitiveness, um, right now the the proposal from the governor, which was echoed by the superintendent of education, was for a $2,000 per cell increase. So, you know, if we were to expect our counterparts to match that, we would need to be above $2,000 per cell uh, in order to move that star upwards in comparison. Uh and so in the past we haven't looked at the PhD scale or the doctoral SCA scale um PhD or
038EDDD um a terminal degree and so this is what's now being displayed for um fiscal year 26 where we stand there. Uh again you can see at the beginning of that 0 through 10 um we're a little bit below and then you can see we actually are ascending back into the middle by the end of that scale. Um now one of the things we'll also look at a distribution of where our staff fall in terms of their years of experience and level of education. Um due to the nature of the amount of time it takes to obtain one of these degrees, we have I think nine or 10 employees total that are between years 0ero and 10 with a with a doctorate degree. Um, and I believe from years zero to six or seven, there's
039one individual that falls into that category. Um, so there is a little bit more separation from the pack in the M's area than there is in the bachelor's or the doctorate. That's what that's uh intended to display. So the next uh thing we'll do is compare it to the state scale. Uh, as Mr. Smith articulated, not only are we going to look at that external equity to to our counterparts, but we're going to look at how do we compare to the state scale. Um, and what happens over time is the district has had kind of a mix of practices in terms of how we've budgeted. Um, there have been years like last year where we said, "Okay, the state is going to increase everything 1500, then we're going to give 1500 across the board, every
040cell." Um, so you know, if you're on the lowest end, that's a higher percentage. If you're on the higher end, that's a lower percentage. We also have in the past, the state has maybe said, "We're going to do 2% cost of living." Um, and so the district has undergone years where there was just a percentage for all. And so if there's a percentage applied to 50,000 or there's a percentage applied to 80,000, the 80,000 is going to appreciate more quickly. that compounding mathematics. Um and so as a result of that um what we did is took a look at how much above the state minimum is SDOC paying. Um because the way the formula works is the formula um distributes money based upon an assumption of a certain number of staff per student and then
041an an assumed salary and then that amount of money is supposed to support the instructional program. Now, we know that we're one of the districts that's expected to match the most of that from local effort. Um, and our teachers earn above the minimum. So, that's also additional u local effort. Um, so what happens then is you introduce kind of a local supplement, if you will, but there's an additional tax effort locally to pay above the state's minimum scale. So, what this does is it takes bands of $2,000 and it shows where or demonstrates where we are above the scale with regards to teacher compensation. And so the cells that are highlighted in pink, we are between$1 to $2,000 above the state minimum. Uh, and so you can see by the year seven on the bachelors,
042we are $760 above the state minimum. And there, you know, in the past we've been further as the state has crept its minimum up. And so, um, you know, that's the range. There's there's, I think, seven or eight cells that are pink. Um, between 2,000 and 4,000 above the minimum are the cells in yellow. Um, 4,000 to 6,000 are in blue, 6,000 8,000 in white, and so on. Uh but what you you can see that the disparity there where um a bachelor's degree at year seven of teaching is $760 above the state minimum and at the highest point we're $13,000 above the state minimum. Um so part of that is an artifact of again that compounding growth. [snorts] The other thing um that we did here is looked at the density. So where do the
043teachers fall on this scale? Uh and so what we the method for that was to take the quantity of teachers that are in that color of cells and divide it by the number of cells there are. So where you've got the pink cells and there's what six of them um multiply but there's about 60 teachers then that are falling into those cells because there's 9.5 per cell in terms of density. Um for the yellow cells it's 12. So that's you can there's a lot of teachers on that early bachelor's early masters and then that drops off to a 4.1 density for the blue, 5.5 for the white and 6.3 for the green. So all of that to demonstrate that um where we are closest to the state minimum is also where the highest percentage of
044our staff fall in terms of their level of experience. Um, moving on to the next slide, a little bit different look. This is actually the quantity of certified staff that fall in each one of those cells. Um, and where this becomes a little bit interesting is on the bottom. Um, you can see the the quantity of each column. So 240 teachers um are at the bachelor's level, 330 are at the mast's, 138 the mast's plus, and then 35 at the at the doctorate level. 10% of all of our teaching staff are at their highest 28th year. Um and again u Sandy can you just roll down to the very bottom of that so you can see that um that percentage of faculty um is 30.8 8 42% um 18% 4 and a.5% uh but the
