Regular Meeting of the Board of Trustees - January 18, 2024

001good evening I'm I am called to order the Thursday January 18th 2024 regular monthly meeting of the board of Tres I will now entertain a motion for us to go into first executive session thank you I make a motion that the Board of Trustees interent close session for receipt of legal advice regarding board policies I have a motion do I have a second have a second by Miss Rucker all in favor say I poed we are now in executive session all right we are back in session I'll entertain a motion to come out of executive session yes I'll make a motion that the meeting be reconvene an open session and the appropriate affidavit be executed all right we have a motion and a second everybody in favor it's oh okay I have a motion in

002a second everybody in favor signify by saying I I post all right we are back and an open session and we will continue the meeting um first item is item four and it's the invocation and Pledge of Allegiance and I'll turn that over to Vice chair Miss castles we are fortunate tonight to have Lon Allison and Naya Cary with us they're both from airport high school and I'm going to share a little bit about them when we get started thank you both for being with us tonight Landon Allison is a senior at airport high school with a GPA of 4369 he's involved with both the chorus and theater programs he's participated in every production the school has put on during his four years at airport quite all right moving right along all right we're going

003to continue the Productions include Frozen Jr all together now Bright Young things Matilda Jr Little Women and most recently Anastasia Lannon serves as co-president of the airport High School chorus Leadership Council he's auditioned and been accepted into all state chorus Lex two District Honor Choir and the southern American coral Directors Association choir he also served at his church green Hill Baptist where he sings in the choir and is part of the worship team Landon plans to pursue a career in music education After High School he helps to attend USC wiri University or Newberry College and then we have Miss Nehemiah and she is a senior at airport high school as well with a GPA of 4.6 ranked 20th in her class she's attended airport for the last two years she was homeschooled before attending airport

004having been taught by the tenderloving support of her mom she has participated in a couple of theater Productions herself Matilda Jr Little Women where she served as part of the tech crew she recently played the lead role in the production of Anastasia she is in the honors course program and serves as co-president of the airport High School course Leadership Council she's auditioned for and been accepted into the All State Choir lexingon 2 District Honor Choir and the southern American coral director Association choir she plans to continue her small hair business After High School and start teaching private piano lessons her goal is to save up enough money to continue her education in music or Performing Arts all right step up let us pray dear Lord we thank you for this day um we thank you

005for bringing us all here tonight Lord we pray that you'll be with our board members you you give them wisdom in their decision making and uh keep us safe as we travel home tonight Lord name I pray amen amen to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic whichs one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank y'all so much for coming you're welcome to stay but please feel free to go on home thank you all right next item is consent agenda we have approval of the agenda minutes from the November 16th 2023 regular meeting of the Board of Trustees the November 30th 2023 board workshop and the January 4th 2024 special meeting of the Board of Trustees we will however have a change on the agenda we

006will be pulling under um unfinished business item 13A board policy kec and then we will be under new business pulling all section of 14b on 13A we are pulling because we are waiting for update from the legislation and the State Board of Education under 14 um B under new business we are pulling because we are going to continue to get some legal advice before we move on with that policy and if there is no objection the agenda will stand approved as present presented and next we yes I I think that um under 138 you still may end up having to deal with a motion regarding the current status right and we're we're going to take that up as soon as we get to 13A on the we will we'll entertain a motion at that time

007when we get to it during the meeting if that's okay if there's no objection to that thank you all right and now we're going to move on to honors and accomplishments of St Oh and before I go any further anyone that has signed up for public participation concerning either what uh 13A or 14b you will still be able to speak tonight because you did not realize that we were going to pull before you got here and uh that was decided during our first executive session so we will now continue with honors and accomplishments of stud students and staff and I'll turn that over to Dr Hefner thank you madam chair uh we often seem to see the names of our Lexington 2 athletes on social media or in newspaper or website articles about their achievement

008but it's not often that we get to see them off the field court track in the off away from the pool or the wait room or any other location where they might be putting in uh the hard work and effort to excel in their sports tonight however we have invited some of our most decor ated athletes from Fall Sports along with their coaches to be recognized at this board meeting of course not all of these athletes were able to make it tonight some are multiport athletes as you can imagine and they're in the thick of winter sports or spring Sports preparation I know of at least one airport athlete too who graduated early and has already reported to appalachin state for football so if he's here tonight that will be a great success but I

009will uh invite airport and Brooklyn Casey coaches and representatives to the podium to introduce their athletes I know coach Sharpie also received honors which I believe Dr Jones is going to tell us about so members of the audience you'll see a list of the athletes up on the slides and their prestigious recognitions they will also appear on our uh District website and be in board docs tomorrow Mr Shell good evening Madam chair members of the board Dr Hafner we're excited to be here at this time airport high school athletes that are here if you would all please come forward and stand with Coach Fiddler uh are excited to be here and and celebrate excellence in athletics uh these students that you're about to meet um have done everything that you would expect and hope for

010with Lexington 2 students they've represented us they've shined and we're here just to celebrate them and tell you a little bit about each each one of them so at this time I'm excited to turn it over to Shane fer who is our athletic director good evening everyone thank you for having us here tonight um just wanted to say a little shout out about all our athletes and their teams um our football season we won more games this year than the last two seasons combined and some we had uh a team make the playoffs our cheer team won competitions they made the state competition as well our volleyball team won some rivalry games we saw our girls Tennis and Swim Team have athletes compete in region and state finals but not just that we had 16

