001agenda was going to be the moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance please stand for the moment of silence I I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you may be seated first thing on the agenda is recog recognition of Georgetown County School District board members calling Dr Michelle green with Delta Sigma Theta sorti hello Dr Green good afternoon I like the way you say that you need to be a radio announcer maybe in my next life good afternoon to each and every one of you may you be proud of the work you do the person you are and the difference you make good afternoon chair Gaskins board members
002superintendent price Dr Bethany gals and cabinet members and those who are assembled first let me ask the members of George hung alumni chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sor to Incorporated to stand as we make a brief presentation and thank you for your dedicated services to the students parents employees and all others in Georgetown County School District [Music] thank you as stated in years past we believe that you're doing a phenomenal job despite the challenges you face and the continued opposition you experience thank you for staying the course in times like these and embracing best practices for Georgetown County School District's students so this organization of college educated women of diverse backgrounds will continue Contin to support your shared vision for Georgetown County School District as we Embrace an organization of Sisterhood scholarship service and social
003action today we will share just some of the ways in which we are contributing to your vision each year we award eight academic and four needs-based scholarships to graduating seniors in our four high schools so we ask that principals and counselors help and encourage those students to apply for those scholarships we definitely don't want anybody being omitted we're also visiting the high schools and Howard Adult Center to conduct voter registration drives and increase social action strategies in an attempt to negate the low voter turnout throughout Georgetown County each person's voice does matter some of our adulter retirees from a diverse background of professional careers volunteer in the schools some serve on the schools PTO sic booster club tutor to school a students some serve as mentors and student Advocates and assist annually with the Low
004Country Food Bank distribution Mr Burgess will not let us go we're also mentoring two groups of young ladies whom we believe have promising Futures they are Delta Academy those are the young ladies in middle school and Delta gims the young ladies in the high school these ladies are learning a lot of Prof from professionals who share their expertise on utilizing proper social media media etiquette reading authentic literary material creating vision boards and employing daily affirmations just to name a few just know that we are here to support you and we thank you for everything that you do daily happy School Board appreciation month may you be proud of the work that you do the V person that you are and the difference that you make some of the ladies now will come and present to
005you a gift just a small token of appreciation just to let you know how much we support you how much we love you and we truly appreciate you we thank you and we thank you for all the work that this sity does for all of our kids in Georgetown County thank you very much thank you need to get two I'm wi so y'all have one thank you so much we appreciate you app thank you so much thank you thank you thank you for your work y'all do a lot for the schools thank you so than you thank you thank you very much you so thank you man once again thank you so much we do appreciate each and every one of you yeah one of our board members is absent they belong to somebody yes
006Dr M Mr deos is not with us this evening thank you thank you go to the secretary okay thank you appreciate that next on our agenda is Dr Paula Anderson director of Georgetown county adult education thank you Amanda I am going to ask my colleagues to please join me in this presentation good afternoon afternoon in the words of Ralph Waldo emberson do not go where the path may lead go instead where there is no path and leave a trail chairman gasin board members superintendent price Deputy superintendent KES District officials my fellow administrators and all guests who are with us on this afternoon I am elated to stand before you on behalf of the principles of Georgetown county school district to extend our hearty appreciation to our auspicious board members today as school board members we
007recognize the fact that you are charged with making decisions that can sometimes be quite difficult or require sifting through a great deal of information further these decisions affect our children and our community we do not take these major responsibilities that you are required to implement lightly we do not take these lightly we sincerely thank you for your commitment and service to our district schools Community parents and most importantly our students we are grateful to you for passing the school budgets while providing us with the tools resources and networks to help all children learn the skills they need to succeed in whatever their post secondary path may be there are no words to truly Express how much your support has meant to us over the years you've been there for us through thick and thin always
008ready with a word of kindness or an encouragement or a helping hand your support has given us as administrators the strength and courage to overcome any obstacle that comes our way we are so grateful for everything that you've done for us and we want you to know that your support has not gone unnoticed therefore on this day January 16th 2024 let the record show that we the administration of Georgetown County School District express our love and appreciation to each of you by saying thank you for being such an amazing supporter and School Board member please know that well done is better than well said therefore in the words of our coined that are coined by our eminent superintendent Mr Price hard work pays off today we salute you for your hard work and commitment to
009Excellence again thank you we thank you we have some of the best school administrators in South Carolina thank you for all you do thank you so much thank you thank you very much see thank you so thank you once again thank you so much always in your blood thank you yeah thank you ma'am good to see you next on our agenda is Mr Keith Price our superintendent thank you chairman Gaskin as we celebrate School Board appreciation month I come before you with a deep sense of gratitude for the dedicated individuals who make up our school board it's with great pleasure that I express my heartfelt thanks to each member for their unwavering commitment to the education and well-being of our students our school board members provide guidance support and vision that shape the future of
010Georgetown county school district their tireless efforts countless hours of dedication and unwavering advocacy for the success of every student truly exemplify the spirit of Public Service as superintendent I have the privilege of working closely with each member of the school board witnessing firsthand their commitment to Excellence together we have achieved Milestones faced obstacles and and celebrated triumphs all with the shared goal of providing the best possible education for the students we serve to our school board members I extend my deepest appreciation for your selfless dedication and tireless efforts to make Georgetown County School District a place where students Thrive and succeed your leadership inspires us all and we are truly fortunate to have such a dedicated group steering the course of our educational Journey thank you each and every one of you for your outstanding
011service and for being the guiding force behind our commitment to Excellence and education and the gift that you had waiting for you um by your station is on behalf of the district leadership team here at be thank you for all that you do for us thank you Mr we do appreciate it thank you moving on with our agenda it's time for public comments just a reminder with public comments comments or requests should be brief and to the point as possible and shall not exceed 3 minutes and must not mention specific names of students or Personnel public comments will be aired live but the board typically will not respond to individual comments and this evening our first speaker is Dr Lorenzo Smalls I would like to first of all say thank you for allowing me this
012opportunity to speak to the chairman of the board to the uh superintendent to this board I stand and I'm thankful that uh this is a day of recognition amen and I want to uh recognize something that has taken place that uh I feel is uh uh just just terrible and that is uh uh an employee of the school district for close to 25 years with the perfect record an altercation showed up in HR department where two uh employees were at odd with one another and uh the individual uh that uh stopped the altercation uh was put on leave the two individual that was in the altercation is back at work and I I I can't understand the reality of that I I love my kids I raise them the best I can but they have
013an tendency to do what they want to do and I know with this board amen representing the school district our children uh we show up today as Community leaders and concerned parents and Hallelujah just to say please do the right thing uh because this person character is being uh uh torn to shred and I ask you once again uh uh if you have a video tape please look at what took place if they stopped the fight if they stopped the altercation if they brought it to the right person that they would stop it better that happened than the police department and the News showing up because something terrible took place it is sad it is sad when people say give us Barabas and we know barabus is is wrong that is sad when you execute
014Christ and say we rather have a criminal Amen to stand for us please do the right thing we're standing as the community uh uh in large just to ask you again and we plead with you please ma'am please sir if you didn't see the video see the video and ask yourself the question I'm quite sure many of you would supervise a position or place of authority when you give the best of your service things still go wrong but please don't take it out on the innocent individual and let the folks with the altercation go back to work and I'm not saying to get rid of the folks but what's happening with this individual in h ARA is totally wrong and while we appreciate your service I wish we can appreciate the service of the 25
015years of this employee that's being done wrong thank you God thank you very much our next speaker is Mr Donald [Music] Gillard good evening may please the board um uh I've really enjoyed watching the delter um celebrate the importance of honoring uh the board members MERS but I think it's also important to realize that there is an employee in this District just like they work for the district for 25 years unblemished record nothing negative in the personnel file in their home that's just not right it's just not right I enjoyed listening to Reverend Ms speak about the importance of of of this issue but this issue is different than some may realize it's obviously something personal was going on it's obvious I mean it's just plain obvious and we asking this board you all ran
016for office you came into the community you say you going to do this you're going to be fair that's what you ran on this situation needs to be rectified now I've seen the number of people come in here every time you all have a board meeting we come in here nothing's done on the other side if Mom's for Liberty come in here trust me you all will get something done and this has to be rectified she should come back to her job and do what we are paying the taxpayers are paying her to do please it's enough of us coming in here every week asking you all to to rectify this situation that you all came into the community and told us you would do if we vote for you please get this situation rectified
017give her her job back and has move this District forward thank you thank you our next speaker is Mr Wesley Gibson good evening today marks exactly days a 25e employee would have been 26 years next month her anniversary with impeccable work record remains at at home pondering her future because of false allegations made against her I want to know where's the Justice I'm just one voice here that resonates for many in this community this community has some questions for the board and the superintendent what were the results of the sled investigation pertaining to this assaulted allegation is there proof that the manager assaulted anyone what did the video show it's been 3 months the manager has been hasn't been charged nor arrested evidently there's no merit to these allegations again I want to know where