045percentage of each one of those columns that is on that 28th step increases from left to right um so you know the actually the m I think it's 35 or 40% of the uh PhD are on that step 10 um so that's kind of shown in distribution as to where staff fall um so moving on to the next slide then. Uh we're looking at uh a potential shift and so this is I guess a suggestion as to where we might go to achieve our goals. Um again in the past we've applied a flat amount. we've applied a, you know, graduated amount of a flat percentage and in some instances we um did 25 across the board, 2500 across the board except for the seven or eight cells on the bachelors where we really wanted to
046be aggressive at the starting point. So we employed these hybrid methodologies. Um and so what this would do is it would apply a graduated change to the scale. Um, so what would happen is and and there's a couple of bullets about it on the next slide that that we'll get to, but we know that we have a finite amount of revenue to distribute. And so we've identified statistically that where we are the least competitive is earlier in the scale. We have more teachers there that would stand to benefit, but we have limited resources and how we want to distribute the funds to try to address that. So, what this mechanism would do, you can see at the bachelor's, um, it would start with a $2,500 increase. And so, the graphic on your left is per
047cell. That's what we would do to the teaching scale per cell. Um, and so that would be 2500 at the bottom. It would escalate, you know, by that year seven on the bachelors we saw were actually the closest to the state scale. It would go up to 2700. Um, and then it would taper itself back down. the bachelor's plus 18 has been discontinued by the state. So the goal there is to ensure that whatever the bachelor's degree increases by, those people don't surpass someone that has a master's plus 18. Um and then the masters again would kind of mimic the um bachelors and then we would have step only and then smaller increases on that mast's plus 30 in that PhD. Um, again, where it's step only, you're going to see a smaller concentration of
048staff. Um, so it's not going to impact as many folks. Uh, but that that would be how we would apply the changes um to the teaching cells. And again, that's predicated on the current the current notion would be a $2,000 increase per cell. So, in those cells where we really need to increase our ourselves comparatively to our counterparts, we would need to be well above $2,000 to close that gap because we anticipate they'd also be moving up $2,000 or potentially more. Um, so that's the strategy there. Um on the right hand side that graphic that says take-home dollar increase this would be the resultant increase in compensation for a teacher who is advancing a step and then receiving what is on that cell. So you can see in many instances the bigger increase in pay
049is not from the cell growth it's from advancing a year in terms of experience. And so that's how there are cells like um on the doctorate scale on year 10, it may say step only for the the cell itself, but that's still $1,500 just by advancing a year on the cell. So the goal there was to ensure that the the vast majority of staff would at least see a four figure increase in pay um while still trying to address our deficiencies in terms of how we compare. Um so any questions at that point that I can answer about that model? And of course if things change at the state level and those values that the state wants to apply would change then we would adjust course um in reflection of that. Okay. Um, moving on
050to take a look at what the scale would change. Then that would bring our minimum pay from the current 51,500 to 54,000 for bachelors. Masters would go from a beginning rate of about 56,000 to 58,500. Um, and then the graphic on the right is representative of the uh percent increase of take-home pay. So, you know, that cascades anywhere from u, you know, the only place where you're not seeing a one and a half or a 2% are really those cells where we have very few individuals. And near the bottom of the scale, you can see there's five, six, seven percents. Um, so that column average, you know, you can see the the majority of the effort is concentrated on that bachelors and then masters. Um I think you know proportionally it would end up about
051a 3% take-home for um the aggregate you know the aggregate increase in pay but again um the way our finance system works is we would take one of these models that we had settled on we want to give it a shot and then it would take all of our 770 certified staff and it would move them to the next cell they're going to be on and it would compute all the benefits and all the you know FICA and state retirement kind of spit out what that's going to look like and then we can adjust accordingly. So, usually this is just the starting point to see can we make it work? What would it look like in terms of the needs that we would have to ask for from uh across the street? Things like that.