011athletes make All Region this year as you can see their names up here we had four athletes make the All State team we had five participate in postseason All-Star games we had two win state Player of the Year Awards we had three wi win player of the week Awards and we had one girl win silver medal and set the record for bench press at the state weightlifting meet for females this year first time in airport history we had somebody compete and we had great success with that so what I'm going to do is I'm going allow all of our athletes that are here to come up recognize themselves say their name to you and then we'll close it out and move on to Brooklyn Casey um my name is Taran Gooding and I do cheer

012I'm Taylor Gooding and I do cheer too I'm Emerson centerfit and I'm a Cheerleader my name is Cameron Turner and I do cheerleading my name is Hannah Williams and I do cheer my name is Riley Conor and I play volleyball my name is Avery McCree and I play tennis my name is aana Henderson and I live in run trk my name is Mont keys and I play football as you can see not everyone could make it tonight they had basketball or wrestling or they're preparing for their Spring sport as well so they may not have been able to make it just want to give a quick individual shout out to our two uh player of the years for the state Dylan barbry was recognized by our football coaches association as the 4A lineman of the

013year he is the one that Dr Hafner mentioned has already enrolled at Appalachian State um FBS college football on a full scholarship and he's already started he's getting ready for spring practice and hopes to win a starting job for next year as a true freshman and also Taylor Gooding was our region uh five 4A cheerleader of the year and she's heading to Presbyterian uh division one school for acro tumbling which is a new sport in the NCAA she'll be participating in that and also Cameron Turner will be going to Presbyterian for cheerleading as well so thank you for having us tonight we appreciate you recognize these athletes thank you and I did want to recognize we have by my count at least five coaches also here not counting coach Fiddler we've got them spread out

014through the audience so we just definitely want to recognize them because they are the ones who put in a lot of time and effort with these students thank [Applause] you good evening Madam chair board members Dr Hefner um first of all congratulations to all the airport athletes on your accomplishments this year but I am excited to be here to recognize um our BC athletes as well as our head football coach and athletic director um Mr Rusty Sharpie he is our athletic director slf footb basketball coach but he is also a wonderful influence to our student athletes couple things about Coach Sharpie 22 straight region wins as far as our baseball team is concerned four region champion ships in football region Championship region coach of the year four times football region ad of the Year twice

015three three trips to the Lower State Championship Game including this season he also was the shinbo selecte as a position coach coach Sharpie was also in the past selected to the north south game as a position coach um he's done great work with our student athletes he's continuing to push them inside the classroom as well as on the football field so at this time I introduce our athletic director region Coach of the Year coach Sharpie thank you very much it's U wonderful to have the opportunity to see the people that run this District it's been a great experience U 14 years now almost and I could not be any happier it's been uh quite the ride so I want to thank the board I want to thank the many people in this District uh but

016tonight we're here here to honor the athletes and we had quite a few in fact we had so many do so well this year it'd be very difficult to name them all in fact we had about 11 players make all region in fact will Young Who was a shrine bow selection was the player of the year that's three times in the last four years the Brooklyn Casey's had the player of the year in their region that's quite impressive we in fact had not only a shrine bowl player a north south player in Camden socks and so that's 13 straight years that Brooklyn Casey's either had a member in the shrine bowl or the north south game I don't think there's many schools that can attest to that fact um our tennis team had another wonderful

017year our girls didn't win the region but they came in second and they think they're going to have another strong team next year the cross country team made it to State again and our swim numbers were down a little but the one member we had did qualify for state and so the football team tied a record I think maybe uh one of our board members might have been on that airport team that won 11 games back in 1981 I'm not for certain but I think he was I was actually there and up until the 2016 team that we had win 12 games uh those are the winningest football teams in the Lex two history so we have quite the uh student athlete I have a wonderful principal a wonderful School Board a wonderful superintendent and

018many people in lexon 2o and I cannot thank you enough I do have one of our best athletes that's here tonight I apologize the rest of them are not here but uh coach Fiddler did to allude to the idea that we have multiple sport athletes so almost every one of our football players and tennis players are playing other sports they're practicing baseball in fact I had to leave an inter Squad scrimmage tonight for baseball to be here um so they're all involved in multiple Sports so I'm sorry but one of our best student athletes um Jordan Boston is here tonight an all region defensive back I do think he's getting an academic award too so tell them about yourself my name's my name is Jordan Boston uh I'm a student athlete and um yeah made

019the National Honor Society over thank you and congratulations to all of our student athletes next up you may recall that last fall Dr Megan Carrero and her team were recognized at a board meeting for Fulmer's redesignation as a national school to watch tonight we are recognizing Busby Creative Arts Academy for its redesignation as a national school to watch the school to watch program Embraces a focus on school Improvement and advancing excellence in middle level education so I invite principal Sam Mone and his team to the podium share a little bit about this prestigious redesignation good evening Madam chair members of the board Dr Hafner uh really appreciate really excited about the opportunity uh to stand before you tonight I have with me a couple members of our faculty Miss Rebecca burus our assistant principal uh

020Dr Lisa fiser our instructional facilitator for steam uh and Dr Robin Walsh is our seventh grade team leader they are members of our schools to watch Focus Group um and and at the end of December uh before Christmas we had our first redesignation visit um I'm very proud to say that we were redesignated uh as a national school to watch uh we're very excited about um you know continuing this journey with schools to watch um it really is built into our vision and our mission of the school and the feedback taken from uh our visit will drive what we do in the next few years so we're very proud of that that and I can't stand up here um and talk about schools to watch without recognizing Miss Stephanie hux um for the work that

021she did to lay this ground workor uh for Busby without her uh drive in and going into our initial uh you know visit in 2020 and then really Paving the way as our school leader um you know through that process I have to give her the credit here I just happen to be the one that gets to speak at the board meeting um but we are very thankful um for the board's support um and for the cabinet Dr Hafner um you guys have been fantastic and we're very excited about what we are doing at Busby we're very excited about the direction that we're going to go and so we're very proud and we appreciate the opportunity to to speak tonight thank you I thought they were see okay I did to well many of you