018is the Justice board members put yourself in her place tonight she's given 26 years of Exemplar service to Georgetown County School District she received outstanding evaluation from for 25 years she's looking to retire in Just 2 years she defused the fight between two employees now she's at home falsely accused of assault how would you feel I say woe unto you Mr superintendent and the board to allow a 25-year management employee to be treated like this her career could be ruined because of false Alle allegations if this is how you treat a manager just think about the entry level employees that get messed over the custodians the cafeteria workers the bus drivers if you treat the top like this how you treat nose at the bottom I say to every minority administrator in here tonight today
019is the HR manager job in question but tomorrow it could be yours closing board members and Mr superintendent she has done nothing wrong there is no evidence to corroborate these false allegation allegations every grievance lodged against her has been investigated by you Mr superintendent and found unmerited that means you signed off on it termination the motion is unacceptable this situation will not go away and if you want her to go don't tarnish her reputation but settle with her allow her to retire and let her move on to greener pastures thank you our next speaker is Mr Frederick Williams good evening thank you guys for allowing me an opportunity to speak to you since we can't use names we'll admit it I'm getting spats here and there of what's going on I don't know full details
020what I would like to speak to the individual that I know in question speaking from a character standpoint I don't know anybody any better and I've known her more than 30 years so when I'm getting these bits and pieces of these outrageous allegations cuz basically that's what it is allegations nothing been proven nothing am I correct I do believe so but if that is indeed the deal I mean what is the issue with a person of that kind of tenure that's a long time to be employed with somebody just to have your loyalty debased in such a manner like it is now that's crazy what was the point of those 26 years there had to be some kind of point to it people just don't throw their time away like that and for this individually
021to get the type of reception she's now getting it's not right come on guys y'all can do better than that you know it y'all know better than that if you had something go ahead and run with it obviously you don't have anything you ain't running you're not running and Stevie Wonder can see that you guys man you know you got to you got to do better man and I'm not I'm not in no Soul Saving position but there is a right and a wrong and you guys know you're wrong and you can't play pretend everybody up there growing you know you're wrong that ain't right thank you for your time thank you our speaker Mr Justin gamble good evening um name is Justin gamble Pastor mountai missionary B apst Church Brown s community of [Music]
022Georgetown foolishness the futer these are just a few of the words that come to mind as I hear the Witch Hunt that is going on about a 25 year old or 25 year um employee of this District I'm disgruntled I'm dis diss satisfied I'm angry I'm a conflicted C clergy man I'm upset because this board that we have elected to uphold the banner of Truth honesty transparency and equality has dropped it in the mud I know some of you personally I've eaten breakfast with you matter of fact I've paid for your breakfast many of you come and fellowship with us at the Mount Si Church many of you have asked me for prayer and without hesitation I've done that but today I'm asking you to do what your job is and that's to be fair
023that's to be one who does the right thing this employee deserves better treatment than she's receiving by this board and this District in whom she has served for 25 plus years an impeccable clean record but yet one altercation has caused her to be on leave for 90 days is that right no is that fair no no it's not and so I say to you School Board Mr superintendent primarily that it's time that we do the right thing it's time that we call a spade a spade and an Ace and Ace and that we do the thing that we have been elected to do and that is to serve this community and not our own personal agendas yes sir when you were elected to public office personal agendas went out the window yes and so if
024you're going to conflict Personal Agenda with public office maybe the seat you're in you need to give it up wow thank you very much moving on with the approval of the minutes all of our board members have received the amends and you've had time to look them over is there a motion that we approve them so move it's been moved second it moved and there's been a second all in favor please say I I the motion is carried the next is the adoption of the agenda is there a motion that we move forward with the agenda so move moved second second by Mr Walker all in favor of the agenda please say I I okay the next thing on the agenda is the gcsd Schoolboard ethical principal pledge and I think you have a copy
025of that in your packet and I am going to read The Pledge and after reading the pledge we're going to go down and sign the pledge then we're going to take a group picture together we pledge our efforts to improve public education in our community and will solemnly try to represent the interest of the entire district with making decisions and to rely on the available facts on our judgment rather than individual or special interest groups understand the proper role of the board to set policies governing the district and to hire the chief administrative officer to carry out these policies to to encourage an open exchange of ideas by all board members during the decision-making process to seek regular communication between the board and students staff and all segments of the community to attend all board
026meetings to study issues facing the board and to enact policies and official action only after full discussions discussion at such meetings to work with other board members and a conscientious and courteous manner befitting the public trust placed in the position of Schoolboard trustees to communicate concern and public reaction to board policies and school programs to the superintendent and other board members in a professional manner to support employment of the person's best qualified for staff positions to ensure a regular and impartial evaluation of all staff to avoid conflicts of and to retain from using our board positions for personal or partisan gain to encourage recognition of achievements of students and staff and of the involvement of community residents to support legislation and funding which improved the educational opportunities and environment for students and staff to take
027no individual action which would compromise the Integrity of the board or the administration and to respect the confidentiality of information that is privileged under the Freedom of Information Act to study current educational issues and to participate in training programs such as those offered through the South Carolina School boards Association and to make our District's educational setting the best possible to encourage all students to achieve into love learning and I'm very proud to say this board does a really good job with this and I do appreciate each and every one of you and our superintendent and our staff now if we would step down to sign the pledge if y'all will follow me down then we going to have Miss keer come up and take a picture know okay much [Music] I that the Cupid Shuffle
028the Cupid Shuffle uh-huh all right one two three [Music] thank [Music] okay this evening we're going to carry on with our information items the first thing on item for information called Dr Bethany gues expulsion process you [Music] do all right good evening to Mr Gaskins members of the board Mr Price District administrators in our georan County School District extended family this presentation will focus on the specific policies procedures and protocols for recommendations for expulsion um these are not policies that have not been updated they are all updated and while the policies have been updated the procedures as well as the protocols have been revised and that was shared with you towards the beginning of our semester so this presentation will focus on a review of our first semester of these updated policies procedures and protocols
029just as a review policy JF indicates a student may be expelled for the above stated reasons the process is initiated by the school level administrator with a notification and writing to the parent as well as the student this notification includes the reason or reasons for the recommendation for expulsion as well as the date and time for the expulsion hearing I note that during the pendency while they're waiting on their hearing the student does remain suspended as an additional note the process flows slightly differently for those students with a 504 or an IEP what is termed as a manifestation determination review is held first two questions are asked during that review was the behavior or incident a result of the disability and was it a lack of implementation of the IEP um after the hearing an
030additional IEP meeting is held to determine if the appropriate placement is has been recommended for the hearing invited attendees are the student parent Guardian administrator as well as the hearing officer during the hearing documentary documentary excuse me evidence and information are shared these hearings are private with the exception of invited supports that the parent and or the students may include implemented this year the hearing officer has four options the first option is to return a student to their home school on probation option two the student may be placed at Howard alternative School 45 days the student may be placed on homebased instruction and the student may be expelled for each of those I've included a sample of the letter that is shared with the school as well as the parent the parent as well as
031the principal have the right to appeal the decision that process has been spelled out more specifically as the result of feedback we've received this past semester overall the student must submit a written appeal hard copy or before the end before the deadline excuse me indicated in the letter along with the reason for the appeal I do note that once the appeal has been reviewed is shared with you all during executive session data that I'd like to share are indicated in the next few slides our semester ended December 21st 2023 in the next next slides will summarize the incident counts that have resulted in recommendation for expulsions and the decisions rendered either by the hearing officer or as Modified by our board the first slide I share this data chart is a recommendation for expulsion by
032Level Elementary or Intermediate School our one Intermediate School had a total of four recommendation for expulsions our middle schools combined had 37 recommendations for expulsions and our high schools 62 recommendations for the first quarter and 32 for the second for a combined 94 our next slide is with our Middle School specifically seven for Rosemary Middle School Carver Bay Middle School AC a steam Academy excuse me excuse me seven Georgetown Middle School 20 for a total and walal Middle School five for our high schools Andrews High School a combined total of 25 Carver's Bay 29 Georgetown High 21 and wall High School 16 based on results that were rendered there were 15 for or excuse me 51 for option one which was sending the students back on probation alternative school 45 were assigned homebased 26 those
033that were expelled were 12 and we had a total of 25 appeals for this first semester it is important to consider trends when when reviewing data so in this summarization I only considered for the purposes of this presentation a comparison of first semester last year to first semester of this year and the main goal or reason for that is based on the new guidelines just to see how we're trending I would like to say we are trending downward by count and I think factors to consider are our interventions that are in place our procedures that are in place as well as the consistency with guidelines our administrators took part in a couple of activities and where they calibrated to determine what is a recommendation for expulsion in summary overall again I reiterate that our discipline
