Board Meeting 3/10/2025

001I think I hear [Music] one in the hallway. They're in the hall. Yeah, they're in the hall waiting until Okay. All right. I will officially call this meeting to order. Tonight is Monday, March 10th, and this is the March board meeting for the school district of Okone County. So, I'd like to welcome everybody, and uh it's been a fun, exciting month. So, we're excited to have you all here joining us. If you will join me in a moment of silence, please. Amen. And at this time, I would like to ask Mr. Ryan Addis of West Oak High School to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Okay. Get ready. [Music] hallway. Good. Y'all will lead us in the pledge. Attention. Salute. Pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and

002to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Thank you. All right, guys. We're going to take a a minute if you guys will have a seat and I'll call you back up here shortly. All right. So, the next item on our agenda is the approval of the agenda. So, if I have any motions to make any changes. All right. Hearing none, the mot uh agenda stands approved. Now, at this time, I would like to call our West Oak High School wrestling state champions to the stage for a special recognition. So, I think Dr. Blackwood is We got one more coming in. Got one more coming in. There he is. Dr. Blackwell, you want to introduce Coach Trobble? Introduce Coach Troble and then coach, maybe you can

003introduce the boys and um share a little bit. Is that going to put you on the spot? So, as Dr. Forson said, this is Coach Strobble. He has been with us now for four years and four straight wrestling state championships. So, um very very proud of of what he has brought to what was already a strong wrestling tradition at West Oak High School and um and the future is continuing to be bright. So, coach, how about this? It's good for these young men to be able to introduce themselves. We'll uh let them introduce themselves and maybe guys you tell us what class you're in and uh and maybe your weight class too. Maybe your class in school and your weight class. So uh maybe we'll start over here on that far end down there. Is

004that okay? Public speaking. I'm Drake. I'm a junior and I wrestle class 150 150. Uh my name is AJ Dela Cruz. I'm a junior and I wrestled 132 this past year. Uh my name is Gage Ballard and I'm a junior and I wrestled 190. I'm Sash Stroble. I'm a sophomore and I wrestle 150. I'm Watt Saxon. I'm a junior and I wrestle 175. I'm Jason Alexander. I'm a freshman and I wrestle 157. I'm Payton Durham. I'm a junior and I wrestle 120. My name is Luke Mlan. I'm a freshman and I wrestle 113. My name is Casey Loveven. I'm a freshman and I wrestle 126. Holden Durham, senior 165. Jacob Addis, uh, freshman 120. My name is Ryan Addis. I wrestled 285 and I am a senior. My name is Ryan Driver. I'm a junior

005and I wrestled 157. My name is Gunnar Me. I wrestled 106 and I'm a sophomore. Just to share with the board, I I went to Wajala Rotary. I mean, I'm sorry, Westminster Rotary several months ago when Coach Strobble was speaking to the Rotary Club and uh this was before the season and I remember distinctly him saying that uh Palmetto was really strong. They did not lose much last year and and he said there's there's a chance we're going to have to work to get a state championship this year. But his comment after that was but if somebody's going to get us they better get us this year because some of these young guys. So, uh, it's just encouraging to see how the program has thrived and, uh, Coach Treble, we appreciate you and your staff,

006Coach McGlaclin, and, um, just appreciate y'all being here. And I think we'd like to get a picture with, uh, the board and the the boys so we can put it maybe on the website. So, if you'll give us just a second, guys. Two rows of you since there are so many of you. So, we'll let the board members stand on the um, where y'all are right now, and we'll let some of you come down in front. Everybody went down. [Music] Behind the me. their front zone. Okay. Thank you guys. You guys, I'd like to say a few words. I'm a West Oak former coach and just love West Oak High School. Notice the colors that I have on tonight. And I just appreciate everything you've done for our community. People don't understand what it takes

007to win a state championship. How much dedication you have. And it's just not during the season or just before the season. It's all year long. and y'all have two seniors and you've won four state championships. So, the pressure is on now, is it? But listen, congratulations. You really represented your community well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank y'all. Thank you. We appreciate it. Thank you. Certainly always a a great time to have such a wonderful students and parents and community involvement and nights like tonight. So congratulations again. At this time I would like to move to our school highlights. We've got two schools tonight that we're going to feature and one is North Side Elementary and then we'll hear from Sica Middle School. Hey you guys, I'm Charlotte Ker. I am the principal at Northside Elementary

008School and I'm so excited to come to you all today to share about some amazing folks that we have here at Northside. Um, so we have Dana Jenko, she is our librarian. We have Mandy Nelson, she teaches art. We have Laura Latin, the mad science lady. And then we have Coach Hubard. He is our PE coach. and we are so thankful for them and we want to share um of just some special things about what they're doing at Versid. And here's the clicker magic. So here they are. One thing that I wanted to share with you is that we have been um doing professional learning communities at our school and I believe that this group of lovely ladies and gentlemen are one of the first to do that with related arts. And so they've been

009digging into the early learning standards for prek and so seeing how they can just be the best related arts folks for those prek teacher for those prek students. So we're really excited about that. And also we just have to say they go above and beyond every single day. But one of the things that they're doing for our general education teachers this year is they are covering their classrooms every single day from 7:30 to 8:30 so that they can do their letters professional development that's required by the state department at school. And so for that hour that they're doing that for them they don't have to do that professional development outside of school and lose time away from their families. So, we are just so so so grateful for you guys doing that. And now we're

010going to talk about um the special things that you do that are unique. So, I'm going to start with Coach Hubard. The kids love going to PE. Um so, he this is just one of his recent units where he was teaching gymnastics. The students were able to develop and create their own plans and then perform them in front of each other. um and he does try to incorporate, you know, the local community. We have Clemson gymnastics now and some of our kids get to go to those meets. So, that's really special way to talk about how we're doing this inside our school community and outside in our community. So, we're really excited about that. He also brought P3 soccer to our afterchool um program for us and it has been a a great outreach for

011some of our students that don't necessarily get the opportunity um to do rec sports. Um so it's been great. We do have some kids that are on scholarships with that and coach Hubard organized all of that so I'm really thankful for him. Good evening. I'm Kristen Heden and I'm one of the assistant principles at North Side and tonight I get to share with you about the things that go on in the media center at our school. So, Miss Jenko makes the library a place where our kids love to go. Um, it never fails as I'm walking the hallways of the school, I will always see a student either coming to the library or going back to their classroom because they finished the books that they had and they just can't wait to get their hands

012on the new ones. Um, you can see here in the pictures just some of our classes as they come to the library to check out books. Um, there are STEM bins. You can see up in the top right corner the dinosaur for Dino November where they had books all about dinosaurs and just learned um through books. And down there in the bottom corner is Bobby the Bobcat, our library mascot. Um, we just had our spring book fair which went great. Our students and our families loved participating in that. Um, and something that's not on the screens that's going on for the month of March is a book bracket where we've selected 16 books that are popular from the books that students have checked out through the circulation desk. And all throughout the month, they'll be

013voting and then at the end of the month, we'll have our favorite book for the school. So, we are so thankful for all that you do to help foster love um a love of reading in our students. We are also thankful to Miss Laura Land who heads up our science lab. Um science lab is a place where our students can go and engage in hands-on learning, inquiry based learning. Um our students collaborate and create and communicate with one another, which are all really important skills for them to learn. Um on the slides you can see some of our youngest learners. We have our prek students and they were doing a lesson where they were observing meal worms. And then our fourth graders were working in pairs where they had to create a structure with cranberries

014and toothpicks. And the goal was to use as many cranberries as possible, but the structure still had to float. So they had to have some teamwork to come up with that. And then our fifth graders are creating paper roller coasters to illustrate Newton's law of motion. Another thing that Miss Lan does to go above and beyond and to provide opportunities for our students to engage in science is the science fair. So our fourth and fifth grade students have the opportunity to participate. This year we had over 40 students choose to participate in the science fair. um they can work independently or they can work with a partner and they go through the whole scientific method and at the end they create their board and Miss Lan hosts a family night where she has paper and

015stickers and posters and all of those things that they need at the school and everybody comes in and works on their projects together and it's a really fun time and it's just exciting and the kids love it and the families love it. Um the students will then present their science fair boards to their peers and then they present for the school science fair and our five winners will go to regionals on March 21st at Southern Westland. Five from fourth and five five from fourth and five from fifth. So we're looking forward to them representing our school and seeing how they do. Clemson. All right. Hi. And I'm Paige Lou. the other assistant principal at North Side. I would like to highlight Miss Britain Bruno. She wasn't able to be here because um of a sick

016little one. So, she was very sad about that. But in one of the pictures here, you'll see um she just expanded her keyboard lab and the students are absolutely loving learning um different chords on the keyboards. Um she also has a ukulele lab and um of course is utilizing quaver in um building out her curriculum. So there are my office is right up from the music room and sometimes there's really wonderful sounds and sometimes there's like all right we're like productive uh learning going on here like growth mindset, right? So, but she does such a wonderful job and she also goes above and beyond with different performances out in our community. Um, North Side has a tradition of starting the Christmas parade in Cynica. So, um they every every Christmas parade get to do a