052>> Um so, the observations from Yes, >> I just have one quick question. Um the fringe is the same regardless within the state as far as what the um district pays for that employee. It doesn't it doesn't vary from district to district. It's all the same. That's correct. The state correct. Yeah. The uh the employer and employee contribution for health care is going to be the same for any PEA participant. Um at least in education PEA participant and then um it's a flat percentage rate on retirement. So currently I think it's 24 there's a co- insurance but it's like 24.9%. >> Um and so that's applied to whatever that salary may be. Thank you. >> Um so observations here again the state's potential changes. You know we talked about the um the fiscal affairs recommendations
053for tweaking how the foundation aid flows. Um I have yet to get full clarity on whether all of those are included in the governor's budget or just some of the changes. Um I think the way it looks right now is they would be removing the CTE component as a as an additional pupil weight. Um but I have not seen overt statements about changing the tax effort. Um and so I think you know our presentation in the past would indicate that that would be a higher a higher effort for us and so if that's not the case that would be beneficial. So, um, as soon as I get clarity on what the House and the Senate are really talking about, how it compares to Governor McMaster, hopefully we'll get some clarity on that. Um, we continue
054to staff comparatively, uh, to or below our regional counterparts in many areas. Um, however, two categories where we have, um, comparatively been more generous, meaning having more positions, our certified teachers and also our facilities and and maintenance department. Um so those are things for us to uh look at in terms of our fiscal capacity to support those individuals. Um one of the things that is not here it is more difficult to compare and get data for is the pay supplements for um we call them stipens for arts coaching advisorships for students and clubs things like that. Um they're not as readily available. Um anecdotally we have made some improvements on some of them. Some middle school stipens. We've actually added stipens for some positions that had been volunteer in the past. Um but again, we'll
055continue to look to make adjustments to ma maintain par um with those around us. And then um really the next concept is our defined priority for compensation strategy. So, you know, in the past, um, when I've given presentations about, you know, the district's budget, one of those items that is a strategic goal for us was maintain competitiveness in terms of being able to attract and retain candidates. Um, and so there's the concept of needing to needing to bump up some of those areas where some of our areas are already competitive versus the internal equity of, you know, is that people people feel as though they're not valued then when there's differentials and you kind of have to navigate, but which one of those takes priority? And I think the proposal here would be when those
056blue stars start to drop in certain areas, we need to move those blue stars. Um so that is that sums up certified teachers. Um next we move into building administration and uh those it's just two positions we're looking at assistant principal and principal. Um for for many of the rest of the positions I think all of them there's not a year-over-year comparison. It's just where do we stand right now? um they have not changed a ton and where they do I'll try to articulate you know what might have happened or what changes have taken place um one of the districts here does not publish an administrative scale was not able to ascertain their administrative scale um from last year so or I'm sorry had it from last year had did not have it for this
057year so we applied a 3% escalator now it also happens to be the one that is the orange dot so it's not as impactful as if it was in the rest of the group. Um so for the assistant principal ship, you can see we're very competitive at the low end. Um and we are near the bottom of the pack at the high end. Um for the principal ship, u we're in the pack but a little bit, you know, very competitive there. Only a couple of districts that are substantially above us and then right in the middle of the pack for the high end. um the district really made a concerted effort, especially on that assistant principal um low end to try to attract uh qualified candidates. So, we kind of bumped the compressed that scale,
058kind of left the top end where it was, but brought the bottom end up. Um so, that's what that's where we stand in terms of administrator. Um next, we'll get into a variety of different classified positions. Um teachers, assistant, or aid. Again, some some districts have multiple scales um depending on whether someone has a high school degree, a two-year degree, or a four-year degree, or the level of u need of a student. So, they may pay a differential for a special education placement versus excuse me, a regular classroom. Um so, in again, in this one, we've addressed the bottom end of the pay scale in particular. Um so for a teacher's assistant and a teacher's aid um what you're seeing is a is a depiction of the hourly wage hourly rate they get because if
059you compare as an annual salary our counterparts all staff this position at 185 or 190day contract >> and so the additional 3 to five day or I'm sorry 3 to seven days 3 to eight days um is going to kind of inflate a little bit and we would not look as competitive when you compare to an hourly rate. Um that's where we fall. So right in the middle of the pack for a starting rate and um you know bottom third or so at the top end. [snorts] Uh moving on to the next is a bus driver. Um be beginning rate for bus drivers is something we have really attacked heavily the past three or four years. Every year since I've been here um the percentage increase for a bus driver has exceeded the other positions.