034progression guidelines have been shared with our administrators they've been trained on them based on feedback we've we've received from parents as well as Administration communication and documentation have been revised we have continuously monitored and are continuing to track the number of incidents the hearing dates and decisions to determine that we are uh carrying them out in an expedited Manner and notification and timelines to ensure consistency this data will help us to uh make better decisions as we move forward in terms of policies procedures and practices as well as improving how can we reduce the amount of exclusionary discipline how can we keep our students in school while also providing them with the wraparound services that they need in order to make better decisions so in stating that our next decision are to are our next
035steps are to continue to review our wraparound services and interventions monitor our enrollment at our alternative site while it is an alternative site and students earn their way there we also want to ensure that we're providing the best services so that they can have a positive return to their home school and we will continue to track these incidents as well as again keeping up with the dates and the decisions that are made as well as our notification timelines to ensure that we are within the guidelines any questions that I can answer at this time I appreciate the hard work that everyone has put into this because we're we're seeing the results of the hard work and really appreciate the fact that you're constantly monitoring this and updating the procedures and listening to the feedback I
036do the board really appreciates that yes U Dr Dr gal uh my question is I know you you gather a lot of data whenever but but initially initially the policy says if you do this this is what happens and I know we've looked over some cases where uh I felt like we it needed to be after you guys determine whatever you determine uh some of them need to be looked at a little closer on the case by case basis because uh the nature of the fence may not be you know for everybody involved and and do do that person deserve what that person get so I would like to see us you know just continue to Monitor and see where we might want to go with um you know looking at things even a little
037bit closer once you guys make a decision if you understand definitely are reviewing Case by case and also ensuring that we're consistent fair and firm okay the extent we can be um I think she's already left she has I wanted to recognize Dr Green who's serving as our hearing officer and um giving of her time as a retiree um to assist us and she's really turning around our hearings rapidly we thank her for that anything else for we're going to keep you up here and invite Mr Clark to come up for Howard alternative update so as Mr Clark comes allow me to say just as I've shared we have made changes and adjustments um this presentation likewise is an update of the changes and the current uh structures that we've made at Howard alternative school
038um we've tasked our director of Howard alternative Mr Clark with some goals and initiatives and I must say that he has embraced those and he will share how he has um Incorporated those into the Howard structure um that structure and enrollment does have a e and flow of students um so he will share how that operates to ensure that he's monitoring the enrollment and ensuring that the staff is adequate based on that so for more of an overview Mr Clark will share and if I can assist I will thank you thank you Dr G thank you board members for your um attention to this effort one of the things Dr gu said earlier it is the um expansion of those interventions and and continuing to facilitate wraparound services that are going to be appropriate for
039our students in order to continue to meet their needs that's that is that is one of the steps we're taken in the right direction there can't ever really be enough I mean there's you know there's like enough time in the day for a teacher to get everything done give them a planning period there's still not enough time in the day to meet every kid's need the same is with that so as we continue to to look at this as Mr Walker just mentioned those interventions and wraparound services and the expansion therein is going to be really key for our success we're currently enrolling new students for this semester and um working with the schools and District administration to determine the best place for these students you know there are 11 coming from uh an event
040or series of events that happened in the fall and so this semester those students are going to be the first students this year that attend on the altern alternative A and B Day schedule we're currently working that out that's that's twofold one so we don't mix a pot of students together that might not be cathe at least at this time frame they're all going to eventually my original thought 3 years ago was they're going to go back to the same high school they're going to need to get along but maybe Howard is not the the the the petri dish to to study that in intensely um we crossed that bridge a couple years ago we we shuffled the cards and we played another game and and I think this is working better for us because
041we still have students that are that are attending that were here from the fall semester you know I in the fall in the spring of last school year I had students that didn't finish their 45 days so they had to come and start the school year with me in August and into of September and even October those students have left some others have ebbed in as Dr Green has held hearings and students have been sent to Howard and they do their 45 days and after those 45 days ideally it would be 45 days they can go back to their school rehabilitated you know that's not a set in stone they come on October the 1st and 45 school days later from that date is when they leave that's not always true we look at their
042attendance if they're just missing to miss school and there's no excuses those students make those days up if they're missing because they're misbehaving and they are suspended from school then they have to make those days up too so it's not just a it's not just a give me if there's a major Al altercation we can extend it up to you know two weeks 3 weeks 15 days but ideally we want to work with the student their family and their home school to make sure that when they do go back they are ready as best they can be for that classroom um so like I said some of some of these students are going to attend daily throughout the rest of this current school semester as their days are are warranted for 45 and then the
043ones that are coming during the spring semester will actually attend 40 44 45 days but the days that they're not in school their progress is going to be monitored on apex so that we can see that they're doing their work and those CU they I told them again today I reminded them at lunchtime in before we left if you don't work on your office days that can be an absence against you you need to go into your computer log on and complete just like we would if it was an e-learning day um for the rest of the district um as far as the staff that were on that previous slide just for a second we have a counselor um but I don't want to get you confused by saying that that's a that's a school-based
044guidance counselor what we have is we have a College and Career navigator that is employed in the adult education side of of Howard education system Howard educational School Mrs Linda Vine is the College and Career navigator for downstairs and she comes up in the afternoon works works with students on soft skills and coping skills and getting students more ready to have basic conversations that some of them have forgotten and she helps them with their studies um the administrative Monitor and Mr Cleveland Milton he's he's my right hand he assists with um discipline interventions he assists along with myself and conducting ISS if we have a kid that you know really what they want as you know if you have children or have worked in the school or volunteered students a lot of times want that
045they want those days out they don't want to come to school and we can't I work with parents all the time please don't send Brian home Brian wants to be at home try to get him to stay there so we work within our confines and with our resources to try to keep those kids at school as much as we can and assigning them some in in school suspension kind of Duties and keep extra eyes on them remove them from the classroom where they might have had a minor infraction that didn't warrant an out of school suspension but just removing them from that setting whether it was with the students whether it was the teachers or or or overall um Mr Clark yes ma'am may I ask a question sure so they don't have a counselor
046like a behavioral we have we yes we have a rbhs counselor Mr Andy sty is the lead rbhs counselor and he is housed at Howard as well so we have a rehabilitative counselor there but he's not one that can serve every students just willingly I mean we have to get parent input and so we work on that when we do orientation sessions Mr Milton or I one push that paperwork to the parents and say these are the services we have a lot of times we'll find out that Brian was at Andrews High School and he already had those services so it's just a matter of Mr sty connecting with that rbhs counselor there and that student's on the case load so that's that's the best case scenario but pulling some of these other ones into
047the group and getting them involved in it that's that's what's difficult and and he he's really I mean I don't know what his certification is but but I don't know that he's a truly a mental health counselor he's a rehabilitative Services kind of counseling but he he does give them an opportunity and I try to convince the parents that it's it's not our way of trying to invade your privacy it's our way of giving your your son or daughter an Avenue an option to to to take a walk with Mr sty to spend some time playing chess or or Tic Tac Toe or or um Connect Four in his office or playing with cubes and just having conversations with him so we do have that and he's a resource but it's just it's a limited
048resource because we can't make the kids we can't force the parents to you know bite that Apple we want them to partake if they will but we have to you know sell it to them in the best way we can and we really try and I and because Andy's on on board there there most every day he intervenes and helps he jumps in like everybody else does we it's a small staff um each period we have one one content area teacher up each block and then we have a special ed teacher up there three of the blocks but we share our responsibilities and duties try to you know divide and conquer that was one of the things and I'll get to the schedule in a minute but that was one of the keys in in
049re recreating the schedule a little bit so it wasn't so rigid give the kids more time to move because they don't like to always be in their seats a lot of them have ADHD and they aren't medicated and they have a difficult time maintaining um appreciate you sharing that and appreciate you having that resource available yes I do too Mr sty like I said he's he's he's all in all day comes he comes in early enough to help do Duty in the afternoon does some Duty in the after in the mornings and in the afternoon to help offset that responsibility of of others and the school nurse I don't want to I'm just clarifying for you the school nurse is not present every day and that's because we don't currently have a student that has
050a need for the nurse every day last year we had a string of of students that had uh pretty severe diabet diabetes and so she had to be on campus to check their their sugar levels a couple times a day she's not there every day we don't necessarily need a nurse for the bandages but she's also she knows the kids very well cuz she's in and out like last week I was out a couple I had to be out a couple of days and so I asked Miss nurse McCall the lead nurse if I could have Miss uh nury Carl over to Howard for the week no problem so when I request it they work with me but she's just not there every day and just having that extra set of eyes in the hallway
051that extra set of ears to listen and extra set of you know coping hands and and arms to help people out when they're having a hard time cuz she'll take them in and she'll do like nurses do and and nurture and care for and and and try to make better even if they don't need a Band-Aid um so goals for 23 24 we do monitor attendance every day I've been working with Mr Amanti um on some severe truy cases got some kids that just don't want to get on the bus parents can't get them on the bus they tell them no so I'm working with David and he's working through his Avenues and we're trying to make sure that we can try to get these kids accountable and make sure that we if we can't
052deliver services at Howard how do we need to deliver these Services I'm working with Dr GES and and her team and and and Dr Tut to try to make sure that we can't just not let a kid go to school because he doesn't want to come to school there's got to be a reason but you know if we can't make them come to school what other avenues do we have we have to make sure that they get their education somewhere somehow so we do monitor attendance daily we make phone calls to parents we encourage them to come um in if they if they are absent if they if if they to bring them back in readmit um academics are monitored in conjunction with school guidance departments because we work with their local departments to make