017performance um with one of the singers that's invited there. Um and that's really fun. You'll see in the other picture that she invited um the concert truck from they were touring and went to the Brooks Center in Clemson and they expanded to a few elementary schools and so she asked them to come to North Side and that was a wonderful experience for our students to see professional musicians that they wouldn't have otherwise gotten to see. Um and then we had two students make it to the South Carolina Honors Choir in Colombia and um they had a week weekendl long clinic in Colombia and then had a beautiful performance. Um so she facilitates them trying out sending in all those forms that kind of thing which is wonderful and we really appreciate her. And Mandy Nelson

018is um our art teacher. She has a lot going on and I just want to take one minute to recognize how long it takes to actually set up art. That in and of itself, much less the planning and instruction. Um, but showcasing our students art takes a long, long time. Um, and we appreciate all her efforts in that. Um, so her slide kind of highlights things that have happened out in our community that we've been involved in and also some things that our parents absolutely love. The fundraiser for Art to Remember is something tangible that um our parents can buy with their students artwork on it, but then the funds go into her local account to buy even more supplies and unique things that our students get to do. And then there's another fundraiser there

019um that the company actually frames the students artwork and it's they showcase it in a gallery which is so beautiful. We even had a teacher buy several of her students artwork and it's out in the hallway now. So very lovely. I'm gonna turn it over to Miss Kiker for one of our awesome um other new adventures that we did this year. So this is brand new. Um we saw through our data that our youngest learners needed to solidify the basics. And so we thought, what can we do to make sure that they have the foundation strong and set before they go to first grade? So, our kindergarten students this year have been doing fun phonics. And it is a multi-ensory lab for our students to be able to explore their letters in sand, making their

020letters in sand, they tap words on a drum. So, if they were doing the word cat, they all have their little drums out and go cat. Um, our teacher, Miss Lauren Arens, does a wonderful job following the scope and sequence for structured literacy. And she's one week after the teachers. So, after a um letter or a word or a skill has been taught to those students, they have a way to go back and practice that skill with station rotations. And you are going to hear our students um brag about this and and you'll hear the sweet little precious child say, "My favorite thing is stations." And that's what she's talking about. Um but it starts from the moment they come and it starts with directionality. They have streamers and they go, you know, top to

021bottom, left to right. so that they do have that full kinesthetic approach to learning that just makes that skill stick. And we have saw great great results in our data from doing this. So, we're really excited about that. And as always, we feel like we can stand up here and talk all day, but it's great to hear why you're special and why we think they're special right from our kids. [Music] I love art because you get to do all these amazing uh arts and crafts and it's so fun. PE is because we get to run around, get some exercise and play basketball and do all like volleyball and soccer and I like the lawn. I love to paint, eat, and art because we get to see our friends in other classes. Like for because I

022like to do the sins. I love art because I can let my imagination explore. STEM because we can do a lot of fun experiments. I love STEM lab because we get to do all sorts of fun experiments. Music because we have a lot of fun in there and it's just it's like nice learning all like the instruments and stuff like that. I like painting and art because we get to play like a lot of games and run around and all that. Yeah. My favorite is cuz it's fun because I like the hula hoop. I love PE because we play cool games. I like PE because we fun. I love art because we can paint and do a lot of things. I love ST Lab because we do fun crafts and it's so fun. I love

023art cuz we make cool creations. I love PE cuz it's fun. We love specials. [Music] U while Dr. Corey's coming up, we did have one wrestler that came in just a little bit late, but we'd love for him to introduce himself, too. Put you on the spot here. All right. That's what you get for coming in. All right. Congratulations. Great job. Great job, West. And uh this is lovely we get to follow North side because it's great. You will actually get to see how some of the things at that level, how it articulates to to what you end up seeing at the middle school level, which is awesome, too. Um, my name is Mike Corey, principal of Senica Middle School and our award-winning media specialist. So, uh, there's a reason why both of them are

024here tonight as schools celebrate some success. Our libraries are a big part of what we do at both schools and it really creates a great great learning environment uh, over in Senica that we're very proud of. behalf of all of the students and staff, I just got to open by saying thank you for this wonderful building. Um, it's been a great blessing uh for all of us and to see now all the work, the plans, everything you intended and designed within that building is now coming to life. Uh, so just thank you uh because I know all of the work behind the scenes to make that beautiful facility. uh we appreciate it very much and all of us uh are now benefiting from it. Uh we will also as you heard professional learning communities are

025alive and well also at your middle school level and um we're going to speak a little about how you can see how that actually works right down to the individual learner. I know that's so much at the heart of what you want done in all of your schools and even in schools with over 800 students. How you can get to that level of actually making that individual difference for every student. I'm just picking one content here and one very small part in that content. Um but I I think you will see uh through that work but then also a more holistic approach how you can do great things with students. uh and your investment in the middle school instructional coaches has been instrumental to so much of our work. We're blessed with Sarah Lee Roy

026over at Senica, but actually all of your middle school instructional coaches work, plan, talk across those attendance lines and and there's examples of this all over in all of the attendance zones. Uh so if you back up the challenge we had faced over in Senica uh was for example in writing and students take the SE ready writing test and it's scored up at the state level and uh through data review noticed that there was 117 students that that writing was not even being scored and and there's reasons for that and this is provided to schools and we have this information. This was actually a three-year trend where that number was getting larger and larger each year. Um so through the professional learning community's work and being data-informed educators, um we started seeing that that for

027example uh had 58 essays being labeled as insufficient. There's not enough writing there to even grade as an example. And 49 being what they classify as copy. Now that's not students actually just copying another student's work. But you cite uh information from the text so much without providing your own words it thinks you're copying. Uh so that was actually the data we had uh that uh we went through and teachers need to see first of all who that is and and have a little focus and clarity on the problem and then if you have great teachers once they have that and they collaborate together and for example that sixth grade group talks to seventh then you can reverse that outcome and that was reduced uh within one year uh that went from 117 to 59

028over 50 students taking off that non-scorable list. A very microscopic view there of that work drilling down to individual students and how it can make a difference uh for them. But then in a subject like writing, it's also middle school learners don't do boring very well. Um they have to be engaged. It's got to be interesting. It's got to be meaningful. Uh so then we launched uh uh some learning with authenticity uh and that began uh uh our first Bobcat journal actually we got some folks here with our our friends uh with media and um that was our first newspaper club published the first Bobcat journal that's student work but it's not just students articles and work they are learning from newspaper writers and the editor has their I think Caleb's in one of those

029pictures speaking to our group. This is real stuff in our community and they're learning from not just our teachers uh but great partners in education with us and a newspaper does a great job of that. And then there's an example there of our main hallway became the Black Heritage Trail that will be a great addition to the Senica area uh after it moves over from Clemson and the work you see being done there. And it's a um starting also in the Senica area, but we started our own version. Our our uh media specialist here uh um we take on the whole hallway. So at Senica Middle, that's 210 of a mile long and that was uh student learning. So what you see on there is sixth grade quilts um that were messages in the Underground

030Railroad. And you go down farther and you see like Maya Angelo there where seventh grade social studies teachers collaborated in our library, did research and writing about uh significant um achievements uh in black history. And that now takes up the entire main hallway where students can now learn from the walls. We had our fifth graders came through and they can learn from that hallway just like their fifth grade parents that recently came through. So, it's just been great uh to see and it really makes a difference uh in student uh learning. And our award-winning uh media specialists will talk to you also how we partner with families. That's at the core of your mission and our mission together as we serve. and that's very much happening in the area of literacy and reading uh through

031Cassie. She's uh recently received a national award with an an NEA and a teaching excellence award and also in the Senica community at our recent black history lunchon where she was also recognized for her work in the Senica community. So I'll turn it over to Miss Cassie Owens M. Um, good evening. And so I've been fortunate enough to partner with uh the Cynica City Museums and we, you know, they know I love books and I think that's just a given. And so we were talking, um, Miss Henderson and I were just talking about what could we do in the community to get books out into the community. And so we came up with bookends. Um it's a monthly meet where um really it targets K through sixth grade, but we don't care really what age

032you are. We've had toddlers, we've had um college students, and they come in and I read to them and then we do a guided discussion of the book and then everybody leaves with the book that I read. So they get a free book. Um and it's just been outstanding. It's a great way to connect with families and to just get some books out into the atmosphere. Um, something that we started this year um at our school is Bean Stack. Um, and it is proven to be just it's so equitable for all students. Everybody is able to participate. If you um come in like at the, you know, in January, you don't feel overwhelmed. You can come in and read. And what Bingstat does is it tracks minutes. I still track books because I have for

033years and some of the students are really, you know, competitive about beating their their book goal. I have one sixth grade student. My my overall book um you know, total the the record is 210 books in a single school year. And I have a sixth grader, you probably know that sixth grader, who is determined to beat this goal. So every week he'll come up to me and he's like, "What's that goal again?" And I think right now he's at 170. He's going to beat this goal. Um because he loves to read. He's always in the library. And so, you know, I still count the books, but counting the minutes just does something for students. It really helps our multil- language learners. It helps students who um just have an identified uh you know, difficulty with