060Um still you can see that's there are other districts that are matching that effort. Um so we are right in the thick of things in terms of a minimum rate um for the folks with the longest tenure. We might have a little bit of room to improve but still um amongst our counterparts there. You don't see that blue star dropping behind like in some other areas. And so um the beginning rate has also become more clustered. It used to be more separation. Everyone's kind of normalized around one value. The other thing that is difficult to quantify is um you know we have a six-h hour a day guarantee for a driver. They are going to get paid six hours at minimum and that's going to be annualized. Uh if they drive extra trips, meaning they
061pick up a field trip or they may have a midday run to take somebody, you know, somewhere uh especially special education students that may have different needs. We're paying them at whatever their hourly rate is as a driver. There are other districts that might say that's a flat $17 per hour or whatever the minimum is. So that's a benefit to our staff. We also have a practice of paying a flat rate for certain duties. So for example, if a driver um is sick or can't make it in uh especially when we had weather incidents and we u we did open u but maybe somebody was lives up in the mountains and was stuck and couldn't make it in even though schools could operate. uh if somebody picks up those routes and drives extra that day,
062we play we pay a flat rate for that. We don't just say, "Okay, you drove an extra 30 minutes." We actually say, "Okay, [clears throat] this is we we held up this amount of your day. We're going to pay you two hours for the labor." Um so those things would benefit our staff where it may not be displayed on an hour per hour basis. Um so that's where we stand for bus driver for custodian. We really have made efforts in this one. Uh that's an area where and you see the personnel reports um for a couple of years we really struggled to recruit and to retain custodial staff. Um so we've really again been aggressive at compressing the bottom end of that scale up. Um and yet are we're still in a healthy place in
063terms of the higher end of that scale right in the middle part of the bell curve. Um, so that's it for custodian. Bookkeeper and database clerk was an interesting one to me because for our district, we have always tied those two positions as, you know, front office support staff in a school building. They've been paid on the same scale for us where other districts do not treat it that way. So there is a little bit of difference. Um, for the data clerk position, you can see that we are a little bit above average there. doing pretty well on the starting rate and right in the pack uh for the average for the maximum. Uh bookkeepers, we're um kind of trailing the pack. We're tied with uh one other district there at $18. I think we're
064$18.3 as you round the mathematics, but about $18. So, a little bit low on the front end. And then um at the higher end, we're right in the middle of the pack for school nurses. something we did a couple years ago, we had a practice of paying um a reimbursement for the Medicaid claims that nurses submitted. And um upon doing some analysis, we saw that depending on what school you work in, there may be more or less students that are eligible for Medicaid. So, you may have a greater or lower opportunity to file claims and earn compensation. Um, and so, uh, because of that, what we did is we looked at the average amount of Medicaid claim reimbursements somebody's submitting, and we, um, we removed that, but raised the salaries quite a bit to be
065competitive with the region. Um, and the goal there was not to, you know, harm anybody who may have benefited from submitting a number of claims. Uh, but there were a number of individuals that did not have the capacity to do that or didn't have the student population where they had the opportunity. So, um, we felt like that normalized the the wages across the board for our staff internally, but also led to a very competitive position amongst our counterparts for school nurses. Um, one thing that's not on here, this is the RN scale. There are only two districts u besides our own that pays a different scale for an LPN. So, some all some districts pay the same rate for all nurses. If you're a nurse, whether it's LPN or RN, they pay the same. We