053sure that their schedules are copasetic we want them taking the courses that they need to take their guidance counsels their homeschools schedule those courses for them we place them in Apex courses with the exception of some schools um mainly Andrew High School uh Miss Mahone who has students that have um course work and they and on their schedule this this semester she wants them to be in Google classroom with her teachers and her staff so they can learn those standards and be ready for that test because those students are coming back to their classroom so they want them to not be out of the out of the loop on what's going on in the classroom um and we also rely on the on those schools to help us with the eoccs and end of course
054testing when it comes up at the end of the semester but academics are monitored um we pull we pull reports off Apex um daily sometimes weekly we make sure the kids are monitored um teachers do that as well the teachers in the core content areas Monitor and Mr Milton and I also Monitor and then the behaviors of course are monitored daily consequences for negative behaviors may include um in school or out of school suspension like I mentioned before we really try not to do the out of school but if if a student is at howed for a certain infraction and they commit that same infraction they have not learned yet so we we may need to it may warrant a day out or if it's a disruption to the learning process um recommendations for expulsion
055can emanate from Howard we don't like for that to happen because that's sort of a last stop anyway but sometimes that is not even the place some of them want to be um and students are assigned interventions and work with Mr Milton or with me to correct some of those negative behaviors and like I said earlier extension of the rbhs and wraparound Services we also through uh M re have a partnership with Helping Hands helping with some of those soft skills and the kids really enjoy the the the sessions um with with those volunteers from Helping Hands that's been helpful to us as well and then this year we expanded um curricular support to middle schools and the students are completing Apex coursework in sixth seventh and eighth grade if they're here for for a
056period of time in the Middle School setting and that has worked very well so as far as program is initiatives number one clarifying procedures for enrollment assignment dismissal that's been made clear we we've pretty much we're handling that support staff with professional development we're doing that training others and this in the daily schedule um was was key you know the blocks on a Andrew's on a regular high school day are an hour and a half 90 minute periods that's a long time to sit in front of a computer so and I'm not saying they don't sit in in front of the computer for the 90 minutes but it might be not that set 90 minutes they'll have 45 minutes with a teacher then they'll take we'll have a class change and they'll spend 45 minutes
057with Miss Vine working on life skills or they'll spend 45 minutes with Mr Milton the ones that need AB interventions doing that and we'll and we'll we divide and conquer that in that way and allowing the special ed teacher then to incorporate whether or not the student has an IEP he still has skills that can help those students maintain better grades and so he's he's working on Mr car is working on that as well and just we need to increase the additional wraparound Services as we can that's the one um procedures from for assignment to Howard that's listed as it is all that happens and we uh really do Relish in being able to notify those schools and letting them know that their students are ready to come back and like I said we work
058with those principles to make sure that they are happy and we are are sending them a product that they can then work with when they get back to their school development press professional development and Ed menim or Apex has been ongoing throughout the school year and the district uh content area coaches have U been providing instructional supports as as they're able to and as our teachers request and that's what I have I have a question yes ma'am are you noticing a difference in the climate or is it too soon in the school climate there since you've you know kind of gotten more consistency and more Communications it flows a whole lot better than it did year three is a whole lot smoother than year one you know this is one of the most difficult gigs
059I believe in the district it's it's difficult to be there and run and and work with these students and and and help them make better life decisions it's it's difficult to be in any school I'm not saying that this the the hardest one being a principal of a school is difficult but when you have the alternative school in in mind and you've got you know 12 18 20 students that really just school's not their favorite place to be it really takes a caring loving nurturing person to be there to listen to them when they have their needs and and that's what we try to do at Howard Mr Clark yes sir you said earlier that uh in some instances you have kids who just don't want to come right and you said that you tried
060to find other alternative Avenues uh can you give me an example of those well what the what the parent the parents the parents request is can't my kid just get on homebound you know that's I get I got that call today because they can't come in they don't have a car they work here they've got these many kids they can't make the bus stop they can't get the kid to the to the high school cuz the buses don't make door to-door deliveries they meet at a at a hub a central location and pick up in the outer areas so if parent can't get their kid to Andrew's high school because they of where they live geographically or what time they leave during the course of their morning to start their day at Publix and Paulie's
061Island they can't get their kid to the bus so they don't know what to do they they're that's what the quandry is or if you have a a a student who just does not want to come to school um it for whatever reason and I've I've run into one of these recently and and and the parents at at a quandry she said I don't know what to do but you know it's not easy to be a parent either what happens what happens when you get to that point well right now we're working with David Amonte and treny and and DSs to try to figure out what the best Avenue is going to be and I've and I've asked Dr GES and her team to help me figure out what we need to do because because
062the student doesn't need to just sit and not do anything until the next time somebody asks a question you know why aren't you in school so but homebound homebound to home base is is one of those options that that I know is not one that we like to just throw out there because it's it's difficult to monitor it's difficult to make sure that students are achieving what they're supposed to achieve and that they're getting the instruction that they need and deserve to master the content that's what's Difficult about homebased it sounds easy but in practice it's really very very difficult thank you yes sir thank you Mr Clark y'all have really stepped up to the challenge with thank you sir the alternative skill thank you for all the hard hard work you guys are doing
063um the next is uh Mr Doug Jenkins policy regarding employee [Music] resignation okay evening chairman Gaskins Vice chair Ford members of the board superintendent price District staff and guests I come before you tonight to discuss revisions to policy gcq which is the employee resignation what we're asking is to replace the current policy with a more robust one that details the procedures for employee resignations um what we did is we looked at the scasa model policy and policies with surrounding districts to try to come up with verbiage that was a little bit more detailed than what we currently have because if you look at our current policy it really is vague um but one of the things that we have in there that I'm really ask for a revision is the June 1st deadline that we
064have in there currently right now employees if you are certified can resign from your position without warning or without notification up until June 1st um no other school district that I'm aware of has that in place so essentially they can sign their contract in March but it doesn't become legally binding until June 1st and what has happened is in other surrounding employers I'll just leave it at that um have actually pointed to that clause in our policy that just says come join us because it's before June 1st one of the other things that is not really in this policy are the expectations for cert I mean classified staff what we're expecting of them so if you will turn to the second page on this I'm going to go over some things that we really want
065to have in place for both certified and classified if you look at the first paragraph the last sentence it says by mutual agreement the resignation may be accepted immediately what that is referring to if an employee wishes to resign and the district deems that it is in the best interest for that employee to resign we can now present that to you the way the policy is currently written we cannot present a resignation to you until we have found a suitable replacement so in other words we would have to have a long-term sub in place or we would have to continue in what may be considered a bad situation because of the way that the policy is written if you look at the second paragraph about Midway through the Senate starts with is there is concl
066inclusive evidence the State Board of Education will take action on a complaint signed by the appropriate administrator however there must be documentation that the District board voted to send the complaint in the past we have brought if we're going to take any disciplinary actions against somebody's certificate to you uh for you to vote but we have not shared that they've actually voted on that with the state and we really need to have that in place to show that we're allowing our employees to have due process with that for the non-certified or the classified staff previously we had just asked for them to give 15 days notice prior to resigning where now you can see that we're putting a little bit more meat into it um we're asking for two weeks and then that the supervisor
067shall forward the letter to the appropriate department head so essentially that um C non-certified or classified individual could have just stopped by HR and said I want to resign now we're asking for a little bit more rationale as to why you're wanting to resign and instead of allowing 15 days we're now asking for 2 weeks which is standard practice um for basically any profession and those are the updates that I'm bringing for you but I'll answer any questions that you may have it looks good I have a quick question the the June 1st are we still Bound by the state for the May 15th instead of the June 1st and is there still a May 15th there there is still a May 15th uh but keep in mind that if an employee signs their contract
068we're asking for that contract to be returned within two weeks however uh by state policy the employee has up until May 15th to return that contract but once they have signed that contract with us now taking that June 1st provision out of it it does become legally binding okay at the point at which the employees signs the contract correct but the May 15th is still just making sure okay thank you very much most welcome policy regarding student absences and excuses Miss Thompson good evening chairman Gaskins members of the board Mr Price um we have a a revision to an administrative rule here for students absences and excuses um and I will say that you all are well aware that I come before you as the mouthpiece for my my much smarter colleagues and um this
069is one of those times when I'm going to rely on my much smarter colleagues behind me um because this policy or or administrative rule is surprisingly complicated and unclear um state law gives you some some wiggle room that um that I don't think I I necessarily anticipated um and and so after an audit last year of our practices we learned that we were um somewhat out of line with what the state department is expecting of us and so we are trying to to pull ourselves back into line with those expectations to be um compliant with the law and with their expectations um but the the the wiggle room sort of arises from the fact that the state department doesn't necessarily prescribe the number of um the number of minutes per course whether a course is