034reading. And so, they feel like this is something that they can attain. And so just to give you some numbers, um in 2022 when I became the librarian, um I had 41% student participation. In 2023, 63% student participation. Last year we were at 75% participation. And everybody was like, "Oh my goodness, how are you doing this in middle school?" But I go for a 100. So right now we're at 96% student participation. We received the reading culture trailblazer award from Beanstack. They are actually writing a Cica middle school spotlight case study on how well our school has done with this and um I am presenting with Beanstack at a state conference next week. So it's been it's been pretty amazing and our students um are reading more than ever. Um we have project lit we

035have so many reading initiatives in our schools. Um, and I'm really thankful to Dr. Corey who has been super um, he's just been so supportive of everything that we do. In addition to working with sixth, seventh, and eighth graders for social studies, I just finished teaching every uh, seventh grader the global uh, the graphic novel global. Um, so now we're we're reading about um, global warming and climate change. And um, and I won't, you know, be free until the end of April. I am partnering with a different grade level, different subject um pretty much for the rest of the year. But I love it. This is what I'm born to do. So, thank you. Thank you, Miss Ker and and Dr. Corey. So, it's always a pleasure to hear the the great things going on

036at your school. So, it's always always a pleasure. At this time we will um go to public comment. Do we have any anyone handi Barwell? Good evening members of the school board, superintendent and community. My name is Tiara Bwell and I'm here tonight as a concerned parent to urge this board to take immediate action in implementing metal detectors in our high schools. Recently, a student was able to bring a firearm onto school grounds. An alarming and deeply troubling incident that could have ended in tragedy. This event has shaken our community and has made it clear that we need to do more to ensure the safety of our children, teachers, and staff. We cannot afford to wait for a worstcase scenario. Preventative measures must be taken now. That is why I have gathered a petition with

037over 100 signatures from local taxpaying voters who also support adding metal detectors to our schools. I think y'all may have a copy of that. Okay. And uh metal detectors are not a perfect solution, but they are an added layer of security, one that has been successfully implemented in schools ac across the country. They serve as a deterrent and a tool to prevent weapons entering school buildings. The simple truth is that a student cannot use a gun they cannot bring inside. We understand that cost and logistics may be concerns but that is the what but the cost of inaction is more is is the scariest part. What is the price of a life? If we can spend money on athletics, technology and new facilities, we can and should invest in security measures that could prevent a

038tragedy. We urge the school board to take this matter seriously and act swiftly. Please do not wait until it is too late. Let's be proactive and make our schools as safe as possible for every student and educator. Thank you. That's okay. At this time, we will have the approval of minutes. So, um, if everybody had a chance to read over those. So, I'll entertain a motion for approval. I make a motion to approve the minutes of the February 10th, 2025 board meeting. A second. Hearing a motion, a second. Any further discussion? Not all in favor of approving the minutes. All right. Thank you. 5. All right. Moving on to our discussion items. First up is our superintendence report. Yes. And I'm actually going to um pass off to uh Dr. McDonald and Mr. Smith for

039the first um item there with the uh professional development day. Thank you, Dr. Thors and Dr. Kaman. uh February 17th, uh we actually had an opportunity to host our third of our three required district uh professional learning days. You'll recall that our first day was on during pre-planning week. Our second day was uh in October. This coming uh April 21st, there will be an additional day and that will be local professional development uh delivered by uh by each local school. uh on this day uh for secondary uh really K through 12 we we had 23 different sessions that covered a broad spectrum of topics and I really our desire was to ensure that each participant was able to access learning that was relevant to their specific role. uh our content teachers in core areas but

040much beyond that included the arts CTE teachers, world language teachers, specific content for speech language pathologists, occupational therapist, media specialists and librarians. Really hoping that everyone was able to access content that was directly connected to the work that they do uh each and every day. Would like to highlight a couple of specific topics. As you know, this fall we will be launching new K through2 math standards just as we did uh language arts this past year. And so we were able to continue uh work into diving deeply into these new standards and also allowing uh an opportunity for our teachers to explore some of the state approved textbooks and uh curriculum resources that they'll be using uh for the fall. Uh you'll recall a couple of months ago you approved a local board approved course

041for frontier history. And so each of those teachers that's going to be teaching that course this fall was able to uh to get together and really discuss connections from the US history the government curriculum to that frontier history course and even begin planning some of those uh authentic and engaging learning experiences for students. Uh thirdly, as a reminder, uh for this is the second consecutive year that we've offered very specific training for our CTE teachers. And so some of the uh topics that were highlighted for our CTE teachers were literacy in the CTE classroom, student efficacy, and instructional practices that are most effective in the CTE classroom. Uh so far, we've gotten a a good amount of feedback. I think that our math teachers are continuing to tell us that uh there's a lot to

042explore and a lot to learn. And so as we begin looking forward to April 21st and even summer institute, uh we still have some additional work to make sure that all of our teachers feel comfortable and confident uh with those standards and the resources attached to them as we go into the school year. Uh but we also heard from one teacher that reached out in response to the science learning as one of the most productive professional learning experiences that he's seen in recent history when it comes to classroom instruction support. And so we feel like we're hitting the mark in terms of making sure that the learning is relevant and meaningful to each uh group of students. In short, our team is committed to continuing to offer authentic learning sessions that are really four different

043things. One, driven by current data and research, aligned to our district mission, vision, and direction, relevant to each and every participant in their specific roles and needs, and implemented using engaging learning strategies aligned with adult learning theory. And so, I'll pass it over uh to Dr. McDonald if you have anything that you'd like to add. Yeah. Um Andy did a really good nice comprehensive uh view of what really took place that day. Um as far as elementary uh related arts counselors as well as our librarians, they worked collaborative collaboratively with their secondary counterparts on that day. So that was an unique opportunity for them. And then of course general education teachers were engaged in their third day of letters um training which is really exciting because in April 24th it'll first it'll be our fourth

044professional development day around letters which means that our elementary teachers are halfway through their letters journey. And last Friday our reading coaches as well as some of our administrators and our district office staff there's about 25 folks in that group engaged in their last professional development day with letters. And so we actually have a cohort that has finished letters in our district and we're really really proud of them and excited for the work that they've done so far. And another thing I just want to throw out there, uh we've been told by multiple facilitators that our district is one of the few that have had administrators and reading coaches go through this process ahead of uh the teachers in the the district. And that really provides a nice unique perspective as well as the fact

045that our school district initially went ahead and went ahead and uh had our fourth and fifth grade teachers move through this process and now the state of course is saying fourth and fifth grade teachers should go through this process. So I just want to say thank you for allowing us to go ahead and go down that road uh and obviously blaze a trail in our state where other folks are going to now be having to catch up to us. So we're really excited about that. Thank you. Um, moving on to uh the next item on the list. U just wanted to highlight our um SDOC Black History Month presentation and uh Dr. McDonald helped to do this and we um had 20 slides on a presentation um that are either local Okone County individuals. Um

046you can see we have Dr. Sloan representing one of those days. Some of them are are other African-American citizens from around the state. Uh but the idea was that there would be one slide for every day in February where we would highlight people um that made significant contributions to the local area or the state of South Carolina. So I I asked Miss Bay to highlight um Dr. Sloan and then Miss Williams who was a a longtime educator in Okoni County as well. Um they were two of the the uh individuals highlighted during the month of February. So we appreciate Dr. McDonald's leadership there, but also just a chance to celebrate um important milestones and important individuals in our community and state. Um the next item is the elementary steam and career night which is tomorrow

047night at the Hamilton Career and Technology Center beginning at 5:00. If you were able to go, uh this event past couple of years has just gotten better and better. very well attended, an awesome introduction for our elementary students to just career education, but we're also so excited to be able to just show off that building to families to get wet their appetite so that hopefully in a few years those students will want to be there. So that's open to the public. Would love for anyone to come. It's really a a great evening where our elementary schools also community partners just work to uh have interesting hands-on STEM learning for our elementary students. Also wanted to announce publicly that we have started something new recently with school board of trustees school visits. Uh we did this

048a couple weeks ago and um so you'll see it now if you go to our district website and look at the schoolboard meeting dates. We've included our school board visits simply because there will be times where there's a quorum of schoolboard members together. They're not doing anything illegal conducting business at a you know non-sponsored meeting or anything like that but they'll be in the same place. So, we wanted to be transparent and let people know that our board members are going to get together about once a month for the at least the rest of this school year. And uh we do separate. Um I think we we had a group of two and a and an individual last time, but I think this later this month we'll have all five board members participating. So, we'll

049have a a group of three and a group of two uh just going out and seeing the great things going on in our school buildings. So, uh, that was that was fun a couple weeks ago and look forward to a couple more opportunities to do that this spring. And then finally, our town hall meetings um for about three years now. Uh, we've gone around and just, uh, met with faculty and staff. It's an optional meeting, so there's nothing mandatory, but it is an opportunity for Mr. Smith, Dr. McDonald, and myself to be in the schools to talk to teachers and just hear concerns, share ideas. Um, so we have done I think probably 16 out of 17 of those, 17 out of 18 of those. And we have one tomorrow that'll complete our spring town

050hall meetings. And that is it for me. All right. I'm assuming we will hear updates next month about those meetings. Sure. Go in any concerns. All right. Next is our legislative update with Mr. shickling. And I um actually made an error there. Um Dr. McDonald's going to do this section. He does have a couple of legislative items, but he's going to handle those in his um budget review. So, uh Dr. McDonald will do the official legislative update tonight. All right. Uh so, thank you. Thank you. These are the three uh things that were just circling around. Two we've already talked about. one is new. If we could go ahead to the next slide. So, the education scholarship account, last time when I presented about this, it was the South Carol, it was the education lottery