066have a different scale for LPN, but we compare favorably to those two districts that have that practice. Um, and then facilities department is the last. Um, this is one where again it's very difficult to compare apples to apples. Um, not all districts have comparable scales or titles. And so this was a lot of um just kind of corresponding with my counterparts via email. What do you know what do you guys call this? What's your scale for this? some of them um don't have a scale if it's a a skilled trades person and so they set it by market competitiveness. Um but what we were able to ascertain this this is Pickins Anderson 5 and Anderson 4 in comparison to us um for the HVAC technician position. Um, and in fact, I think for every position,
067our blue star is the lowest. Uh, when it comes to a foreman or a supervisor that would lead perhaps a grounds crew, um, or, uh, you know, folks that are going out in the and during the closures to, you know, address the ice in the parking lots, get a get ice melt out there. Um, you can see that we're substantially lower than our counterparts. And so this is one area in particular that we're thinking we would target um to bring those salaries up to be more competitive. So [clears throat] that is what I've got in terms of the presentation. That's what's going to feed into our um first look at trying to put together what can we afford and what would the ask be across the street and things of that nature. Um so any
068questions that I can answer for you or any feedback or thoughts? >> I got a couple questions. So, I know that most teachers that are leaving the professional leave between year five and 10. >> That's right. >> How about bus drivers? Do you know what off the top of your head? What at what period do we lose? >> I don't I don't have firm data on that. So, it would only be speculation. [snorts] Um >> teachers aid. >> Yeah, I I I don't know the numbers on those. Um it's always been my experience for transportation um that um usually the transportation staff would have a higher average age than many other staff in the district. Um a lot of times that's uh for the insurance benefit. Um but no I don't I don't know if
069there was a particular part on the scale. We would have to look go back and look talk to Mr. Leroy about that if we have data on that. >> I have one question. Um the difference between the minimum and the maximum. I I know that you don't know how many we've got that come in at a minimum, but I know that we always try to get them above that minimum. Is is it based more on experience than is is that what the minimum's based on? >> Um so well I think there's a couple of verbage a difference in verbiage. So the minimum is whatever we would pay for years the first year in a position and what first year in a position means is no experience. So when I we could I guess make the
070analogy or or correspond minimum is no experience. Whether they worked in a different industry for 10 years uh and then went into a completely different field that would be no experience. So now even in cases like that um we'll look at uh if that person has maybe worked in a factory role and then they're going in facilities we do have the capability to match similar experience. So we might say well it's not the exact job u but HR will look at you know what are the aptitudes this person has and if they have 10 years of experience we can do a two for one so we'll put them in at step five. So, I think it's pretty rare other than someone come in like our bachelor's, our bachelor's teachers or masters teachers that have not
071taught, they're an induction teacher, they truly will come in with no experience teaching. Um, when you're looking at trades people, custodial staff, folks that have a work history, even if it's not doing that exact job, they will usually come in above that minimum. So if we look at the number of employees we actually have making minimum there's probably it's a small percentage. >> Yeah I in fact in the classified positions I would say it almost looks the inverse of the staff whereas the majority well not the majority we have 40 50 teachers that were induction teachers the masters is heavily packed on that years you know three through 10. Um I want to say maybe 30% 40% of our classified staff are at their top step. Okay. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Well,
072thank you for your hard work on all this. >> My pleasure. >> A great presentation. Okay, moving on to procurement and um one one thing I neglected to mention during the financial report and it wasn't an an item for discussion, but um we did find out on Friday that we are one of many districts in the state that's going to participate um in a program u from the south uh South Carolina Department of Agriculture um to try to get more fresh foods from local farms into buildings. So, I thought it would be worth mentioning that today um just because we learned that last week. That's good news in our opinion. Um but now I'll move on to procurement. Um so it is a requirement every third year that a school district has a procurement audit.