070a semester or nine weeks or a full year course and so that leads to some ambiguity and some some murkiness at least for me um and I know Dr GES and Miss Kibler have have really worked hard on this to to try to make sure that that what I have written is actually what we're doing so we're presenting it tonight just as an information item only but I want to highlight some of the some of the things that we're changing so first off um I'm recommending that we basically scrap the entire old policy um it uses some outdated language it uses some um we put some requirements in there that are stricter than the law requires and and of course we can be um we we have the right to do that but we'd like
071to try to stay a little bit more in line with what the law has rather than than being too strict on our students and and requiring um a higher level of attendance than what the law requires so first we've we've suggested to to scrap the old language um and to utilize the new language in the statute um and and one of the small differences is they change the words from unexcused and excused absences to unlawful and lawful absences so you'll see that kind of change throughout um you'll also see that we um made sure and and this was sort of the the the biggest bulk of what we tried to do here is we made sure to distinguish between what makes somebody Trent and what makes somebody un ineligible to earn credit for a course
072and so what we tried to show in in this policy is that you can um have a attended enough school to not be truant but you may not have attended enough school to have earned credit for the course and they are two totally separate animals um and it also depends um how much school you have to attend um depends on the length of the course the number of minutes in the course all of those sorts of things um and it also depends on um why you've been absent so we tried to lay all of those issues out as to what constitutes lawful and unlawful absences what constitutes um what what absences you can be eligible to make up seat time for and what absences you can't um what what's the difference between making up work
073when you're absent versus making up time when you're absent um we tried to put in here information about um students who are missing due to Chronic health conditions um that that they need to to be be looking at a homebound situation or an intermittent homebound situation um and we tried to just really clarify some of those very specific differences that are really hard to wrap your mind around um we we've made some changes even as late as this afternoon um to to what we had presented and I have asked all of the the principles for the middle and high school who this affects most significantly I've asked each of them to look through this with a fine tooth comb and to make sure that they understand one what we're saying and two that it's actually
074what they're doing um so like I said this is much more complicated than I than I had anticipated once she just say what the attendance regulations are um and and I want to be sure that that we are um completely abiding by both the laws and the expectations and what's workable and doable for our schools so that's what we have here I'm happy to answer any specific questions you have this evening or um I may ask Dr GES or Miss Kibler who've also done a lot of research on this issue um but but what questions do you have right now I did have a question it and I think it's just a little confusing but I saw the answer later okay and now I can't find the question but but on page four somewhere on
075page four I thought it said that regardless of whether a student has is excused for medical reasons or others that if it exceeded 10 days that it was an issue correct that's correct so so if they have a medical excuse and it exceeds you know that the absence is excuse 10 days then they're still they're still kind of dinged for it well they still they still need to utilize the opportunities that are given for make up for to make up the seat time so and I saw the correction like on somewhere in page six that said the principal has the discretion to see whether that student would get the seat time the credit Etc but it's still was just a little confusing okay all right and if I may yes sir please do to answer
076that question Miss Ford that the the state law allows some discretion at the school level principal level to um work with parents who have whose students have identified chronic medical conditions and it allows that flexibility in state law and Miss Thompson has tried to write that in to reflect that in our policy um sometimes there's confusion between a medical note and a parent note and when you issue a parent note for an absence that will keep you out of um trouble with regard to treny but you still only have so many absences you're allowed even with a parent note if you're going to earn Credit in addition when we have a chronic medical condition where a student is out for a significant period of time um when a par when a parent communicates closely with
077the school they can work with them and walk them through the homebound application process right so if a a student is considered truant if they have more than three consecutive undocumented absences or five scattered but when you know that you're working with a chronical a chronic situation and we've got communication between parent physician and school we can work with parents in those kinds of situations to make sure that we've got an Avenue for Success moving forward it's not an an empty open-ended you can is however many you want right it requires constant communication of all parties involved and we've tried to reflect that in this administrative rule as it's written but it's it's fuzzy yes it's not clear and concise and then some places where the law says you get 10 doesn't matter if they're
078excused unexcused medical documentation or not you get 10 but then later they say but you've got some discretion to work with that's what I saw that's correct armed me then I went two pages over and said oh okay I understand this now okay and that's why it's important for students parents and school administrators to work together in those unique situations absolutely thank you and I think the goal I think Mr Price's goal um with this policy is not just to have a policy that that stays in the the board manual but to have some some really workable guidelines for our schools and our parents and our students to understand so kind of once we have this comprehensive policy then we can share you know okay this is how this piece applies to your school and
079your situation and that sort of thing there's specific guidelines for schools um because it is confusing um and it's confusing at least it's confusing to me um but you know I think that once we get something um that's the more in line with the expectations of the state department and with the the state regulations then I think we can give some better guidance to our schools and our parents and and as Miss Thompson mentioned earlier when we we did a voluntary audit last year for several components of school operations and one of the things that we got feedback on was attendance enforcement and we were tasked with shaping up some things that we had had in place in order to ensure that we are in alignment with state law and expectations and so that's why
080we've we've taken a really deep look into this and had lots of conversations to make sure number one that our administrative rule reflects our practice MH but also that our practice is in alignment with law great I think it's very very difficult for a student to miss more than 10% of a a semester class and and stay in good standing and and gather the content for that class I think that's first of all when we got rid of the seat time or the number of minutes and it didn't become as clear I think I think that was a a real kind of fuzzy part of that but I think after Co and the attendance across our country yes became so absolutely non-existent and that people thought it didn't matter Mama can write me a note
081and I don't have to go to class today or I have a test and I'm not prepared and I'm just not going to go today I I I think some of that happened as well and I think it's really important that we tighten this up in order to produce the results for students going forward as well as the attendance policy to be correct with the state I I don't think it's just that I think that you can't learn if you aren't in school and if you can then we aren't doing very good job of being responsible so I do think that's very important and I think that you've done an adequate job of trying to say hey attendance is important and that we're not going to just pass you on and and you can just
082take vacations and that kind of thing cuz that's happening Nationwide not just Georgetown county and one of the things that state law allows is what's called seat time recovery and makeup so if you're allowed 10 absences and you've missed 12 then you're two over the limit and so state law allows us allows not only us but any school district the opportunity to allow seat time recovery programs for students but it's not a blank check it's not an open-ended number of absences if the limit is 10 and you've got 45 and you're over the limit by 35 days we've got to draw the line somewhere and say too much is too much and that's what state law expects for us to do and I think the the other thing is as we saw some of the
083opportunities that we afforded our students last semester to come in and make that time up or makeup that work uh our percentage of students that took advantage of that I think our parents we giv that opportunity we're giving it to you to have students come and do those things I think it's important for us to get that word out hey we're not going to just forgive all this and say you're going to move right on cuz we wouldn't be good stewards for students if we did and and and I know I've got I see one high school principal standing in the back that can verify that our principles communicate communicate communicate all of the different opportunities that they make available for students to do those recovery programs and sometimes regardless of the massive amounts of
084communications of opportunities we still have folks who show up at the 11th Hour asking hey is there a way that I can make up some seat time so where's my forgiveness that's right that's right um so you know I I certainly believe in providing opportunities but we've we've got to we've got to be accountable as well cuz that's what state law expects us to do well you just satisfied thought that I was having because I recall some early meetings where a grandparent was speaking about a daughter with a chronical illness and his concern I was just wondering are we initiating that communication on and they understand clearly what the options are so you just satisfi that that's where it's important for everybody to work together and and and it doesn't matter who initiates the conversation
085as long as the conversation happens when you've got uh critical situations like that that result in a high number of absences that's where we we are afforded the flexibility to work in in certain situations like that thank you good thank you okay thank you thank you next on our agenda is per pupil expenditure report Miss Johnson and Mr stream good evening chairman Gaskins members of the board Mr Price District staff and distinguished guests um Miss Johnson just sent me up here she said I can go ahead and go um but tonight I'd like to present to you an overview of the per people expenditures for really for focusing on fiscal year 2223 but during the present you'll see a 2-year comparison um 2122 and 2223 um these expenditures are reported to the State Department of
086Education every year um the deadline is December the 1st along with our financial audit um and it's required um by every student succeeds act so you'll hear it referred to the Issa report um but it's also included on the school and the school district report card every year and so just an overview of the Issa report and what Issa is it's um every student succeeds act and it requires that school districts publish the per pupil expenditures by school building um by level and by source of fund uh South Carina Department of Education was charged with providing guidance to districts for reporting so that the presentation on the report card would provide transparency but it's also important to know that the state department developed the template that we use so that everything is consistent because we
087we all know that I can report one thing one way and somebody else can report it a different way and it looks entirely different so we all use the same exact template to report by so that's just an overview um one thing to mention you'll notice throughout the presentation you'll hear me say ADM and that ADM is the average daily membership But it includes your three and four year olds and typically when we're looking at ADM we don't necessarily always include three and four year olds in that ADM count but for the purposes of tonight and for thep purposes of this report it does include those what are the exclusions um if I had a a Excel spreadsheet it would be very very long because there are a ton of exclusions within this but I