051account. Um, it was originally passed in the Senate, but whenever the House got a hold of this bill, they made some adjustments. And so, the reason it now says education scholarship account versus the lottery is the House is actually seeking to fund this out of the general fund using tax revenue. whereas the senate were was looking to fund this through lottery earnings and winnings. Um you can see a comparison breakdown of the house version and the senate version. Another update in the house is that now any family would be eligible to receive an education scholarship account whereas before there were those income um qualifications that a family had to meet. So this would open it up to anyone uh can now receive this uh benefit. It also eliminates the cap on how many of these

052can be given and funded within a year. So the house uh the government, excuse me, would actually have the flexibility to offer however many they they felt was necessary. And it also raises the amount of funds that can be spent on transportation costs at $3,000 a year to help parents move those students from one place to another. So, it'll be very interesting as it now sits in the House has now passed their version. As it goes back to the Senate, they have to either decide to reconcile or uh come up with a version that they both can agree on or they start from scratch and start over again. So, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. The next one, the Educators Assistance Act. Nothing on this slide is new. Just wanted you guys

053to know that this bill was in fact passed and is now in the Senate. I think a lot of folks in the room are interested in this because it would change that reertification process as well as um allow more flexibility for teachers to be able to engage in that learning within the district and not have to seek out those outside opportunities for learning as well as creating that lifetime certificate for retired educators. And our last one, this one is really interesting. Uh this bill moved from Senate committee to full Senate last week, but this is a non-certified teacher pilot program. So, in an effort to, I guess you could say, combat, you know, the the amount of teachers that we're seeing leave the profession and the difficulty sometimes to fill those positions, our our state

054is looking at creating a pathway for folks who have attended college and have that back that bullet degree or have a graduate degree and they have at least five years of workplace experience in the field where they could fill those positions. And before originally when they made uh this uh bill, one of the things they said is that the school either had to be rated rated as excellent or below average or unsatisfactory. But they've gone back and they've taken out those qualifiers and they're saying that any school could participate in this pilot program. Of course, the goal is to try to get more teachers in the classroom and make the pathway to being a teacher a little bit more easier for our career changers and of course to meet the need of having teachers in

055the classroom. So, it'll be interesting to see how this uh moves through um the government at the state level. There's lots of really interesting topics and debates that are happening in our state house right now especially as they fund the budget and discuss the budget and a lot of those provisos that are uh maybe are being that are being discussed as being attached to uh the budget. So as we see how that happens and how what happens next I'll be look forward to bringing some things to the room. Great. Thank you for that. Now Mr. Shikling for the February financial report. Okay. I will uh try as I'm going through this one, I'll try to uh preface a little bit about what we'll talk talk about next in uh budget development. Uh so the revenue

056side, we've got uh our tax collections here and you know it's the county collects it one month, then they give us the report and turn it over to us the next month and then once that month closes, I present that to you. So this is really January's collections showing up on your February report in the month of March. But 30 32.5 or 32 and a half or so um million which is the bulk of the collections in January. You know we started to see some of that earlier. Um but January is always also are always the largest month. Um we've got some of our fee and loo tax coming in then. So again that's a local property tax. Those are agreements where there is some sort of industrial development attached to a project. And so

057rather than paying a flat or rather than paying their rated tax, there's some agreement that's a different amount. Um and then that gets turned over to the district. So one of the things I'll speak to in the budget development is that line item and its potential to be a variable item for us. Um looking at local um local non-tax interest investments is a large one for us this year. Last year it I I'll speak to it peaked because of the Fed raising their rates so quickly. Um now we're starting to see we thought we were going to see a fairly aggressive decline in rates. It seems to have kind of tapered. Um but this time last year we were about a million dollars of interest earned and this year we're at 700. So again when

058I'm talking about variable items where we you know it's difficult to budget that's an example of one of them. Um all in all in the in the revenue side um we've got some transfers in to the general fund from that educational improvement act as a line item and so overall we're at 41 million um 93,000 so a big month for cash flow here. Um expenditures is is fairly routine about 10.9 million and really aside from some of our general dispersements we're about 10.5 to 11 million every month except for June. So, um that's fairly routine. Um spending the the um food service management contract out of the cafeteria fund is one of the larger expenditures this month. Um capital as usual. Um then our payment for the strategic system implementation is also on there. Um

059and that will be a line item that will add to the security area of the budget um for next year as we're looking through there. I do have to make you aware and apologize for a mistake on the capital um capital project report that third line there's a very important parentheses missing. So that um is reporting as basically a refund to us which it shouldn't be. So um that's that's uh creating an issue with the total of the comp completed projects because it's actually subtracting rather than adding to that number. So the completed projects should be 11.1 million rather than the 6.3. So I apologize for that. Um this was the first time that I've separated those because of how many projects we have going and separating them is what created the error. So my

060apologies. Um but you can also see now the things that are in progress and the things that are complete um isolated from one another rather than mixed in every other. So, any questions on the expenditures or the finance report? Okay, then I'll jump into the budget review. Um, going about this two ways. There's a public presentation that is in essence an executive summary of the past three years history and then um summaries of the different components of our budget. And then in front of you, you've got a booklet that has more line item detail about each of those components. So where I'm displaying the total results of that cluster of of accounts, you'll see more detail in front of you in a packet and I'll try to address both. Um this is the time of

061year where I really envy uh or wish it was the fall when um Mr. Smith and Dr. McDonald and my counterparts are on the agenda a lot more than I am. But um I'll do my best here to get through it. So um the first thing that I wanted to address is put in those principles of financial management again. Um do I have the power? Yep. Do Oh, I have the clicker. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm thinking that Mr. B is going to do that. Uh principles of financial management. And I'm really, you know, we covered them last time, but a couple of things I really wanted to highlight is those um items, specifically revenues, that have the potential to be variable. So, do you want to generate a reliance upon money that you're not sure

062is going to materialize versus the money that you know will materialize is another way of saying variability. Um the second part of that is utilizing the matching principle. Um, the matching principle is not just our terminology. Um, what I've put into the presentation, it's actually an appendix in the booklet, and I'll skip forward to that, is Moody's bond rating criteria for school districts. And Moody's is the is the entity that we pay to do our bond ratings before we issue debt each year. So, they have criteria where they assess the the health of a public entity, and in this case, a school district. Um so the matching principle um is something that they actually take into account when they're assessing your bond rating. And so Moody's defines a very strong district as a district whose

063revenues are 105% of their expenditures. Um so again their ability to continuously fund recurring costs with re sources of revenue. Um we are a double A rated district. were in strong and so in strong they want to see between 102 to 105% revenue to expense. Um so again the expectation that revenues are exceeding expenditures or that there is a operating surplus. Um the other thing is fund balance. Our board policy is to maintain 20% of the prior year's expenditures in fund balance. For Moody's they rate a very strong district as 25% plus. Um so as we go in and look at our annual results um one of the things I'll highlight is our um trying to straddle a line with fund balance where we want to have enough um we don't want to be excessive

064or frivolous and so how do we manage that responsibly um and so the the rest of it I think is self-explanatory. Um part of the mood as well that that I would want to speak to is there are some factors that we do control. So we can control our revenue and expenditure footprints. Um we can control our management of um fund balance and to we can control how much debt we have outstanding and how aggressively we pay that debt off. That's something um that Mr. Nurk, our financial adviser, helps us with in the capital side of things all the time. what we can't control is our property value per capita um the income per capita that's that you know of our residents in our county and the pension liabilities that the state you know determines

065as an actuarial process but these things do have an impact on our credit report. So where we have the ability to exercise managerial control we try to and we're you know at the mercy of the other ones as environmental factors. Um, so I will now jump into kind of these overarching highlights. Um, what you have in front of you is you've got two sections. There's a revenue section. Um, actually has more detail than the expenditures, which is way different than our report that I show you every month. Um, but they're fairly isolated sources of revenue where all salaries are salaries as an expenditure. So those have been aggregated a little more. Um, looking at that, uh, I'm I'm going to take you over a timeline, but then I'm also want to touch on a few

066different points. So, um, when we talk about our board policy of maintaining a certain amount of, uh, fund balance, there was a time not too long ago where we were right above 20%. So, at the end of that 2122 school year, we were um 21 or I'm sorry, the beginning of the 2122 school year, we were right at 21.8%. Um that year was an interesting year because there was a um dispute with with Duke Energy. Um it was about the assessed value of the property and there were taxes that had been collected that were essentially held in escrow. Um it's it's called a certiary case. So you don't again you don't collect that revenue until it's settled and you're entitled to that revenue otherwise you would have to give it back if the assessment were

067to change. Um so that year we were uh handed over more than $2 million of revenue that was accumulated over time um that showed up in our um tax receipts and our expenditures there were pretty close and we still had esser funds that were helping us offset some of our costs. So if you look at the the net results of that first column the fiscal year 22 we entered the year with about a 21 22% fund balance. Um we had a very anomalous year and I remember using that terminology with you. Um you know it's $9.8 million surplus. Um some of that coming from overcolction in taxes, some of it coming from additional um merchants inventory, but if you look at other sources of revenue, our local revenues were underwater. Our state aid was underwater.