022are aware that January is School Board appreciation month and I would like to take this moment to publicly express my heartfelt gratitude to the members of our school board that are sitting up here before you um the your commitment to shaping the future of our students is absolutely commendable and appreciated and I just want to thank you for your tireless efforts and your passion and your dedication to the educational journey of the students in our community um I know that our schools have some special uh gifts for you this evening to show their appreciation to you but I would also like to draw your attention before you to um a packet of note cards and with the help of Mr LeBlanc and the Fine Arts teachers at our schools we have the art teachers selected

023I can't get this apart because Miss uh strange did such a good job of putting it together but um but it is a packet of artwork from each of the schools uh one at least one per per school and it's been imaged on a note card and on the back of the note card with parents permission it gives the students name and their grade level and their their school location and we just hope that you'll find some joy in utilizing these note cards we will have the artwork up on the district website if you'd like to take a look and we look forward to uh continuing this tradition during our month of appreciation so uh if you would please join me in a round of applause for our board members [Applause] and lastly each year

024during the month of appreciating board members across our state trustees take the time to sign an oath of ethical principles and Madam chair I believe you plan to share um some of this information in the oath with our stakeholders I do thank you um as members of the board of Lexington District 2 we pledge our efforts to improve public education in our community and will solemnly try to represent the entrance of the entire District when making decisions and to rely on available facts and on our judgment rather than our individual or special interest groups understand the proper role of the board to set policies governing the district and to hire the chief administrative officers to carry out these policies encourage an open exchange of ideas by all board members during the decision-making process seek regular

025Communications between the board and the students staff and all segments of the community attend all board meetings to study issues facing the board and to enact policies and officially actions all only after full discussion at such meetings work with other board members and be courteous manner be fitting the public trust placed in the position of Schoolboard trustee communicate concerns and public reaction to board policies and school programs to the superintendent and other board members in a professional manner support employment of the person best qualified for staff positions and to Ure a regular and impartial evaluation of all staff avoid conflicts of interests and to refrain from using our board positions for personal gain encourage recognition and achievements of students and staff and of all the involvement of community residents support legislation and funding which will

026improve the education opportunities and environment for students and staff take no individual action which would compromise the Integrity of the board or Administration and to respect the confidentiality of information that is privileged under the Freedom of Information Act study current current educational issues and to participate in training programs such as those offered through South Carolina Schoolboard Association and make our District's educational setting the best possible to encourage all students to achieve and to love learning thank you and we are all going to sign um this tonight P sure and I'm going to start off first and then I'll pass it to y'all and then if we'll pass it back down this way all right all right while um everyone is signing that we will move on um our next item on the AG agenda is

027a public participation and we follow board policy bed AG I think everyone is familiar with the rules um so we have three speakers tonight and um I'm just going to remind everybody to please stay on part on point to the item of the agenda of which you are speaking we're going to start off with uh Dawn Pierce and she is speaking to kec policy is she here okay all right all right Miss Pierce is not here so we will move on we will um and each one because we only had uh three tonight um I'm sorry I didn't say this at the beginning you do get five minutes okay um we will next move on to Dr Angela kley who is speaking on mentoring program and it is under the item of instruction good evening

028good evening Madam chair members of the board Dr Hefner and fellow community members the difference between a stumbling block and a stepping stone is how how you raise your foot by author Benny Lewis my name is Dr D'Angelo kley I serve as the computer lab manager at airport High School in West Columbia where I've been honored to serve for the last four years not to mention that I myself am a 2008 graduate of airport High School I am here to voice my concern for the number of students who are causing problems in our lexon two schools due to the lack of mentors and solid guidance other than what is given through our capable and able teachers in the classroom and those serving in our guidance offices this impacts me because I've witnessed firsthand assisting several

029students who have been labeled as possible problem students succeed once I began to Mentor them and guide them academically and to making better choices what I have discovered is many of our children causing problems come from lowincome backgrounds and broken family homes I believe if we invest in a districtwide mentoring program and show our students that they don't have to act out or be disruptive but instead be a mentor and set examples such as increase High School graduation rates lower high school dropout rates healthier relationship and lifestyle choices enhance self-esteem and self-confidence and improve interpersonal skills as elected officials we are obligated to make sure sure that even a problem student is not left behind but afforded the opportunity to learn and be successful just as any other student finally thank you lexon District 2

030school board for all the love and support you consistently give students and staff and on behalf of the South Carolina educational Association and the greater Lexington educational Association we have a card for each board member that simply reads we know is not always a piece of cake but thank you for all that you do for the students and staff in lexon District 2 along with some special hand soap made from students by lexon District 2 screw Scott program thank you thank you Dr kley all right now uh coming up is Miss Melissa go forth and she will be speaking um to the KE policy good evening tonight I'd like to speak about the KE proposed revisions a special meeting was called on January 4th for introduction and first reading after excuse me chairwoman won gave

031a statement saying that on November 30th District Attorneys had new information proposals coming from the State Board of Education that impacted the draft policies they've been working on so they discussed it for a little more than an hour in executive session while we were there and then decided to wait to present until the special meeting that took place on January the 4th first reading was given on a revised policy that hadn't yet been released to the public without any opportunity for public input before polling tonight T it would have been our only chance before consideration of second and final reading to give input so that's why I'm here I appreciate you all allowing us to continue continue to give input even though the policy was pulled tonight this change of not providing attachments until 24