088just want to go over the overview of this is you know debt Services excluded capital projects and Equipment are excluded people activities are excluded and adult education is excluded also in governmental expenditures or internal transfers are excluded and if you think about that from a district to District to District comparison is our Capital expenditures are very different than in other districts and so removing all of that keeps all of the expenditures that we want to look at very consistent throughout from District to District to District across the state so what I'd like to do is I'd like to start with just a District overview of 2223 expenditures and what you'll see on this graph is is truly the total average per pupil expenditures and the ADM for the two years in 20122 our average daily
089U I'm sorry our average P per pupil expenditures is $4,140 of 8,185 in 2023 it was $4,561.76 um average per pupil expenditures and ADM are have a direct correlation so as your ADM goes up you would expect your expenditures to go up as [Music] well so I want to break this down a little bit further um the way this report is broken down it's broken down into your personnel level and non-personnel level and within Personnel it's broken into state and local as a combined category as well as a federal and the non-personnel side is broken up the same way so so you have state and local together and federal together and as you'll see here as a comparison uh in 22 we had 95,783 in state and local expenditures and this is not total expenditures
090this is average expenditures by school um Federal Personnel was 33513 for a total of 229,230 in 23 it was state and local $ 32461 for federal with for a total of $243,100 the next slide shows you the non-personnel expenditures and you notice these are much less right and that is a direct correlation of our general fund budget we know that our budget's about 87% Personnel so you would expect the Personnel numbers to be much higher than the non-personnel and you can see here the numbers again um I'm just going to do totals for these two slides cuz you kind of get the gist of what the colors mean um but for 22 our total for non-personnel was uh 4456 and for 23 it was $45,881 Middle and High um and I'm not going to read
091every one of these numbers because it it kind of runs together but you can look at that and you can see you know ADM comparison to Total average per pupil expenditures for each School in the elementary sector um and then also included a total average for elementary school in the First Column of that graph there's any questions about those numbers I'd be happy to answer them so the next slide is now global view of kind of what you looked at from the district side but this is specifically for elementary level only and so for 2022 we had $6,279 in average per pupil expenditures 3,815 for ADM in 2023 we had $1 17,19 in average P per pupil expenditures with an ADM of 3,832 so an increase in dollars as well as an increase in ADM
092again same slide that you saw is the District overview but specifically for elementary schools so a total in 2022 of $137,700 and a total in 20123 for $145,300 22 and 26576 and 23 and the total in 22 combined categories is 162,163 the combined total for those two categories is [Music] $171,900 middle schools uh with a district total and again I just like to mention that none of these numbers include Coastal monory schools so I didn't include them in elementary or in the middle level so they're just completely excluded so you can get a view of what what our schools are doing so again I'll start with the middle schools average 22 23 uh 13,18 in 22 and 1,771 students uh $1 13,993 and 23 and 174 students for ADM again Personnel totals for middle schools
09322 was $ 43,6 18 and in 23 it was $46,800 we move on to uh non-personnel totals you'll see it's $99,100 for 22 and $971 for 23 and the total combined for 22 is $527 22 and 23 it's $ 55,985 so we had an increase again U moving to the last category will be high schools uh again broken down by the four high schools twoyear comparison with a total in the first col first set of columns just give you a few minutes just look at over that as we move into the last section for the high schools um you'll see that our average in 22 was $4,725 N8 um sorry 2598 students and 23 was $115,100 with an ADM of $2,669 personnel uh 47,9 $923 in 2022 and 5,857 in 23 and for non-personnel was
094$1,884 and22 and then $7 and in 23 is $6,450 for Combined total and I'd be happy to answer any questions on this data um that you may have I have some comment I'm really concerned about the variance in the amount of per pupil that we're spending uh from one school to another uh obviously the smaller schools and schools with mag money are going to have some increase in what it looks like and I certainly understand that but an $188,000 in a variance is a pretty hard one to uh understand and another variance that I see is one of our high schools with a very very high population of special needs children and I don't see extra funding in that line item or or the amount per pupil that is expended and I'd certainly like for
095us to take a deeper dive into exactly what we are expending in in those complete variances in per puple amounts um because some of our schools as an example larger schools that are in high poverty areas have many many children that need extra support and services and there's a lot more students that need that extra help in some than some of the very small populations that have the large amounts to be expended I I certainly would like our board to take a deep dive into that because that really concerns me as we move forward into the budget planning process um and in one of our small schools uh you've got two students that would fund a teach teacher salary that's that's a very large very large that's a very large amount of money to be
096expended and I'm willing to say I I'm concerned when we can't have programs in some of our other schools because we're expending so many dollars in some of those other areas but the schools with the special needs populations I certainly would like for us to take a look at those twoo because those students need lots of extra services in schools as well thank you though that you did an excellent job of presentation thank you and and actually portrayed a picture that I think we really need to take a deeper dive into uh as we move forward into the budget process I I agree with you 100% we do need to take a deep dive into that because it is concerning spending with the variance especially one of our schools uh some of the schools that
097were got that got magnet money had only made a very little bit of difference as I looked across the board even though they receive those funds but in other instances that isn't the case and in some of the schools where we have uh very high special needs populations not just in high schools but middle schools some that are needy in the academic areas um I I think we really need to take a deep in and and I appreciate that chairman thank you Mr Street appreciate it moving on with our final audit Miss Lisa Johnson and Mr Harris darver and welcome Mr Dar to our Schoolboard meeting yes sir chairman Gaskin board members and Mr Price um I am going to turn it over to Harris Harris darver is a CPA he is the um engagement
098partner with darver Kelly um he is going to go through all of the slides with you and then I'll be up here to help answer any questions that you thank [Music] you thank you Miss Johnson uh Mr chairman members of the board Mr price thank you for having me tonight I know yall have all had a chance to review the audit I've tried to summarize the results of the 150 page document in front of you down into a couple slides so hopefully that is appreciated absolutely um as Miss Johnson mentioned my name is Harris stver I'm the engagement partner I'm a partner and co-founder of darver Kelly based out of Greenville South Carolina firm specializes in government nonprofit audit work um been doing school district audits myself for over 15 years uh my business partner
099lesle Kelly serves as a quality control partner and what that function is completely independent from our day-to-day um audit processes that way she can come in from a quality control standpoint review our work make sure that we've done it to meet standards that the decisions and assumptions that we've made are accurate and that our audit is correct as it's presented lastly Kirk spots was our engagement staff that worked on site with me this year um for our audit we began our audit in August of this year um doing preliminary fieldwork came back after a couple months in October and November finished our main field work and issued on November 28th um in time for the submission to the federal audit clearing house as well as the state department of UC on December 1st our a
100auditor report that was issued is a what we consider a clean unmodified opinion the highest opinion that you can receive and it states that we've audited the financial statements as of and for the year into June 30th 2023 and in our opinion the financial statements present fairly all material in all material respects the financial position of Georgetown county school district as of June 30th 23 and the respective changes in financial position and where applicable cash flows thereof for the year then ended in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America that's the only time I will read to you tonight but that is our formal opinion paragraph So I do like to read that and once again that is the what is considered a clean unmodified opinion the highest level opinion
101that the district can receive in the back of the audit there is a summary of auditor results and I like to go to this page because in one page it summarizes um what we found in our audit so as I mentioned before over the financial stat and this report is split into two sections one on the financial statements and one on the federal awards that you receive also known as a single audit for the financial statements as I mentioned we issued a clean unmodified opinion in performing our audit on the financial statements we are required to test certain internal control deficiencies and identify any matters of weaknesses that um were present in that testing in addition we're required to disclose any instances of material non-compliance that could have an effect on the financial statements as
102you'll see presented there we did find one finding related to the financial statements depicted as 2023 001 that's applicable as a material weakness to the financial statements in addition finding 20232 was applicable as a compliance matter material to the financial statements these findings while they are presented in the financial statements are applicable as a federal program finding but do have financial statement con and that's why they're presented here we'll walk through those findings specifically in detail um but I did want to outline that there as you can see in the federal Awards section we issued both an adverse and unmodified opinion um I'll quickly explain what this is but essentially we audited as you can see at the bottom three Federal programs as major programs this year we audited the title one program we audited
103Esser funds as well as the magnet schools assistance program in these we issued two unmodified opinions on Title One in the education stabilization fund or Esser and issued an adverse opinion on the magnet schools assistance this adverse opinion was issued due to the findings that are depicted that we previously discussed the two material weaknesses um related to 20231 and 20232 the next two slides represent the same thing I'm going to skip this slide it's the same presentation just ones related to financial statements and it's duplicated because it's also a Federal program finding so um it's presented twice for presentation purposes to split the two sections but it is the exact same finding just repeated the first finding 2023 001 is related to cash management related magnet schools assistance program I'm going to try and paraphrase
104here but the for every finding we're required to disclose five main elements we're required to disclose a criteria which is what is the rule the condition of what happened the cause of why the effect or its potential effect as as well as our recommendation so I've depicted here the two um main elements of the finding to give you an understanding of what took place um but the rest of the details can be found in the audit report for the criteria code of federal regulations requires that districts um minimize the time elapsing between expending their funds and requesting draw down or receiving their funds from the federal government generally speaking most federal grants have this set up as a claim reimbursement processes all of the funds that the district receives through the South Carolina Department of