073Some school districts have that done by their external auditor in in conjunction with their regular audit. We have always had a separate firm do it. Um so this audit has been completed now. Our last one was um from up years up to 2022, but it was presented in 2023. And so this one is up to year 2025. Um there were 17 different areas that were observed by the auditors. Um happy to say that out of those 17, 14 of them had no findings or comments. Um there were a few that had a finding or a comment from the auditor. So I just wanted to bring those to your attention. Uh the first of them was uh a finding that we do not have a formal uh minority business report available. And so what that means
074is when we put out an RFP or when we put out a bid um we we have not received from all of the um submitting biders an official certification as to whether they are or not a womanowned or minority business. Um and so that is something that they would certify um wi with the state and then submit that. Um and so we do not have a record as to how many of them have been in order to report it to you. Um that has been the district practice in the past uh because of the difficulty of trying to obtain them from vendors that may not have them or may not have gone through that process to obtain one. Um the next one is about RP cards. Um the and this is a comment that has
075been consistent across multiple audits in the past. We don't employ a position that is called an internal auditor who specifically audits our dispersements. Um but we have a segregation of duties where the the bookkeeper of the building or the department aggregates all the receipts for the pecards and then they are um reconciled and then the district office will spot check different position or different places within the district to make sure that they conform to policy. So again I think the auditor is looking for a position that's called an internal claims auditor. Um but they are finding also um did not find that we are non you know, don't have any non-conforming transactions that they were able to pull. Um, so we feel like our processes are adequate there. Um, and then the last one was
076uh with regard to sole source uh procurement. Soul source is the terminology for um the lack of ability to bid. And so uh a perfect example of that is um we might use a particular software to do map testing for student assessment. Well, if you're going to do map testing, there's only one provider that provides map testing software. And so, you don't have the capability [clears throat] to bid that because there's no one to bid against. And so, then you would determine that's a sole source contract. Um, and so we do have soul source procurement. And the finding here was that um the district has brought a report to the board every year of all the soul source activity and we can do that in in a more in a quarterly fashion which would be
077more responsive over the timeline of the year. Um, so those were the findings in the procurement audit. Um, you know, I was pleased to see that. I think our procurement director, Shannon Gibson, does a fantastic job. I know she's answering questions all day, every day. Um, I also want to commend our bookkeepers in the buildings and departments. Um, and Andrea Brainer in our office. We do millions of dollars of credit card transactions from, you know, $1,000 here or there down to $410 for a cable. someone's ordering it off Amazon. Um, they do a tremendous job of maintaining the recordeping and maintaining that system and tracking all the receipts and returns. I mean, folks that have Amazon accounts, you know what it's like to do a return with Amazon. Um, we've got that going on in
078every building and and I'm very thankful for their hard work on that. So, >> right, any further questions for Mr. Shik? We certainly appreciate >> Okay. Thank you. >> All of this. >> All right. Dr. McDonald again for our legislative update. So, a couple of years ago, uh, the board requested just to receive some, you know, regular updates about what's going on in the legislative session. And so, the legisl legislative session has just really kicked off for this year. And there's a lot of talk about lots of things going on. And so, I just wanted to pull forward three things that I thought may be of interest um for tonight. And then of course as legislative session really starts to settle in and we see which bills they're really heavily debating, I think that would
079be an appropriate time to bring some of those items forward. So the three we're going to look at tonight are around workforce readiness, local advisory councils for educating students with disabilities and parental rights. So um House Bill 3197 is around workforce readiness. The state has set forth a goal to where 60% of the working age South Carolinians will hold a postsecary degree or an industry recognized credential by 2032. And so in this bill, you're going to see an emphasis on growing the STEM related fields. You're also going to see that this bill requires high schools to offer academic remediation in literacy and math for seniors who are not currently college ready. But that class that they can take is actually going to be allowed to count as a high school elective credit. So it will
080be something they can use toward graduation and helping them on their next journey after high school. It also puts in place a requirement for high school students to complete and submit the FASA at before their um before graduation as a requirement. They would have to do that by January of their senior year. There are some stipulations to that and some exemptions where a parent can opt out of their student participating in FASA. If the student's 18, they themselves can opt out. And then school counselors can also submit an opt out form for students that they've counseledled and they with in collaboration with parents, they've determined, you know, college pursuing college is not what that student would like to do. But that'll be something that will be interesting to see how that moves forward as our
081state begins to go down that road. Another piece of interest uh that I think will be really beneficial for students should this uh bill go to law is that it would state that by July 1st, 2026, the Department of Employment and Workforce would have to publish online data on the economic value of college majors and job availability and provide that information to schools and the public at no cost. And so we know in a time where a lot of folks are going into college, they're not really aware of what the earning potential is on the other side. And do you see students taking out student loans, this is a great way for students to know going into their major what their earning potential will be as they're trying to navigate adulthood. All right, the next