032hours after the board meeting is sometimes infuriating no matter what other school districts do it's not what we've done for years it's not an improvement or more transparent process especially when it comes to policy decisions want to hide the unveiling of a mascot or consideration of a fabulous raise great but proposed policy changes should be released in advance especially when you look at how vague our board minutes are thank goodness for live stream here cap abilities but even that has cut out at rather convenient times like when Mr Bray and Miss Rucker were discussing the very issue I'm talking about not voting on a policy that hasn't been publicly posted moving on I see pros and cons with the revised proposal for ke I appreciate that parents and Guardians have the right to review materials

033in the school library the previous precedent allowing any Community member within Lex 2 District to come and inspect our libraries during the school day seemed rather unsafe both for the staff and the students stating the obvious that challenged materials must actually be found in our school libraries before being looked into the by the Review Committee was helpful as well however allowing any individual with our within our district to request reconsideration of school library materials doesn't seem helpful for District employees or our students it encourages more of the same in past public testimony I've commented that many but not all of the book challenges Lodge seem to come from a certain Sunday school class I was recently given access to both an email sharing the link to the online Sunday school class that mentioned as well

034as an email sent encouraging attendance and participation in Lexington 2 book appeals coming from a complaintant that we heard from numerous times that complaintant wrote it truly does speak volumes to show the bot that the community is paying attention and willing to attend meetings like these my hunch was correct the email distribution list of 200 plus members were identical for both emails local church leaders were advocating to change our public school policies using Sunday school distribution list and even hosting meeting meting to encourage appeal and guide complaintants in the process that same Community will continue to challenge our library materials interestingly however that Community now seems to have bypassed these B meetings and instead have attended and testified at the state level hoping that the SC State Board of Education will vote to do their

035dirty work and censor the books available within our school libraries our hope I hope our B isn't doing the same right now I was happy to see parents notified that they can restrict their child selections from the school library but also sadden to see the waiver that it allows them to opt out of school Library resources completely how sad the revised policy gives participants and school librarians the opportunity to informally discuss the matter with the complainant as well as the selection procedures while I've always encouraged the B to heed the feedback of librarians I do worry about the pressure being placed on both the school librarian and the principal as we've seen post from pace for Lex 2 members that that encourag them to put pressure on the principal or librarian to avoid having to

036go through the K process I worry Librarians will be subject to more hostility from those that aren't successful with their complaints good thing they're a tough Bunch but it's still your job to protect them and all Lex to employees after the informal discussion KC forms are supposed to be submitted within 10 days we all know that many of these complaints will have that form ready before the process begins the updated form requires complainants to have actually read the entire work before the challenge process begins thank goodness for that no more challenges that say well the title or the intro told me all I needed to know while multiple members of the review team and even some BO team members read hundreds of pages to make an informed decision for our kids very much appreciate that

037complaints will be posted publicly on the district website would like to see a Time guarantee on that is it the same day the superintendent receives notification of The Challenge from the principal written responses from parent Gardens is an excellent addition and I hope they're posted in a timely manner as well as well finally parents can weigh in publicly outside of four or five minutes of public input at the next board meeting when the superintendent designates a poll excuse me parent volunteer Miss go I'm have to ask you to wrap it up thank you time all right all right next item is um item eight and we will start with administrative divisional reports and we will turn that over to Dr he thank you madam chair since this is our first regular meeting of 2024 I

038would like to take a moment and say happy New Year to everyone I hope that your holiday season was full of love and warmth and gratitude I do take pride in the fact that in addition to the necessary academics of school we also take this time of year to teach our students about gratitude and encouragement to give back to the community whether it's in the gift of their musical talents performances and parades Distributing toys collecting and distributing things to our senior citizens or the Oliver Gospel Mission our students learn about the spirit of giving and the profound impact of generosity so in a world that is pretty fast-paced right now I love that our students can feel the joy of not um just what they receive but also from The Joy from what they are

039able to give to others so our performing arts groups uh actually provided a large portion of that joy throughout the holiday season and I cannot wait to see our students perform on the stage at our new Performing Art Center which you'll hear about um our construction update a little bit later but in the meantime I would like Mr LeBlanc to offer an update for us on the Fine Art side and our newly developed Hall of Fame so Mr LeBlanc thank you Dr Hafner Madame chair members of the board our guests this evening thank you for the opportunity to come and share a brief update with you all um as always you can see on the screen here last month or November's board meetings a picture of the inside of the auditorium versus about a week

040ago just to uh note some of the project uh the progress that that has occurred but I'm here today to speak largely about the Hall of Fame and to first uh just say thank you thank you thank you after the November meeting um I had an outpouring of help um from many of you all sharing uh names of individuals former Educators in lexingon 2 and also community members we almost doubled the number of nominations that we had and so I just um really want to thank you for that this is very important to us and and what we're trying to do in Lex and 2 with the Fine Arts um so thank you for your help in and and for answering our cry for help in November um as you can see on the screen

041we had 29 individuals submitted I have a breakdown of each area for you 11 visual art seven music Six Theater or videography four Educators and one dance um so we have a wide variety of folks represented in the nominations and um as mentioned previously we would like um you guys to consider uh rep giving us a representative from the school board to serve as we um join as a committee to help go through each of these nominations so um if you guys can consider that um we would love your your help with that and as we move through the spring and and conclude the inaugural process um we hope to be able to introduce these um individuals and um inductees at our grand opening on April 17th and also provide a reception for them to

042recognize them this spring I've included a few more pictures I don't want to uh steal Mr Robinson's Thunder he's he's got the real construction update but we have had a busy um last couple months at the Performing Arts Center you can see uh the inside of the lobb looking awesome this is from a week ago so even being in it uh today M much more has occurred since then on the right Mr Warren Dr Hafner um they arranged for us to provide uh tours to all of our district and uh office employees last week and you can see some of them in these pictures uh getting to see their new home um that they'll be move into here on the left you can see A View From on the stage right by the orchestra pit