068So we were, you know, mostly propped up by those extra local collections. Um on the budget side, we did a pretty good job of constraining our spending to exactly what the budget was. And so in that instance, you know, all of that revenue, additional revenue is pure surplus turns into fund balance. So that put us at a very high fund balance of 29.3% at the end of that year. Um and so then the recommendation going into the next year was that's higher than we need per our policy and really higher than we need for operations. So, um, we engaged in a plan to invest some of that fund balance in different ways. One of the ways was the board had made a long-term pledge to the YMCA to help support the initial construction of the

069YMCA and its operations. We were able to pay off that pledge at one time. Um, we also were able to transfer money to a pupil activity fund to help uh provide additional pupil activity buses for each of our school attendance zones. um because our we had deferred the purchase of some of those vehicles for a while. Um and so we were due I remember we had folks speaking at board meetings about you know the failed air conditioners and so we were addressing a need with that excess fund balance. Um then we transferred some to the capital projects fund to supplement our building plan. Um so in that fiscal year of 2023 um there also were some unbudgeted expenditures. Part of that was a mid-year bonus. There also was conversation at the state level for bus

070driver retention bonuses and we honored that despite it not being in the budget from the um from the legislature. Um so again we we saw higher than budgeted revenues but we saw higher than budgeted expenditures as well. Um and so you'll see some of those things um manifest as in the expenditures of the total annual results. Those are a transfer out. So um they do count as an outflow but they're not truly spending. So when we do that reinvestment plan, I don't I you know they're included in outflows. So total money out is the expenditures at the bottom, but if we transfer money to capital or to pupil activity, that's not truly an expenditure. It's a transfer. So for the metrics that Moody uses, they would not look at that as an operating deficit because

071that was a transfer out. It wasn't money spent on salaries or recurring costs. So I wanted to make sure that that was clear. Um but in that year um we basically remained flat on our value of fund balance, our actual value. Um but our budget grew and so when you're talking about 20% of budget, your fund balance dollar value doesn't change, but your budget gets bigger. We actually reduced our percentage from 29% to 25%. Uh or 20 well close to 26 25.9. Um, again, I I highlight that as a, you know, responsible public stewardship, trying to pay down some obligations, make investments where they've we've had deferred costs that we have not spent money on in the past. Um, and then the most recent fiscal year, um, we had a about a 3.5% budget surplus.

072So, under the context of our fiscal management, that, you know, that's a modest surplus. That's part of what we articulate. Um we saw that um for the first time we had a really substantial mid-year reduction in state aid because of our 135th day pupil count. Um again regular tax collections were uh more than we had requested or more than we had budgeted. Um in that instance the rate hikes um so the interest earnings are peaking uh and we can already see that coming down and we began to use indirect costs from food service. So the food service fund is self operating if it generates additional revenue because we have a contract with a company that provides a service and they they bid for that. Sometimes the reimbursements from the federal government are more than what

073the permeal cost of that company is and we end up with additional money. U we have to operate as a not for-profit so we can't have an excess of additional money. So, we've began to use what what's called indirect costs. And in the federal grants, you can move money from a federal grant into your general fund to offset what your regular managerial costs would be. So, you know, if you're running payroll, you're keeping the lights on. You have facility costs. There's a specific percentage of your money that the federal government says you can take that and capture that as operating revenue in your general fund because you are paying for the facilities and you're paying for the kitchens and all these things. Um, so we started to take that for the first time in our

074history u that I've been here. And so that led to and I'll I'll walk you through now some of these line item revenues. So if you look at the um local tax collection, the very top line is what we call advorum taxes. That's just true property. So five $5 million more than our budget, 3 million and then 2.7. So gradually reducing, although still more than what what we're asking for. And again, that's a calculation that's done across the street. And I I won't pretend to know exactly how every component of that calculation is made. Um the fee and loop again you can see we started with a we have traditionally had a budget of three million. We had a 850,000 surplus then at 811 then a 491. So again a trend of reduction. Uh at

075the same time we've moved our budget up to rely more on fee and loo at 3.2 million. Um so we're tightening our our variances on the revenue side. Um, I point out interest earnings because in the 22-year three years ago, we budgeted 75,000 and we generated 100,000. And the year before that, I think we generated something like 19,000. I mean, it was like a zero interest rate. Um, so all of a sudden we're at 1.8, but again, if we budget 1.8 million worth of people and the rates go back down, we're back at a 100,000 and we don't have 1.8 million to pay 1.8 million worth of people. Um in terms of formula aid in the 22 year there was a change in the formula aid functions. So all of these different line items were

076consolidated. You can see in that year um we had one line item where we didn't budget and we still got money. So that was that um educational improvement act and then the line above that the formula aid we budgeted way short. Part of that was just how the state was communicating that and where we anticipated revenues coming in. So, we were low on one, we were high on another. Um, but it all seemed to work out. And since then, we've really gotten one block of aid rather than different line items. So, in that 22 year, I had to add a bunch of different components together to get that 29 million. And now, it really all comes in in one block. Um, so you can see in the most recent year we were quite a bit

077short on our classroom aid because we budgeted exactly what the state forecasted and we had that big reduction mid year when the pupil counts changed. Um, so I think that's all I really wanted to highlight. Um, the the last line is the indirect cost, the very last which you see was 150,000 and then we had a big influx and then and then I began to taper up our budget for that as well. Um, so the moral of that story is we are decreasing our positive variance on revenue. Um, and on the expenditure side, as I go through the different areas, I think you'll see that we're also compressing our our expenditure side of the budget as well. Um, so I'll take you through what we refer to as our instructional functions. This is primarily your

078general education classroom teachers in front of students. Um so in this area we've got um 630ome um full-time equivalents is what FTE stands for. Um so if you're not familiar with that terminology or that acronym FTE is a full-time equivalent. So we had about 637 staff there. That's primarily just teachers and classroom aids. Um not not much else in the instructional area um for general education. Um you can see uh at one point two years ago we had a $1.7 million surplus in this component of budget. Last year we added 280,000 and then we increased that budget pretty substantially this year um because um there was a in some instances $4,500 per cell in the teacher scale. Pretty radical adjustments to the teacher salaries. Um, so this is primarily where you're going to see a

079lot of that when it comes to teacher salary. Um, I also try to include where we get supplemental funding. So we've got, um, and I'm need to skip myself ahead here. I apologize. Um, in the instructional functions, um, that's 585 teachers and 52 aids. We've got about 50 or I'm sorry, 24 staff members in our federal title one. And as that's that was the difficulty with our presentation to you, you know, the board members about shifting that into more buildings. We weren't trying to drastically expand that footprint. So, we're going through that one adjustment year where we are going to use some carryover from this year's title plan to pay for some additional positions to taper down in some buildings and add in others. But we've got about 24 positions in title. Um, and then

080we also get federal, state, and cape money. So that's Perkins and that supports our um career in technology. Um so that's the general instruction area. Um the next area is special education. Um there's a number of different functions that the state articulates. Um they're fairly specific, so I've tried to group them together into categories. Um this area is about 12 12% of our budget. Um the board is aware of course that we've got a consulting report making recommendations about changing some of our staffing hierarchy and and some of our protocols in this area. Um and so we're going to be implementing that over time. In this area we've got 108 teachers and about 111 11 instructional aids. Um again students with profound needs are going to need more individualized attention. So you're going to see

081a different ratio of aid to teacher in this category. Um, we also utilize IDEIDA funds. We get about $2.8 million of IDEIDA funds. About $1.5 million is is um utilized for teachers, special education teachers. That's about 28 FTE coming from IDEIDA, which is a federal stream of funding. The remaining instructional functions, there's kind of a smorgus board here of different types. Um, one of the things that's a little bit misleading is that function 111 for kindergarten is our full day kindergarten programs. The state calls function 147 full day kindergarten, but really it's our it's our prek, our 4K. Um, and so 4K is is mostly funded by SERP with state funds that are outside of the general fund. But what you will see is whatever SERP is also variable. So when we talked about variable

082sources of revenue, one of our various variable areas of expense is we get our grant allocations from the feds and they might tell us by September, October, November that those have been concrete or they've changed or something's approved or disapproved and we operate on a full reimbursement basis. So, if we've been paying um if we've been paying those title one teachers, if we've been paying those idea special education teachers, we have been putting out payroll outflow without any revenue and we have to make a claim with the feds and then the feds give us our money back and we may not see that some cases until January. So, another reason that we rely on fund balances for that cash flow. Um, SERDEP is primarily a state fund and oftentimes what it cannot contain in terms

083of our staffing footprint, we will move those into the general fund and so that's variable every year. Um, SURDEP tends to go up every year. Um, but we have to be able we have to have that flexibility to balance that. Um, we also use federal title 3 here in MLP and in the MLP area in spec in specific um, you'll see that we had not used what the 162 function in the past. So part of the amendment that we did to our budget this year is excuse me simply reallocating folks from other areas into 162 because they are doing multilingual instruction. Um so there are some components where you'll see pretty drastic changes but a large percentage of a small number can often be a small number. So I wanted you know those columns can