105Education function in that format you expend the funds you file a claim most for the district are filed quarterly and you receive those monies after the fact there is no advaned payment on that the magnet schools assistance program functions slightly differently in that um it is a draw down function so rather than claiming those funds you go into an online portal where you have a cash availability and draw those funds down as you'll see in the condition in March 2023 the district performed a draw down of all the available funding allocated to the magnet schools assistance program the draw down include the entirety of year one as well as year 2 funding so I want to talk a little bit about kind of what that means and in this online portal it's my understanding that
106around March um federal government because the program started in October was doing their midyear valuations and said hey this money is out there you need to start spending your money start drawing it down because they evaluate it periodically um it was at that time that um the district Drew down all of the funds that were available there thinking I need to go get my funds my program officer told me to do so however it was more than what had been expended year to date this created the cash advance and cash finding through doing so the district was required to not only return some funds that had been unexpended by the end of the year but in addition had to return Federal interest on interest that had been earned on those funds funds prior to its
107expenditure I'll pause there for a second if y'all have any questions I know that was a lot um but I do want to make sure that y'all understand that those funds did get returned back into your federal holding so it's not like you lost the funds um they just went back into your federal holding to draw down as you expend them in a future period um the year two funds that are included there um were drawn down the way that works is because the federal government runs this Grant on an October to October cycle a year out for every single Grant year of this magnet program's 5 years they will release as pending your next year's allocation and that is strictly so that you can see your value and allocation for budgeting purposes but it
108wasn't meant to be drawn it's there as pending um availability and unfortunately there's no review process on the federal government side it's there in your account and you can pull it down as needed finding 20232 is related to procurement suspension and debarment related to the magnet schools assistance program code of federal regulations requires that districts when entering into a transaction um with a contractor verify that that contractor has not been suspended or debarred or otherwise excluded from participating in these Federal programs in our testing we found that this process of checking these vendors had not been completed thus it becomes a compliance finding now 's a little more straightforward and clear any questions with that one so those were procurement violations for goods or services that were done without a procurement process at our district
109is that what I'm to understand not entirely so this finding is specifically related to the procurement suspension and dearment search so as it relates to expending those federal dollars as part of the procurement process the districts are required to verify that contractors are not suspended or debarred due to these um transactions falling outside of the standard internal controls of the district where these processes are generally completed that process wasn't completed okay not specifically related to the procurement the receiving bids or quotes or anything like that it's strictly related specifically to checking suspension and debarment and that's uh done through various ways that are depicted in the finding it can be checking an exclusions list from the federal government having a clause in your contract that they have to affirm to um there's various methodology methodologies
110that it um can work have we been penalized for this from the feds or the state for these two findings yes um so this F the audit was just issued at the end of November and uploaded December 1 I can't really speak to what the federal government will or will not do I've been doing this like I said over 15 years I've had findings that I thought the federal government should do something and they didn't and I've had findings where I didn't think they should and they did so I can't really speak to that um I did find out earlier today and I was going to let Mr Price share the news would you like to Sir right here um I did find out from a um Source at the State Department of Education that
111um as part of their review and desk review they are not going to penalize significantly District in terms of placing y'all on any Declaration of fiscal compliance related to these however they will be following up on corrective action through the course of this year to verify that corrective action has been timely made and I can I can say that for the federal piece one of the things when we find out when we found out that we had a couple of missteps we immediately reached out to our point of contact at the US Department of Education to find out is there something that we need to undo do whatever to to make sure we're still in good standing and they said we're good we told them what we had done to make Corrections in these two
112areas they said move forward so we we should be okay I I believe in November it was either November or early December the um cash advance was returned to the payment management system as well as the federal interest repaid and for these I know that process has now been included and incorporated into the purchasing processes so a lot of times uh Regulatory Agencies like to look at findings and say okay what's the corrective action have you changed it get it correct moving forward if there's anything from a procurement standpoint that you might need to do they might have you go back and do those that are still in existing contracts however they they generally have you correct moving forward so while this is disappointing maybe um that the errors were made um I I see
113that the corrective action will take care of those because we've not had those kinds of situations uh prior to this uh I've not seen these kinds of things in many many years on our audits so I would say our corrective actions will be in place and certainly will follow up very closely to make certain those don't occur again yeah the corrective action that the district took their formal document of corrective action is the last page of the report the 150 page report so feel free to look at that um as an Auditor's recommendation one of the when we found this that we took into consideration was include this program in the internal controls of the entire District so how other programs Title One idea s or how those function let this one fall in line
114and function the same with that and that will help because a lot of those standard processes have already been built and are running smoothly so that corrective action I think was immediately taken and placed into service and I think that should alleviate a lot of issues going forward thank you thank you um I'll jump into the financial statement since that's what we were auditing and I'll do a quick highlight um for you real quick as a this is all information from FY 23 uh we look at two different as you've heard me say in the past two different sets of financial statements the first being net position of the district this includes or is commonly known as a balance sheet of the district but the district as a whole this is different from your standard
115balance sheet and that this includes long-term items so you'll see Capital assets presented here and you'll see debt presented here on the balance sheet that we look at related to quote unquote the general fund is all shortterm so looking here at the long-term Focus total District as a whole total assets represent uh just under $395 million with cash representing 82 million Capital assets of 300 million deferred outflows of resources related to pension and opep liabilities of 45 million and other liabilities of 437 million of which 188 are related to debt with 2117 related to pension deferred inflows of resources also related to pension NB of $50 million with a negative net position of 45.6 million net investment and capital assets of that net position represent 115 million with restricted net position of 25 million unrestricted
116of netive 86.5 talk about negative net position with means usually negative equity is not a good thing I do like to point out pension Nob as I have done in previous years for you guys that represents about a $220 million liability which is the district's proportionate share of the state's pension and other post-employment benefit plan liabilities which if you remove those from presentation would equate to a positive uh net position of $175 million so uh we are required to depict that in there but I do like to show this visually so that you can see the health of the district excluding those liabilities as we look at the balance sheet as we said this is the shorter term F focus and looking specifically at the general fund total assets represent just under 42 million with
117cash and Investments representing 17.5 million liabilities of 13 million with a majority of that accounting for summer salary acrs with the salary and benefit acrs of just under $12 million deferred inflows of resources and I apologize for the typo but that is 1,594 868 is related to deferred positions in your tax revenues leaving a net position of 27.1 million of which 26.5 is considered unassigned uh looking at your general fund revenues and expenditures general fund revenues of just under $100 million with 47 million represented as your local tax revenues with 5050 million as your state sources expenditures of just under 989 million um 50 million representing instruction Services 43.9 representing Support Services two towards intergovermental and spending 1.7 on Capital outlay other financing sources and uses of 5.2 represent mainly transfers from eia for State
118um funding as well as other transfers for indirect costs with a positive net change in fund balance of $6 million any questions related to those financials I'm more than happy to flip back to any slides you might have I do like to talk about act 23 real quick this is the state mandate that came out several years ago requiring districts to maintain 88.3% or one month's worth of expenditures in their unassigned fund balance pleased to present that number for you um represents uh 8.2 million of which you have 26 million so you're left with a unassigned fund balance percentage of just under 27% so you have a healthy fund balance in your general fund um to be used in future periods lastly I'd like to commend the finance staff on the audit and the financial
119statement presentation the district has received from gfoa for their 22 audit it is always functions in a year and a rear but has received a uh certificate for um excellence in financial reporting over their annual comprehensive financial report for fy22 and we do anticipate that this report should receive the same certificate for FY 23 I know that that has been a long running report and certificate that um the finance department has earned so I would like to praise them for their hard work in doing so and lastly I'd like to praise everybody at the district for putting up with me this year um it was a interesting audit year i' worked with a lot of varying departments that I hadn't worked with in previous years talked to a lot of different individuals um across the
120district all levels of staff from bus drivers to custodians to teachers to HR to transportation to gosh everybody I feel like food service um so it really is a extensive effort that goes into performing these audits thoroughly um and comprehensively and I'd like to thank the district's support and allowing us and opening their information to us for us to be able to do that thank you Mr thank you to say congratulations to our business department because yes that's a very very hard thing to have consecutively for a long time and I'd like to say to the business services department thank you for your hard work the audit is no fun yep suck that thank you all right moving on legislative updates miss Lynn Ford okay I just wanted to share a few highlights um the