043looking out in the auditorium you'll notice the seats are in um it's really starting to take shape um and it's just breathtaking on the right you can see from the very tip top of the balcony the back row looking down towards the stage and a couple more of our groups you can see Landscaping is looking good out on um the paving in the parking lot U really starting to come together I don't want to take U Thunder from the construction update later but I I can't help but to share the the beautiful progress that's been made also included our events that are occurring in the next month or so leading up to February board meeting um for anyone that's interested please uh continue to do as you did in the fall and come out and

044support our students our our uh Fine Arts Educators and the programs that they're putting on um we have a lot of of things continuing to happen December was busy for us it's going to continue through the spring with a lot of good things happening including our districtwide uh clinics and honor groups and that concludes my update for this month I'll be happy to answer any questions um thank you so much Mr LeBlanc it is just absolutely gorgeous and we're all excited and as far as one of us being on the committee um you know it's a hot ticket and we have uh three board members that want to serve so until we decide which one you're going to get me so uh yes ma'am so if you'll just let me know uh when I need

045to be somewhere I will be there okay thank you so much all right thank you all right so next is item nine administrative divisional report finance and I will turn that over to miss Strickland good evening everyone tonight I have the financials for the period ending December 31st 2023 for our Revenue of7 m263 719 is what's budgeted we have received mil1 182,183 of our general fund budgeted revenue for our expenses our budget's 107 m263 719 as of December 31st we have expended m665 $162 183 which is 43% of our budget the next report i h I have is the um Esser report a reminder our deadline for the sr3 grant is September 30th of 2024 our W amount was 22,9 [Music] 58,300 6657 that's 51% of our our Grant and you see at the bottom

046the different um categories where that is budgeted for this current year the next report I have is the um our pack project the um for the Performing Arts um of the 53,1 183,184 cost to date we have expenses of 43 m69 one, 16964 we have 9,492 77336 remaining our contingency $468,000 the last report I have is the pupil pupil activity fund balances I have the First Column the month ending October 31st and then compared to December 31st because we had no November meeting which is an increase of $636 180 and you'll see how it's broken out by schools are there any questions okay thank you thank you all right without objection the monthly financial report will stand approved as presented next we'll move on to item 10 administrative divisional report from uh human resources and

047I'll turn that over to Dr Cooper thank you madam chair members of the board Dr Hafner will call up our director of Human Resources Stephanie hux for our um um vacancy report update yes Madam chair board members Dr Hafner good evening I do have your first um vacancy report for the calendar year of 2024 um you will notice that it is in a different format we hope that you find this a little bit more helpful um given the location of the schools and the um vacancies that are posted So currently for the 2425 school year we have 60 regular education um vacancies we have 20 special education vacancies and 21 support staff vacancies that is for the 2425 school year we do still currently have 23 24 vacancies that are posted and we are working

048to get those filled um but we will look forward to bringing you a report each month and if you would like to check on those we are updating them daily online so if you have any questions I'll entertain those at this time Miss G on page two I see at Kate you need a small animal care instructor have we increase the project or what is that about that m yeah Dr it's a program change in fact that's on our agenda for us to discuss at the workshop in January so uh that might be premature that made it to to this list but it's it's a retirement of one program from last year with uh the the um Agriculture and small animal vet coming into the program here it would been nice to have known that

049Dr h i did share with the officers any question Miss brandom um thank you Miss H how many about how many vacancies do we still have for this school year um for this school year we have approximately 15 regular education and nine special education thank you and um I'm I'm hoping and assuming yall do such a good job that we've been reaching out to hopefully some December teacher graduates who might definitely thank you thank you for your hard work thank you Miss hux and we'll also be presenting to you our um spring report to the school board where we'll go into our recruiting efforts and things such as that Miss brandom um and also we want to invite you and everyone here to our annual teacher Fair which is January 30th 4 to 6 come

050one come all everyone you know please bring them it'll be a wonderful Affair thank you so with the 60 um for upcoming school year Dr Cooper is that seems high to me for January are we tracking normal with that or that's a little higher it is not extreme no it's not extremely abnormal that's pretty on Trend okay thank you and fact it's a little lower than at this at this point thank you Miss hu okay any other questions all right thank you Dr Cooper Miss H all right next we'll move on to um item 11 um of administrative divisional reports and that will be instruction and I'll turn that over to Dr Brooks thank you madam chair members of the board Dr Hafner every month we're trying to bring a school to highlight and I'm

051excited to present um Riverbank Elementary tonight and David has a a outstanding group with him and so I'm gonna turn it over to Mr Sims BR W let him introduce all of his group members hello and good evening everyone as you know my name is David Sims principal at Riverbank uh it took over 35 years for this to happen but I finally volunteered to speak at a board meeting I'm excited tonight uh to share with you our Innovative safety patrol program uh over the years through experience I've learned that those who serve others benefit the most and have the most fun that's the lessons that these students are learning standing behind me I want to introduce officer India Taylor She's My Sr staff person of the year good friend creator and sponsor of Riverbank safety

052patrol officer Taylor thank you all for allowing myself and the safety patrol to come to your meeting tonight um I love these little kiddos uh even Mr LeBlanc can speak for this I am the master of creating mentorship programs um I've created six so far um again I'm also tayor year 20 with the city of West Columbia seven years as an SRO my fourth year with Riverbank Elementary out of the six mentorship programs that I did five of them were always focused on the kids that needed a little extra love or little extra attention that needed a mentor in their life and and normally with sro's and and people from the community we focus on those kids that need that little bit extra but this group is different what about the kids that don't make