084be a little bit misleading as you're looking at them. You have a change of $200 on a $500 line item. That's a huge percentage, but it's not really a very big change. Um, some other other areas we've done pretty big realignments. Um, one of the areas that I I want to pay attention to as we uh progress on is um homebound and that full day K. Um, you know, those had been running a little bit over budget and that was increasing and I made some pretty extreme adjustments to them for the current year and so we'll continue to monitor that and move those forward for next year. um getting into support functions um direct student support. So this is the admin component of the budget and again I think that's a misnomer. A lot of

085times people say well administrative costs you know I have an opinion about administrative costs and yeah administrators are part of our quote unquote 200 functions. Um but so is everything else that's not a teacher in a classroom. So, um, attendance, our school counselors, our school nurses, our psyches, librarians, all of these fall into this area of student support. Um, it's about 7 and a half% of our budget. It's about 100 employees. You can see the different breakdowns. And this is where you start to get a little bit more granular. Instead of just saying, well, this is all teachers or this is, you've got a number of different types of jobs. Um, providing student support here. Um, we use the remainder of our IDEIDA supplements here to fund eight and a half school psychologist positions. So,

086we actually have very little school psych psychology in our general fund. Um, and those have been difficult to staff. So, again, you'll see some differences between years in terms of salary versus contractual um because we've had to spend contractual money to to um make sure we're providing some of those services to students. Um you saw that in speech as well where we can't necessarily find folks all the time. Um school nurse salaries and career counselors were both items that had been in separate funds and over the course of these years that are depicted here have been rolled into the general fund. So in some of those areas you might see salaries increasing quite a bit. Well that's because we might have had revenue that didn't come into the general fund before coming in as the

087state consolidated everything. And then those employees that had been paid here are now paid here. So you're just seeing more things kind of um I don't know what the right word is. Uh pile themselves into the general fund from what were isolated state funds. Um moving on to the next section is just general building administration uh and general c central office. So this would be um supervision of special ed curriculum development, professional development, um superintendent office, board of education, and then school principles. Um in addition to school principles, if you look at the bottom there on um two 233, that line item, um we've got 27 and a half assistant principles and 16 principles. And so again, people say, well, that's your building administration. Well, that's also 32 bookkeepers and database clerks, um 33 clerical

088or administrative supports, and 21 school monitors, which can be divided out to be, you know, 30ome individuals. Um so there's a large footprint of staffing in what we think of as administration that's not purely administrators. Um so this is about 12% of our budget. Um and I think that's really this is more just about the diversity of positions than it is fail in the budget. Um support functions. Again, this is a a very large component second only to primary instruction. Um and so this would have the finance office, buildings and grounds, transportation, um security, which is the SRO's where our contract is paid for for our SRO's and technology and personnel. Um so in in the finance office you know a number of staff dedicated to different roles um in facilities a number of trades

089workers their supervisors being foremans 104 custodial um and facility specialist staff in all the different buildings and then um for transportation the FTE is a little bit different than the actual count of individual because they're they're guaranteed a six-hour day by contract so a six-hour day is a 75 full-time equivalent. You're just multiplying by 75. Um, but there's 77 individuals that are driving buses and 11.5 monitors. Um, and so you can see there's quite a quite a large area of budget there. Um, and that's an area where um, we have some of the most difficulty tracking and constraining costs. Now, one of the things that I've paid special attention to, if you look at the transportation area in particular, um there's a a lot of variable mileage that's driven by bus drivers. Our finance system

090doesn't know how to calculate or project that. Um so, you know, we've traditionally been over our budget in transportation. And um what I did for the current year's budget is look at historical spending, take the baseline, but also then make a guesstimate about what that route mileage would look like in addition to that so that our budget will more accurately depict what our true expenditures will be. Um so you'll see that happen in a couple of areas. Um we also had quite a bit of growth in utilities this year and looking at projections for how we're doing so far, our costs are about the same as they were last year. So that's good news in our favor. Hopefully that'll continue. Um then last again is the transfers out. Um that first year that FY23 part

091of those transfers out was the capital and the um movement to the bus bus fund for pupil activity. Um in last year's what I I chose not to reflect the amendment to the budget for the YMCA support. So last year the the variance in that budget is almost primarily um the 2.25 25 million to to as payment to the YMCA. So that was our one-time investment in fund balance there. Um and then this year our budget is a lot more um looks a lot more like um normal. And primarily what's funded out of here is really just taking money and um cutting checks out to the to the buildings for them to support their pupil activities in their own local checking accounts. So we provide um some support there and our pupil u pupil service

092has coach stipens and salaries in there as well. Um so that's a lot to go over. Um but in the context of us preparing to look at a first read next month um I wanted to make sure that there were no versions about the board being informed as to how the budget functions and where we stand and what our history is. Um, so the next time we look at any of this, it's probably going to be estimates based on um, what the legislature has proposed. And what they have proposed is on the teacher scale a $1,500 increase to each cell uh, moving the beginning salary up to 48,500. Um, last year's total aid to build or to schools was $200 million. This year they're proposing 112. So I think they're seeing a slowing in revenue

093as well. Um last year, um the increase to to state employees, which also includes school bus drivers, was 2.25%. This year they're proposing 2%. Um one of the things that will be hopefully helpful to us is last year the health insurance premiums went up 11.8%. Um this year they're proposing no increase. uh there is going to be an increase to employees contribution to their own health care. Um the employer side would not. Um now we do operate out of phase with the health plan. The health plan runs January to December. Our school year runs July to u to June. So in any given year, we're looking at a blend of what the two rates are. So, you know, we'll start with the higher rate is the end of this year, but we won't see an

094increase midyear like we did currently. Um, so that's about it. Um, I know that's a lot, but I wanted to try to bring that all to an analogy to a family budget. I think we I think this is all a lot of terminology and graphs and things, but when you can make it personal, it's easier to process. Um, so really, you know, we talked about it before, your revenues are your paycheck, your expenses are your living costs. Um, and so I think what's happened to us is we've built living costs. We've bought, you know, a home, our buildings, we're buying groceries, we've got car payments that we can afford based upon our expense footprint. And with um additional interest earnings, with additional tax collections, it's like getting an annual bonus, right? But a you go

095to buy a house, the bank is not going to count your bonus as reliable income to to determine how much you could pay for your home. So that's our fund balance. But when you take that fund balance or if you had that surplus, your bonus at home, would you then go out and take on a higher mortgage payment or a higher lease or car payment or would you put in your savings or would you pay down your credit card or would you know? So that's what our fund balance reinvestment plan is intended to do or was intended to do. Um and so then you know you take that one step further. We're looking at an annual cycle and Moody's tells us that they don't want to see us overspending our budget and spending our fund

096balance. They would move our bond rating down. So we've got this difficulty where we carried a bonus but we don't want to spend it on recurring costs. And so we've made prudent investments in things that are one-time. Um, but if we're not thoughtful about how we plan our revenues and what we request, it would be like saying, well, I don't need a cost of living adjustment. I'll just take what's in my savings account to pay for my more expensive groceries. Now, we know that that's not prudent. So, that's my analogy to how, you know, our rules of fisc fiscal management work with matching recurring to recurring. Very, very good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, any questions? All right, moving on to our security update. Thank you. And I'll um Mr. Hammy may jump

097in and and help a little bit. Um, of course, with the incident we had at one of our high schools, um it it certainly brought security back to the forefront. Um, so I thought tonight, number one, I'd just kind of give an update on what we have in place because there's no single strategy that a school district can employ to keep students safe. It it's multiple layers and uh we have quite a lot in our county existing. We're working on several things and then and then we need to certainly discuss future considerations as well. But to start, I want to talk about 11 things that we feel like enhance safety and security um for our students every day. Um number one is we have a great partnership with the sheriff's office and we have a

098school resource officer in every building. And I think that's probably if there was any one thing I would say is most important, that's probably it to have a school resource officer in each of our buildings. And uh that that's something we can be proud of. and we have secure entries at every SDOC facility. That's two locked doors that visitors have to go through to gain access to our building. So, I think facilitywise, that's something I'd point to in county where we're probably ahead of the game with most school districts with that double secure entry. Um we have um again with the support of our sheriff's office, we have random canine searches in our buildings that sometimes um while they can certainly detect drugs u but they they do sometimes um detect gunpowder as well. So

099so we have that um identicated background checks with every one of our buildings. So, when visitors come into our buildings, they provide a a driver's license where we do a a brief, but al it's still a some sort of background check to make sure we don't have someone dangerous entering schools. Um, a fifth thing, we do regular drills to prepare for emergencies. So, our students are well-versed in what to do should an emergency situation arise. Um, we have great communication within our school system. Um, we'll we'll talk about how that's going to be enhanced, but we do have phones in every classroom. So, if something urgent happens in our classrooms, our teachers can get in touch um with help very very quickly. Um, similar to a school resource officer, we have a nurse in every

100building um, to help with safety of our students. If there is an event, injuries in the school, we've got medical assistance immediately in the building. Um, an eighth thing that we have, thorough security camera coverage in all of our schools. Um, while it's not perfect, I don't know of too many places um where camera coverage is perfect, but we do have um pretty thorough coverage of our of our schools with security cameras. We have linewise monitoring for our students and that is uh it monitors student internet use, but it's also a keystroke uh check. So if students type messages to each other, even in a paper that indicates some type of harm to themselves or others, it's notified. Uh we're notified, administrators are notified, so we can check on that student or investigate. We have