082one uh is local advisory or H4468, local advisory councils for educating students with disabilities. And the reason this one was of interest to me is because we were actually Robin Cox and some of the team members of the special education department. Um, we were actually talking about this just the other day. What would it look like if we had a representation of our students with disabilities and their parents to talk through some of the ideas that we were having with our special education students? And so this would actually require districts to create local advisory councils for educating students with disabilities. And the whole purpose of that council is to work with the school board and advise the school board and the superintendent on the needs of students with disabilities including safety concerns. And so superintendents
083would go through so Mr. Smith would go through um have an application process where you would submit and well people would submit applications. He'd select folks to serve on that board and 51% of the members of the board have to be parents of students with disabilities. And so other members of that board, you have to have a student with an IEP who's on that council. You have to have a school administrator, a district representative with special education experience, and then you have to have at least two teachers, one who represents K through eight and one who represents 9 through 12. And so these folks would meet quarterly. They have to meet at least four times a year. And um it would just be an interesting way to find uh out more information, especially when we
084think about the investment we've made with um oh my goodness, what's the name of that group that we utilized with our special education audit? >> Gibson. There we go. We try not to say his name too much, but [laughter] with Gibson, this would be a nice followup because one of the things that they also recommended there was to have an advisory um council for that. So we are already in talks of pursuing something like that in order to help us uh just navigate all the conversations because that's an area where we can continue to grow and continue to know how to best support students and families. The next one is H4757 and this bill actually would clarify and add some pieces to the parental rights act. So the parental rights act is already law where
085they list different parental rights. For example, some of those are things like reviewing all curriculum and teacher training materials. Um, having access to all educational records of a student, including counseling and psychological records. Um, an ability to withdraw a student from specific instruction or materials if a parent feels as that doesn't align with their beliefs, their religious beliefs. But one thing that this bill would do would be to amend the current law to require parental consent for most non-emergency medical and mental health services provided to minors. Um, one of the things I'm excited to be able to say is that we already asked for consent um before we provide any mental health services to minors. Um, it would repeal statutes that previously allowed minors to consent independently to certain health care services. And it would
086limit school-based healthcare and counseling services without parental approval except in emergency situations. So, it's just another way to continue to partner with families as they are invested in their child's education going forward. But like I said, there are lots of things that are going on and lots of talks about uh different pieces of legislation, but as we start to see what they actually debate, uh we can bring something that's really nice and healthy to the forefront for you guys. Any questions? All right. Thank you for that for sure. All right. And our one action item is uh second reading final approval of that uh policy JND the artificial intelligence responsible use and um I'll let you fill us in. >> Sure. As you know uh we had some work with our ITAG group our innovative
087teacher group that has uh come forward with some best practices around the uh the topic of artificial intelligence. Uh parallel to that, the uh the schoolboards association has come forward with a model policy. And so what you'll find here is just the culmination of that model policy. It's basically what the state schoolboard association put together with just a couple of uh a couple of exceptions. We've removed some redundancy where we had things included in other policies already uh so that uh so that that wouldn't be any longer redundant. And then there was a great suggestion uh that came from the board just on clarity. it. There was a seeming uh contradiction here that we just kind of cleaned up some verbiage here, but what you see before you is basically the model policy. It'll be
088a brand new policy for us. Be second reading and final approval. Bring that to you tonight for your approval. >> I think those were the concerns that we had last time. So, we got those all fixed. Are we ready to move forward and >> um make a motion on final uh second reading? >> All right. >> I'll make a motion we approve on second reading. policy, JND, artificial intelligence, responsible use. >> Second. >> All right. Motion second. Any discussion? All right. All in favor? All right. Thank you. >> And now for your first superintendent report. >> And I I appreciate first of all, I appreciate Mr. Shikling and Dr. McDonald really toteing the mail tonight and making it really easy for me. But I did have uh three items that I'll bring uh for a
089brief superintendence report. One, just wanted to take a moment and celebrate the great art uh work that you see up and down the halls. You know, we have this uh this celebration once per year. It celebrates our students. And why would you have any artwork in the hallways of a school building or any uh district building that's not student art? We have some super talented artists, but wanted to take a moment and thank those teachers. They really pour into those students. they they uh they promote that creativity and uh just really elevate the student experience. And a lot of our students that may not come uh for uh for calculus uh or may not even come for athletics, this is something uh that that really uh motivates them. It engages them in their school experience.