053noise what about the kids that do make all A's what about the kids that have good attendance and no dnotes that's what this group was creating for that untapped group of kids that were actually doing well and because they weren't in the office they were overlooked so this particular group is a group of fifth graders at Riverbank Elementary who has zero dnotes must have all A's and B's good attendance and also get the recommendation from their teacher and their parent to be a part as you can see there's no other safety patrol like this you've heard of safety patrol but not quite like this this particular safety patrol they wear a little uniform forms in which we had a career day one day and BC high school brought the RC to our school for career

054day and my kids wanted to challenge them in drill because they've been working hard so they did a game of knockout and within the first three or four moves all like 10 or 15 BC high school rooc members were out then they looked at me and said Officer Taylor we're Rusty I said well they're 10 you're not Rusty but with this program the kids have an opportunity to serve we've done things this is only the second year so they've had the opportunity to watch the first year safety patrol last year in order to volunteer now I've had kid as young as 4K saying I want to be on safety patrol everybody wants to be on safety patrol what does it take to be on safety patrol how do your grades look how do your beh

055how's your behavior and everybody's working forward to get looking forward to getting the fifth grade so they can be a part of this group if you look at the sash that they wear they all earn different medals for different Service Pro projects you can kind of tell the ones that were here first semester versus second and third look at those sashes and they work hard for those medals I don't have to ask them to do projects they want to do them because they want to get those service points last year we did a program called kids for Liz but we did a um we were trying to raise $ thousand dollar for kids with cancer that was our little um what do you call it service project not only did we get over ,000 we

056got $1,536 for kids wanting to donate for kids with cancer um we also do last year when Mr lont contested us we'll do basketball games so for those of you at High School Middle Schools if we have any games left we present the flag at every assembly we can do your games for you just call me and I'll bring them they can do those flags almost just as good as the high school members so let me know if you need me um we work our soccer program they work the scores table they do all kind of service we got a the campus coming up we do a whole lot of work at the school so this is just a little taste of what they do when they drill every assembly we do this and we

057raise and lower the flag so this is just a little taste order we can do a whole whole lot more than that they're a little nervous right now gosh fabulous L I don't know if you've been to River Bank Elementary but that car r line is takes on a whole personality in itself and sometimes the teachers forget that they have duty they be like Hey where's the where's the safe Patrol wait a minute you work the hallways but they look forward to the to the kids helping they have a medal that has a crossing guard on it which means they're certified trained to work that car r line they have um pins and metals about color guard that they can do all the moves like different things they do mentorships they do tutoring they help

058with coolers they do all the things over the building to the teachers almost forget that it's probably their job to do it so like real quick I'm G have a couple seconds I know you guys are ready to go and I'mma have our and also there's a hierarchy too so there's a chain of command so our unit Commander Mr Asher I have him say a couple of words about what safety patrol means to him the reason I wanted to join safety rol was like I just wanted to have another level of like responsibility to have I also wanted to be like a leader and like a role model to like younger students in the school and I also wanted the school to like respect me as like a student and that's why I joined safety

059[Applause] the reason I wanted to join safety patrol is so that I could help younger kids I just love to create bonds and make new friends through it I also earn respect and earning respect I like to show it back to the people who showed me it also um just the experience getting to do coolers and learning to do all of these drill moves and making new friends through safety with that is the reason I joined safety with tell you a little bit about Avery Avery is Mr service point we had to stop Avery hadn't had a recess since he started he takes his recess a few tutors mentors and just this week we created a schedule for him you have to go to recess and play he wants those service points Marco so uh

060one of the main reasons I joined safety patrol is because I wanted to develop my socializing skills not only with younger students but with students my age and I think it's a really good experience being in being in this like Mentor mentorship program and I think it would be a really good idea idea for other schools and just being able to bond with not only younger children but the whole group is an awesome experience and I like it a lot girls this year reason why I joined safety patrol is because I wanted more responsibility in myself and um I just like creating bonds with the little kids because they made me feel happy and every single time I go home now I feel much happier about myself and I give them respect and they give

061me respect and I just feel really good about myself and I like how I get to help the little kids walk around to their classrooms and I just have really good bonds with them so a few seconds from some of the parents that are here miss Hollman not that sure um good evening Madam chair Dr Hafner members of the board um I was asked to share my thoughts on the safety patrol at Riverbank um first off I've had the pleasure of working with Officer Taylor for several years um one of her most notable char istics is she builds relationships with students and she's a mentor she's not just about safety of the skill of of the school the safety patrol stands out to me because students are not just placed on the team they have

062to fill out an application they have to tell what values they have to make them a member of the team and they have to describe why they should be on the team in a district with well-renowned jotc programs the riverbank safety patrol mimics the same principles and core values of these distinguished programs at a much earlier age it teaches ownership responsibility and discipline students required to be at school early every day this takes commitment and discipline from these students that sets them apart from others at the school they are required to keep up with their materials every day they have a safety vest and a whistle I don't know about your children but having a fifth grade boy keep up with extra materials every day is a big task for everybody the thing I have

063most enjoyed watching is the discipline they have learned and the pride that they show from that accomplishment the safety patrol has a 9-week assignment period And I know um that kipon has already been hoping to be reinstated for the next nine weeks I asked him what his favorite part about the safety patrol was and he said being a leader in a world full of followers any program that makes leaders out of 10 and 11 year olds is doing something right thank you Mr Sims and Officer Taylor for your time and dedication to these students um and instilling in them sound principles and core values that I know will benefit them the rest of their lives thank you she spoke better than I did good evening as a parent of one and an employee at Riverbank