101custodial, which is another one of those um monitor and controls of internet usage, but that particular program hands the control over to parents. So parents can control their students internet usage on their school device outside of school hours. So they can watch what their kids are doing on the internet all day. But a parent can limit internet use on student Chromebooks in the evening. They can turn it off at 8:00 at night if they don't want their students afterward um on on at night. And then finally, number 11 I had down here is mental health services. We do offer um several different varieties of mental health assistance to students um through partnerships, but also our own employees and um and even some virtual services for students. So, we've got a lot in place to make

102our students safe and secure um in progress. Um we are of course working on CGIS. Mr. Shling referenced paying for that program, which will be the the buttons. Um, essentially, I think people have called them um panic buttons to some degree, but but they're more than that. They also would call um administrators to the rooms, but but they could be used in an emergency to locate exactly where a threat is occurring. Dr. Thorson, um I just we had our f first trainings today for the school. I know Dr. Cory had a big crowd at his school because of trying to balance it out. But this week is training for all all the school employees who will be kind of at the forefront, right, with this and then they'll go back and train the entire staff

103and with the hope of rolling it out the first part of April when we get back. April 1st is the hopeful all the strobes and the things have been installed. You can see them in rooms as we go through. Um, but we uh the sens the sensors in into the strobes uh tested. We're still working on some PA connection issues. We we've had to do a little investing on a new card for that, but um at about eight schools, but we're we're in the process of getting that done in the next week and a half to to be ready to go. But it's a been a process which they told us it was going to be about 16 to 18 weeks. Um and it's but we're getting close. And of course that's um what you

104authorized um us to purchase. I believe that was October. So we're about you know pretty pretty good implementation schedule to have that ready by before the school year. Is that in every school elementary, middle, and high? Every school. And it also up here facilities. It's every facility. It also extends even into the parking lot a certain distance. Now, it's not going to work if you're a mile from one of our facilities, but if you're just out in the parking lot and you push that button, it's going to show that the button was pushed in the parking lot. So, there it's it's a pretty good system. Um, we're also in uh a second thing that's in progress is the uh protective film on our first floor glass, whether that be doors or windows. uh that would

105make it difficult for an intruder to gain access through a by breaking a piece of glass. This this field keeps the glass in place and uh makes it difficult to gain access that way. And then finally, another thing that's in progress, we've purchased this year, stop the bleed kits, which is more of um you know, would be in reaction to um some type of of injury, but again, we want to be prepared for everything. So, those are things that we have in place, which I think is is um pretty good. I I feel like we're in pretty good um shape there, but I know the discussion has come up about weapons detection. Of course, uh most of you accompanied us a couple of weeks ago to Stevens County, uh Georgia, where those schools have implemented

106um weapons detection. I think October, November time frame. Uh, Mr. Hamby visited, uh, a neighboring school district, uh, Greenville County, to look at a system they were using and I went to a a school district on the coast to to observe, um, entry into a high school. So, so we've seen um, a couple of different options there. And um and I'll just say one of my biggest fears, I guess, kind of thinking about weapons detection was the feel that it would give a campus students going through metal detection every morning. And I'll I'll just be honest, I I didn't notice um a prison type atmosphere at the schools that I've observed. Um it was, you know, while very serious, it was still um it was still a school, light-hearted teachers interacting with students when they

107entered the building. Um so I didn't notice that fear. It is certainly um an added part of the school day. it, you know, it I didn't see huge backups on the other side of of uh metal detectors, weapons detection. The the students moved through pretty seamlessly. Um and uh the reports we got from from some of the folks who had been there during the implementation was that it wasn't as easy at the beginning, but by the time we observed that they were several months in and and matter of fact, one of the districts I was in, they were several years in and it was smooth. it would, you know, kids moved in pretty quickly. Um, and uh, anyway, so I do think that's that's on my future consideration list and I know some of y'all

108want to talk about that tonight. And then another thing just for future consideration because of questions come up um to me about what happens when an SRO is out and we have had road patrol have to stop by periodically during a day. I know um Sheriff Krenshaw has uh indicated to me that he'd love to have a float SRO. We have a float nurse in the school district so that when a nurse is out, we're able to put a sub in there each day and and try to minimize the time that schools would be without a nurse. And I think the same thing for SRO's would be best practice for us if we could. So if we have an SRO out, we'd have someone that could step in and uh cover a school that day.

109So those would be two things I would say would be future considerations. Um whether that would be funded from the sheriff's office or the county side or the school district budget would be up in the air. But um certainly if we did weapons detection, there would be um uh very large capital outlay initially and then possibly some ongoing costs for contracts and and I would even say uh Miss Hughes plate is extremely full. Um as director of student services, she she um is over safety and security for us if we were to implement metal detection. And I I do think we probably probably need to look at additional staff to to assist our student services office. But um anyway, so that's kind of where we are. And uh happy to uh I don't know, Mr.

110Hammy, anything I missed that you want to jump in and add and then we'll certainly open the discussion for anything y'all have. No, we just we just saw two different systems. You know, one it was an everyday kind of situation where the kids know it was going to be there. In Greenville, what I saw was random three schools. They pick out, they go, they're there that morning. They leave, they go to another school in that area for midday walkthroughs. So, when kids are coming out and going to lunch, they use it then and then um they do the second part of it, the late afternoon at a high school again, like between third and fourth block. Um, and then they move them to athletic events and that kind of thing. And Mr. Handy, it's not

111staffed by school personnel. It's they're they're they are employees of the school district, but they have a team of eight um they call them eight they call techs. Those are are the the ones who uh haul they have trucks and trailers to haul that they use evolve haul that system around to different locations. They're there at 7:15. Set it up. takes about 10 minutes to set it up and they go and they're the ones that check as kids come through. Um they also have a security team uh which currently has five former law enforcement people on it that go to the different locations, some with each group and they're trying to up that to get two more two more of those. So they have a a pretty significant cost on personnel that they have. that's,

112you know, they got 13 looking for 15 folks to be part of that uh unit that takes the machines out and is there to help. Now, their security folks also do things that like Miss Hughes's office does for us, which is like get with law enforcement, do trespass notices. If there's a rowdy parent, um if they h are having to do the drug dogs and that, they will help those kind of things as well. Rowdy rowdy parents, you know, that that kind of stuff. So, um, they don't just do the the metal detectors with the security guard. The techs just do the metal detectors. That's their job. And the metal detectors are middle and high or just high? Uh, they do middle and high. Uh, they have one permanent one at Tangle Wood where they

113had the incident a few years ago. And then the rest are included in the rotation. And the principal gets an email the day the evening before. So, so nobody knows where they're going. You can't go tell and say it's going to be I went to Wayne Hampton High School. The day before it was at JL man. They offered me those two options. So, um the the admin team does uh have to do the searches and and do the work on on that part. And then there's the SRO there in case they find something they're not supposed to find. So, so what Greenville does is um the same as what we do with K9 searches. It's a deterrent. It's not every day. It's uh just students would never know when they may be detected. And just

114like our our K9 searches, they don't know. They they happen routinely during the year. Um but it's more of a deterrent basis whereas um the other schools that we visited are detection every day. I have one question. So the eight people that use that system in Greenville, is that per system or just eight people run all of them? They have three. So eight people do the three. Okay. And the five uh the security team is that just five or is that five per? No, it's it was five total. They were trying to get it to seven. Okay. And Ori was I think five going to six. They had a security team, but but Ori does everyday detection. So the bulk of their detection is like what we've saw in Stevens County where school staff that

115implement the the walkth through detection in the morning for students. It was uh it was this is their third year. So I mean they're like they're they're like a well machine pretty much with it now. I mean they can set it up, take it down. The day I was there, they actually were testing um an X-ray machine like you see at the at the airport. Um so the kids were having to having to adjust. They they did not know that was going to be there. They were already outside taking their Chromebooks out because they hold those up when they come through and it'll circle the Chromebook for them to know that that's what's causing their lawn to go off. But they were now having to pass them through uh a a basically a conveyor line

116that x-ray checked them and it a red light came on if there was something in there. Um and it it it mishid a lot. I mean it girls purses there were all these student athletes with cleats and bats and stuff that were were setting it off. But um all in all it it was uh it was it was pretty pretty smooth. Their biggest concern is the same or one of their biggest concerns is there are a couple times the line backs up and you just got 15 or 20 people kids standing on the front out there which I mean if somebody comes and sees a metal detector and they see 15 20 people outside that's like I mean they're just right there with nowhere to go. So, the goal is to to try to minimize

117the the lines and the going how far it goes out and that that kind of thing. And I also think and and I know most of you know this, but just to say it publicly, um these machines are are very very high-tech and you can catch paper clips in people's pockets if you want to. Um, or you can turn sensitivity to different settings to where you're not a paperclip wouldn't set it off. Um the disadvantages to having a real strong setting um implemented would be that it just takes forever because if you catch people's paper clips and keys and um so a lot of the school district language I've heard is they they're actually detecting for weapons that could create mass casualties. Um, to be honest, you know, the little I carry a little Swiss