090And so we're thankful for those teachers and wanted to celebrate them uh this evening. Uh in uh the general spirit of gratitude, I wanted to come back and talk a little bit about weather. And I promise you that I am so sick of talking about weather. I've talked about it a lot uh the last couple weeks. On one hand, I think the students think I'm the greatest superintendent in the history. I just I just cancel school every day and and the minds of some. Uh but we have had uh we have had some weather and some closings because of it. There's a lot of work that goes into reopening this school system. And I want to say thank you, you know, to to really everybody that the teachers and the folks that work here, but
091uh particularly Josh Witrock and uh his folks over in facilities and maintenance. I'll call out just a couple of examples. We were over I'm not sure if uh if most of our community is aware, but we opened two of our schools as warming shelters. And so we hosted over 40 families here in the Aon community uh on those cold nights. uh and we've provided food and shelter and just a great level of care from some volunteers in coordination uh with our our city folks and and our county officials and just wanted to say thank you for that partnership. But we were over at Sitica Middle School as one example and in the middle of all of this in the in almost in the middle of the night uh we had water that starts dripping and
092draining onto a brand new gymnasium floor and you know that hurts my heart. I know we have a couple of uh former basketball coaches that really hurts to see water flowing through these gym floors and uh we had uh one of our our uh crew members, Randy Smith, came out in the really the middle of the night in the middle of that weather and started to take uh precautionary measures to make sure that that floor was salvaged. The same very night, we had uh one of our freezers fail with really thousands of dollars worth of food in it. So, we had um Jason Flowers came uh came all the way from Wahala over to the Westell community and fixed that freezer in the middle of the night. And you know, I could just go on
093and on and on of folks just stepped up and stood up and uh as we go into that next day when the when the weather starts to thaw and we begin to reopen schools, it was not without work of these crews that were out there clearing the ice off those bus lanes and off of those sidewalks. And so just wanted to say a special thank you to uh to the folks that made it happen on those days. Uh it was really a blessing to to watch and see the the great servant uh the servant leadership uh come forward from Josh Whitrock and his team specifically. Uh you'll also find a flyer uh final uh note uh that is 4K screenings for next year. This is an exciting time for some of our young parents with
094young children as they begin to look forward to next fall, those uh those 4K experiences. And so those screenings uh there are six dates in March, but you know, there's uh there's another date, June 9th, out there uh for those uh for those folks as well. And then we'll make sure we take care of some of those parents as they move in later in the summer as well. Just wanted to make sure those flyers are are uh they're out there on social media now. I've already seen some of those in some of the social media feeds. You'll see them uh produced in English and Spanish for our community members. And I just wanted to put that on your radar. It's something that you think's not going to happen for a while, but here it is.
095It's almost March. >> Any >> and that's all I have. Any questions that you have or further discussion, be happy to try to entertain those. >> Okay. Well, for board member comments, I would also like to reiterate um your gratitude behind our our people um in our buildings, but also to our families. You know, our county is very diverse in in geography. I live up in the mountains. You know, it's 10 degrees typically colder at any point in the day than it is down south in the flatland where I come from in the little small town of Fair Play. But um one of the things that came up was, you know, sometimes families in the Fair Play area, they get they they get punished to not have to come to school because those of us
096on the mountain are frozen in and and can't get out out of our driveways. And so, thank you to everybody, all of our parents for for sticking with us and understanding that, you know, our roads are always the top concern and our bus drivers and um the safety of all of our folks, but especially our children because if there's a road that I traveled on during either the ice magdon or the snowageddon, it was it was always thinking ahead and going, can a bus and a bus driver safely get a child to school on this road? And oftentimes up in the mountains, Long Creek, Mountain Rest area, it just is what it is. So, thank you all for being patient with us and we hope we don't have to use our last e-learning day and
097have to make up another day. So, um just thank you to our to our community for your patience. Anybody else? Okay. Well, with that, um I will take a motion to go into executive session uh for personnel items, employment recommendations, and changes. So, >> move second. >> All right. All in favor? All right. Thank you. >> [snorts] >> ma'am. >> All right, we are back in open session and at this time I would like to take a motion for uh action out of executive session including personnel items, employment recommendations and changes. I make a motion that we approve the personnel items that were recommended tonight. >> Second. >> All right. Motion to second. Any other discussion? All in favor? >> All right. Thank you. >> Uh and now I'd like to have a motion to
098adjurnn. >> I move that we second. And all in favor? >> All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Yes. Thank you. I will always be able to say I made it through one. [laughter]