064it what they do is phenomenal um often times children aren't w to get out of the car or not feeling having a great day coming to school and once they see the safety patrol person their friends there to help them to walk to their classes it changes their whole day um and I think it makes it a lot easier for the classroom teachers when they walk them there as well um as a parent it has given um proven that they can handle more responsibility to keep up with their things to know that they have to be on time for for something to remember all the calls which I'm sure that I could never do um they've done an excellent job and I think and I haven't heard anything negative from it um all the the

065kids that they tutor that are younger than them have made progress and so I think it's an absolutely positive program thank [Applause] you good evening thank you for this opportunity to speak with you about the River Bank safety patrol my son is Avery and it is true he would skip every recess if you let him uh he is committed to getting into bed at a decent time so that he can get into school early to help transport the coolers for the cafeteria ladies and he takes his different duties very seriously uh I like that safety patrol offers various ways to serve both the staff and students uh such as the car rider and bus lines Library helper Mentor uh and ensuring that the hallways remain a safe Zone his dedication to this program has brought

066him so much joy I'm grateful to the people involved in making safety patrol available at Riverbank Elementary and especially for officer Taylor's standard of Excellence this has been a gamechanging experience for both my son and me thank you again I like thank you all for allowing us to be here thank you to Mr Sims for letting me run wild with my imagination and come up with different programs also thank you to Mr raford Mitchell and Sherman Crossland from BCC we beat them so bad that they gave us their old uniforms raise your hand if you have on an old uniform these are actually the old uniforms they're actually costumes from Amazon and he realized that they were costumes and they look just like the real ones that he was like you know what we have

067about 500 for you don't don't go back to Amazon anymore um um so again thank you thank you guys and you get the video all right and then we'll leave you with this quick video and then we get out your hair so we get these kids to bed okay thank [Applause] you at Riverbank Elementary School our safety patrol is unlike any other these remarkable students aren't just Protectors of the hallways they're leaders role models and champions of good [Music] character not only do our Patrol numbers ensure that I call out a long run smoothly and write positive tickets to reinforce acts of kindness and Good Deed throughout the school they raise our flag symbolizing their commitment to [Music] duty these young Heroes perform intricate drill movements with Precision demonstrating teamwork and discipline Riverbank Elementary School

068Safety control where leadership character and safety come together something you Mr Sams can hear me okay can hear me yeah Mr Sams just want to say before they leave outstanding I think I can speak for this whole board best ever congratulations [Applause] okay so our next uh divisional report Mr horren I want to see if you can top that we're g we're gonna turn it over to I was about to say that was phenomenal in genda placement because that's not that's not possible to top that wonderful wonderful presentation really enjoyed that but um real quick I want to move to the operations update our construction update you know Mr Jack Robinson is here from Thompson turn of construction also um Mr Lor long from jumper Carter ceas uh real quick you know as Mr LeBlanc

069said very thrilled with the progress at the pack project and just the teamwork that's present of course I know I'm still fairly new here but just um jumping right in with this group and this team a lot of trust has been developed um a lot of focus you know very driven to to finish this project and turn it over um to this District a topnotch facility that we're all you know thrilled with so let Mr Robinson um provide his update uh good evening Madam chair members of the board Dr Hafner uh thanks for letting me go after them uh that was that was that was pretty incredible um Officer Taylor she's not in here she's awesome my my dad's a retired city of Chara police officer so what she's doing to those kids' lives and

070then kind of it into construction with um Thompson Turner built Riverbank with JCS that's incredible to see you know what it you know we're building something that impacts Generations so in the future and it's just awesome so um thank you U on behalf thps thank you for letting me stand before you to give you a quick update uh about for an art center this picture right here was taken um the end of December and since then we have all but the um entrance and the entrance little small Loop uh paved and striped that's actually getting paved tomorrow and I guess if I have this um quick update on the district education this is as you can see the striping is in the landscaping's in just a quick um entrance we're completing well this was a

071couple days ago the uh stair tread and glass has been completed uh hbac testing and balancing is on ongoing uh should be wrapped up by the end of this week um in Access Control security equipment installing and testing AV Equipment in the boardroom uh you know here in New near future um and testing fire alarm as Mr LeBlanc and maybe Mr Rucker heard today um again this was a couple days ago that St stair GL glazing is now done um that is the entrance Reception Area ceilings are in tiles in paints on uh carpet's in uh this is a picture of the bathroom on the right hand side Division 10 mirrors Etc they're in again left hand side is the testing and balancing that's how they come up with their calculations on the right hand

072side is the uh little annunciator panel for the fire alarm uh and the Performing Art Center we've getting that front entry in as y'all go down plat Springs Road you can see now uh we're able to get done with the lobby work to move those large lifts out out um overhead inspections have been completed as of today um Auditorium seating again has been installed as Mr LeBlanc showed you earlier the rigging wall has been completed um we're looking forward to the fire current coming in next week um we're in the process of pulling a ton of Av uh wiring from multiple locations um installation of finishes in progress again the front entry is being completed electrical fire alarm and AV testing has started uh on the picture on the left hand side you are staying

073on the second floor of that beautiful balcony uh looking over you see all the different Globes there's a lot of different opportunities there to change colors Etc as you can see the right hand side most of y'all don't ever get to see it whenever you walk in because as soon as it goes down and looks like this after it's grouted it gets covered up immediately so I was able to sneak in actually on Sunday to get that picture um again um the tiles going in next week on the ceiling tile uh left hand side is a little bump out inside those bathrooms beautiful green tile um gives a good accent uh the trazzo um sinks and then a picture of the uh dressing rooms on the right hand side all right so this is uh