121State Board of Education is considering the adoption of a regulation that would establish a Statewide policy oh and I have a copy for Amanda for the minute so you don't have to take notes on that um to govern the selection and review of all instructional materials in schools um they're seeking feedback the deadline to provide written feedback to the state board on this proposal is January 22nd um at 5:00 p.m. um a public hearing will be held uh on February 13th or 15th I had to put my glasses on at 1:00 in Colombia that's February 13th they the proposed new regulation is going to be posted on the State Board of Education website for for review and comment um so please take a look at that the South Carolina School Board Association does ask that
122the public provide feedback and several uh school board members do agree that this proposed regulation be amended uh to include the following and we received this from the South Carolina School Board Association there were three areas in order to protect high quality instruction aligned to the purpose of South Carolina's instructional program um that resolution or regulation 43170 must be at minimum amended in three important ways first the proposed definition of age and developmentally appropriate should be clarified by incorporating um the proper reference and by stating explicitly that the regulation is referring only to FCC regulations prohibiting obscene or indecent materials on daytime television or radio second R 43170 should be amended to only allow challenges to instructional materials from three groups parents and Guardians students and District employees the same three groups of individuals eligible
123in the transparency transparency and integrity in Education Act act I think as it as it reads now anybody any Community member or anybody passing through can kind of make a challenge and um that's really there there's some problems with that finally R 43170 should include the requirement found in the transparency act for an individual to make a goodfaith effort to communicate with school staff first about concerns prior to filing a formal challenge to instructional materials and we know that there are sever veral areas where that's that's just not happened so the public again is advised to go to the State Board of education's website and provide feedback in other news South Carolina School Board Association will be advocating for various issues two of particular interest and I'm just going to mention their titles competitive balance
124for ath athletics and also board member participation in state health insurance and then finally this is is just kind of an something of interest um but it really puzzles me CRT critical race Theory a bill passed by the house differs from the Senate version and there were a couple of instances it talks about cause of action can be filed by anyone um it requires parents to exhaust administrative remedies and it removes allowing parents to withdraw students from certain classes and directs teachers to provide alternative instruction and I'm just really I I mentioned just because I'm I'm curious and frustrated about how can you direct teachers to provide alternative instruction when no one teaches CRT and it's already been stated by the South Carolina School Board Association by the state former State superintendent and also by
125other uh State superintendents throughout the country that that critical race theory is not taught in any school district in America so I don't understand um I really don't understand what this is about but I just had to mention that so again I have a copy for you Miss Amanda and I just wanted to bring those to your attention thank you very much thank you thank you Miss for moving on to our action items this evening our first action item is the Personnel list the administration recommends approval of the Personnel list as presented is there a motion to move it forward so moved it's been moved and it's been second is there any discussion hearing none I call for the question in favor please say I I I'll oppose say no the motion is carried the
126next item the next two items is memorandums of agreement teach my people the administration recommends approval of the memorandum of agreement policy with teach my people as presented at the last board meeting these two memorandums were presented to us is there a motion to move this one forward mov second it's been moved in second is there just discussion hearing none I call for the question all in favor please say I I all oppos say no the motion is carried the next one the memorandum of agreement The Village group the administration recommends approval of the memorandum of agreement policy with the village group as presented is there a motion to move it forward so moved second moved second it's been second is there any discussion hearing none I call for the question all in favor please
127say I I I'll oppose say no the motion is carried next is a series of policies that we looked at at our last board meeting policy B DDF voting method the administration recommends first reading of policy B DDF voting method as presented is there a motion to move it forward so moved second it's been moved and second is there any discussion hearing none I call for the question all in favor please say I I all oppose say no the motion is moved forward is Carri it's pass excuse me policy B ddg minutes the administration recommends first reading approval a policy B ddg minutes as presented is there a motion to move it forward so moved moved second is there any discussion hearing none call for the question all in favor please say I I I'll
128oppose say no the motion is carried policy B ddh public participation in board meetings the administration recommends first approval of policy BD DH public participation in board meetings as presented is there a motion to move it forward so moved second move second is there any discussion I would just like to reiterate something I said in at our last board meeting that I think the board should consider a time limit for public comments like our city council and our County Council does um I don't think it's has has ever been an issue for us except during the time of covid if y'all remember those days that I think my first board meeting public comments was an hour and a half with people reiterating the same thing over and over and over I I would urge that
129we would consider the 30 minute and with probably going back to lindsy in to draft something what that might look like I agree I well I agree with you too the more I thought about it I'm just and I know we haven't had that in my time here anyway not my brief time here um but just looking forward okay um if if you all wish I can certainly add in a a statement there that public comment should not exceed or that something to the effective of um the board chair reserves the right to end public comment after 30 minutes or something along those lines um and you know with the if there the board chair can adjust the Amendments that a person speaks if there's a lot of people who wants to speak right I
130don't know what that language would be okay all right um I'm happy to to think on that and bring back some suggestions of the next meeting if that if that suits and if we're thinking about that if we're all speaking about the same subject matter I is there a way we can in that length of time discuss because there could be two or three uh different venues or information that people wanted to share MH and if you just limited it and said this number of people can speak it could all be about one thing but is there a way we can say not to or for a number of of people on the same subject matter would be considered if there were multiple subjects within the 30 minutes okay that's just a suggestion yes ma'am
131okay um let me just kind of do some thinking about where where that language would fall and and exactly how how it would look and I'll bring you back another suggestion um for the next meeting okay I need some advice of Robert's Rules of Order we have this motion has been made it's been moved it's been second what do we need to do um well at this point so you you're you're the motion that you're making is to direct Administration to present you're not at this point you're not you're not voting to to approve approve first reading you're not voting on first reading approval you're voting to direct Administration to present a modified version of policy B DD bdh at the upcoming meeting all right I would I would like to make that motion so
132I think if you make the motion that you're directing Administration to present a modified version of policy bdh at the upcoming meeting and if somebody seconds that then that's all we need and we don't need to I don't think we need to worry about what was actually written as the motion so nobody's making the motion that we approve first raing approval nobody's making that motion we're just making the motion that we're amending that you're directing Administration to to amend I am making the motion that that the administration rewrites that piece for us okay second there's been a second okay is there any discussion about that all in favor please say I I I'll oppose say no the motion is carried I think that fixes it that fixes everything I believe so okay good thank you
133and did nobody made the motion an additional nobody made the motion to to approve to make first reading approval did they yes somebody did make that we did then that motion does need to be withdrawn by who whoever made the motion uh I will withdraw the motion to make to adopt the policy okay um as presented as as presented wonderful thing vot no she's just withdrawing her motion okay all right okay I think I think that Shores it up then okay thank you all right moving on policy B school board work sessions and Retreats the administration recommends first reading approval a policy be school board work sessions and Retreats has presented is there a motion to move it forward so move it's been moved second it's been second is there any discussion hearing none I
134call call for the question all in favor please say I I I'll oppose say no the motion is carried finally policy BFA policy development system the administration recommends first reading approval of policy BFA policy development system as presented is there a motion to move it forward so moved it's been moved it's been second is there any discussion hearing none I call for the question all in favor please say I I I'll oppose say no we are done with our action items thank you now it's time for board superintendent comments or [Music] requests I other comment I would like to make is to thank um um um Miss Anderson for her work with the South count schooler Board Association with be our director I understand you spent last weekend the first yeah the first weekend in
135January yeah it was Bo eye opening and good stuff good stuff we will let you talk about it one day yes we can not tonight not tonight all right hearing n I'm going to move over to the superintendent all right thank you Mr chair ladies and gentlemen of the board uh I hope that everyone was able to enjoy Dr Martin Luther King Jr day yesterday as we recognize all that he stood for and advocated for last week brought us a challenging couple of days with storms passing through but now we turn our attention to second semester last week our eighth grade students were able to attend the pathways to possibilities event held at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center and this annual event uh sponsored by the benell foundation affords our students a great opportunity to
136engage with a variety of working professionals representing several different careers as our students work to determine what career path they hope to pursue throughout high school and Beyond before the break we held our second set of academic support days where students had the opportunity to address failing grades through assignment completion test retakes and additional instruction unfortunately we only had 63 students countywide who took advantage of these opportunities to improve their grades this is two consecutive opportunities where participation has been really low and if it doesn't improve in second semester we may need to reconsider extending this program beyond our Esser funding this year last week we had our second annual District magnet Fair which gave Georgetown County students and parents a chance to come to one location to learn more about the variety of programs
137that we offer over the next couple of weeks our magnet schools will be be hosting information nights on their campuses for those who would like to learn more and see firsthand the application window for those interested in a magnet school experience is now open and finally we have some upcoming events for everyone to add to their calendars the all count chorus uh performance is scheduled for January 26th at 6:00 p.m. at Carver's Bay High the academic fair is the next Day January 27th at 8:00 a.m. at Georgetown middle and the all count band performance is scheduled for Groundhog Day February 2nd at 6 o'clock also at Carver Bay High School thank you Mr chair thank you we are now officially adjourned and have a good evening thank you thank you very [Music] much