118Army pocket knife on my keychain. Just the real smallest kind, you know, it's just a little tool. Um, I have um experimented with some of these different detection systems and it didn't even set it off. um because they're not set to the level again because the the more um the higher the detection level, the longer it's going to take for a thousand students to get in your building in the morning. So, uh they're looking um most of the districts I think we've communicated with, they're honestly not using these detectors to try to keep vapes out of bathrooms. um you'd have to set the detection too high in order to do that and it would really inhibit flow into the school in the morning. So, they're really looking they've got them set in a way to

119where it would be almost impossible to get a firearm in or a large knife, but you know, watches and different things like that are not going to set these detectors off when students walk through them. students and and visitors. Um both of the school districts I've been in that have the daily detection um they detect students and any visitor to the school every time someone walks in. Staff members are not checked daily, but students and visitors are checked every time they walk into the school. In Greenville, they they stay about 15 to 20 minutes after the bell, the tardy bell rings to catch late students, but they don't leave it there for visitors. They move it on then they're going on to the ne next place. But you can tweak that. So, for example, if

120you had a middle school where vapes were a huge problem, you could tweak that and oh, I it's as simple as turning a dial. One thing we we do have that we didn't talk about, all our schools have the one. All our middle and high schools and alternative have the one metal detectors. If you've been to an athletic event, sometimes we pick random games at each site and we try to do one at every location. Um and sometimes we'll be running we'll be using the the metal detectors. Um they're only consistently used at one place, but but we use them, you know, can can through the day if you you feel like there's something going on there. The other thing about uh Wade Hampton, Wade Hampton came in, everybody came in one entrance. So that

121was a whole lot easier. Uh even at the middle school in Georgia in Sis County, we had two entrances. We had the drop off, parent drop off in the bus, and we we got to see both of them. But most of our high schools have three. Um, you know, we we have a bus, we have a parent, and then we have the front entrance where students will come in if they have a note or those kind of things. Um, so that that was another thing that we we've been thinking about is, you know, location and how many. They told me that they their rule was one school wanted to have four and they said, "No, three is the max you can have." That was that was kind of one of the requirements Greyel put in

122place. You couldn't have four points of entry. you have three is the max. And some have tried to cut it to two um just to to save manpower and not have as many of their staff spread out. But but you know, y'all heard the principal at uh at Stevens County Middle School. He said 7:15 to 8:15, this is what I do. Those systems are about a little less than $15,000 a piece. Evolve, you're talking $75,000 and then a software fee each month. Greenville bought theirs straight up for like $150,000, but I what we've been offered is a lease with them. And they just to me for what you're getting, it's the other ones are evolve is not so much better than what we saw at Stevens County that I would say, yeah, you got to

123use that. I think that was pretty good what we saw. Dr. Thorson, which did you see at Ory County? It was the same as Stevens County. Okay. The the one difference was um they actually had two different types of detectors. They had um open gate is the you know, one of the most common. That's what we saw in Stevens County. But they had a a more traditional metal detector. So if a student walked through and set off the open gate system, they walked through a separate system that was a more traditional metal detector that identified where the metal is. Those are called Garrett. Um and and the wands we have are are made by Garrett. That's one of the I think big names in metal detection. But um yeah. So the permanent one at Stevens

124County was Garrett. The the one for visitors. Yes. They didn't have one of those for students. And I think they're a part of on I think they're together. Oh, are they? Okay. Okay. I think there's the two. Um so we we discussed this morning a little bit um about possib possibly um getting some feedback from from staff and possibly even parents. Um so would wonder if that might be something that would be a positive step. to uh we we have capability now with parent square to do surveys quite easily. We've uh there's a group that's kind of like what we saw in Georgia and and what Dr. Thoren saw in Myrtle Beach. Um it's called A3. Um and they have some schools in Spartanber similar to to what we saw um and a little more

125expensive. So, I didn't think that was one we needed to I mean, I don't think it's any better than than the other and and it's it's a little bit cheaper. Yeah. The other ones that we've discussed, but any of them are it's going to be there's going to be a 8 to 10 week wait period. I mean, it's just that's just the way it is with these products with and then you got to train train staff and and that. So it's a with it being mid-March, this what we're really looking if if you decide that this is the direction we want to go is probably going to be an August implementation. We're we're probably not going to get anything this school year. when you we still got that we still got the hand but we

126I don't see any way they could get us because so many people reaching out to them now and that it's kind of why strategic taken a little bit longer before they got after the incident in Georgia they got inundated with the people and requests and demos and and and that so um yeah it's it wouldn't happen um fast but if we you know knew something in the next month or so then you got time to order and you've got time in this over the summer when the teachers come back to train whoever you need to train administrators, train teachers, do whatever we had to do if that was the direction that we went and and it would definitely impact our budget, I guess. Yes, for sure. Um, and I would just want to add, um,

127when I was at North Myrtle Beach High School, um, observing the security chief for Ory County was with me and I just got to talk to him for for several minutes and, uh, he did say just on his own, volunteered if if a another district was going to implement metal detection, he would not do it K12 immediately. He just said that was a very difficult experience that he would um recommend starting with certain schools and maybe moving to more schools and so on, not not trying to do everything at one time. By any chance, have you all been able to look um and find out if we could use um any alternative funding such as local businesses contributing to the to the purchase? Um no, that's not been something that we've looked into. But there

128is possibility of grant money from the state if it is included in the state budget. I know the governor asked for it. I don't know. Make it that usually comes out in the fall and we Yeah. October. September. September. Be usually done by the end of September. So, it would be um I'm not sure how that would work as far as if if we voted to do it and we purchased the systems. I don't know if they would allow us to seek reimbursement for that or if it would have to be I don't I don't think it's a the state safety grant. Yes, the new Okay. So, um that one gets approved during the budget process. Although the state has released the funds to us in part of our monthly payments to school districts, um

129that one is one that we I don't believe for that one. No, we don't have to claim it like we do a federal fund. Um that one they just give us the money outlay and then we spend it, but we have to have an approved eligible item. Um so for the most recent year, we did the remainder of the first floor plan. Yeah. in bus county. So, we would have to reapply for that in September because it's the legislature allocates it to the state department of education and then the state department of education sends out the grant to the school district. So, we could ask for but again I I I'd have to ask if if we paid for metal detection say in the next three four months if in September we could seek reimbursement

130for that. I'm not I don't know the answer to that. Hopefully we can put like the u ongoing strategics charges and costs and that kind of stuff in there because I mean it's if we purchase high schools and then in September decided to expand middle schools that would certainly be a possibility. I would think several school districts have received money for that grant over the last two years um for strategics or for metal detectors as well. A lot of places were behind us because they were doing things like double secure points of entry those kind of things but um I have seen metal detectors on the list of awarded items. Any further questions or discussion? I I do want to I know y'all see it, but but for our people out there who watch or

131listen or who the paper and the radio can help advertise, we do have um on our website, we have a lot of information about what we do because I think people don't know. Uh they don't if they don't see it every day, they don't know. And that doesn't mean we have everything we need by any means, but but there's a good site Jennifer has put together that um shows what we have, the trainings we go through and and the different things. Um and we have a great partnership with uh the the county with all the municipalities with law enforcement in that like we pay for 10 of the SRO's, county pays for eight. I mean, we just we have a we have a great relationship with with them uh working through that. So if people

132are interested, they can go here and visit and see some of the things we're going on. It's kind of you kind of pick and choose what you put out there. We're not going to put a map of the school on there and what we do because we don't want a bad the bad guy to get that. But just the the basic ideas and the things that we cover and and things that we have are are on that page. So it's worth a vis worth a visit. Good point. So, we'll um look for April maybe bringing back a little more detailed cost information and uh I think I saw some lighting to maybe a staff survey and and some parent feedback as well. Absolutely. Okay. Next up, we have our one action item and this is

133the administrative policy manual review G for reading. Um, Miss Holder and myself extensively along with Dr. Thorland went through and and other members of the team went through and um reviewed everything very carefully. So, we hope that everything that we did in that committee meeting um you'll be able to see in that exhibit four for questions up for next reading and and this would be first reading. So, there'd still be one more month before these would be finalized. So, um, they are, uh, Miss Bay tried to capture all of our discussions the other day and, uh, put them in the the policies that are linked right here. Um, so certainly we can res, uh, read those and if if anything needs to be tweaked next month, we can still do that before final reading. I

134move that the board approve section G of the administrative policy manual adopting the recommendations of policy review committee is presented on first reading second. All right motion second. Any discussion hearing? None. All in favor? All right. Thank you. All right. Now for board member comments. Anybody have anything to share? I just like to thank Dr. Dorman and Dr. McDonald for um publicly for the surprise highlight that you did of the um SDLC Black History Month presentation. I do consider it an honor to serve in this position. Again, I just thank you for the recognition. And I would be remiss if I didn't say big congratulations on the historical win for um our Wajala High School girls basketball team. So we look forward to probably recognizing them in a another month. I would also like to

135say that um thank you to the Senica schools for your presentations as a senator representative. I definitely appreciate them. All right. Is that everybody? Now, I'll take a motion for um us to go into executive session. I make a motion we go into executive session for personnel items, employment recommendations, and changes. Second. All right. All in favor? Thank you. 5