074from the loading Gallery uh on the stage looking down you can see all those amazing uh rigging lines mind sets again all the conduit along the wall underneath that uh Ram Board is your stage flooring has been completed um again on the right hand side uh Mr Blan had a pretty good picture earlier about all the seats in we've got carpet going down um that Orchestra pit the final lift and owner training will be Friday afternoon um so that that's this moving right along again site work uh Paving striping being completed uh p should be done bearing any asphalt plant breakdowns Etc tomorrow uh and then striping would continue after that Landscaping along the front is really what's missing and going to be going in in the next week uh weather pending and then a

075Dominion has come out on site and started pulling wire um wires for parking lot lights so final completion activities um owner provided Furniture still scheduled to start delivery on uh the 29th um uh complete Landscaping along flat Springs Road and the side up around the building once the irrigation meter gets put in and we can start watering that make sure that that um has a nice beautiful entrance up there for you um completing fish finishes throughout the the Pam the carpet um Etc um continue testing electrical AV HVAC systems install and test theatrical AV Equipment um that equipment is uh super expensive and has to be in final cleaned areas U before they can do the final punchdown downs and and testing of that uh final cleaning overall everywhere um complete inspections of elevators start

076final inspection process which actually we started today in the dec um with our with third party inspector and um we're working through that and then a punch list Lori as well as Mr Warren um owner's training AV uh theatrical training as well as several other items so that's all I've got for y'all today this evening all right thank you any questions all right jack Lori both thank you so much it is absolutely breathtaking we are so excited thank y'all for all you do all right so Mr Warren anything else no ma'am thank you okay thank you all right so we are coming up on our favorite part part uh of the meeting and that being uh policies under unfinished business and some in new business so we're going to take um and we also have

077h a little bit more in new business that'll take a little bit of time so we're going to take a quick uh five minute break and then we'll come back all right so we're gonna we are back in session um and we will now move on with the agenda and the next item on the agenda is item 13 unfinished business Madam chair if I may yes ma'am um I'd just like to make a comment about uh the change in the agenda with KC being pulled as it was mentioned briefly earlier uh there is work being done with the state at the State Board and with legislation and rather than creating a document that would then have to be woefully uh updated we just wanted to make sure that we get as much feedback as we

078can before we move forward um if I would encourage parents if you have any concerns in the meantime about anything going on with your student please just give the principal a call and have a conversation with them and and we can go from there but um in order for us to do that Madam chair I would need a we would need a motion to continue the suspension of the policy all right I'll entertain a motion Madam chair I make a motion to continue suspended KC policy I have a motion by Miss Kesler a second by Miss Rucker any discussion all in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion carries all right now um we're going to uh finish um or start with unfinished business and we'll move to Item B and Miss Kesler our

079uh policy Guru uh has graciously agreed to continue leading us with the policies so at this time I'm going to turn it over to miss kler I would comment but I'll be honest okay um most of the the policies that we're going to talk about in the next few minutes have been looked at and reviewed so I'm going to go ahead and make the Motions for those policies uh and if you have a comment please do so uh Madam chair I make a motion to approve second and final reading for u a AC policy I have a motion do I have a second second by Mr Bray uh do we have any discussion all in favor signify by saying I I I opposed motion carries madam chair I make a motion to approve second and

080final reading of K policy C the 10 policies listed in that um part C all right I have a motion do I have a second second second by miss brandom any discussion all in favor signify by saying I I I opposed motion carries Madame chair motion to approve D I have a policies that are included in that section I have a motion do I have a second second by Mr Bray any discussion all in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion carries Madam chair a motion to approve second and final reading for J policies in the 10 listed in 13 E I have a motion do I have a second second by Mr key any any discussion all in favor signify by saying I I motion carries before we go into uh F I

081would like to bring to the attention of the uh board that on jic CJ page two the last bullet is actually two bullets the um Aaron already has that correction but just to let you be aware of it Madam chair I make a motion that we approve second and final reading of J policies the nine policies listed in section F I have a motion do I have a second second by Mr key any discussion all in favor signify by saying I I motion carries Madame chair I make a motion to approve second and final reading of J policies in G 13 I have a motion do I have a second second by Mr key any discussion Mr Bry yes Madam chair thank you uh policy JQ Mr Atkins if you wouldn't mind pulling it up

082somewhere right in the beginning it kind of stipulates what a student can or cannot when a fine may be levied uh so the second paragraph which is this one line in the fees section I would like to amend that to state that no school will charge a fee if the pupil activity fund for that school school is greater than $50,000 um is there a second all right the motion does not thank you hold at this time okay we have a motion and we have a second on the floor for items all items in section g any more discussion all in favor signify by saying I I I opposed no motion carries uh Madam chair on in section g we have read through these policies basically except for a RJ i c f a a r

083is there any comments that you would like to make concerning that policy before we go for motion thank you okay motion to approve first and second reading of section 138 s policies I have a motion do I have a second second by Mr key any discussion all in favor signify by saying I opposed motion carries all right now we're gonna thank you so much Miss Kesler now we're going to move on to item 14 on the agenda which is new business and I will then again turn it back over to miss Kesler these policies are for first motion so we need to stop and go through them before we make a motion to make any changes that might be needed so we can have first reading if you will turn with me on um policy

084D DB any comments okay a r d db- r there are a couple I would like to bring to your attention and Erin you already have this under the approval process we'll ensure that campaigns do not if you will look at the first bullet we need to flipflop not is to is not and on page two under the last statement uh a question uh I guess this would be to miss Strickland uh the fundraisers and crowd fundraising that we bring in it says that you will only get a report if it's $1,000 should so the principal is the only one that sees the other we don't have to worry if it's just they fundraise for $900 an employ that um that that report would only come to me if the funds are greater than $1,000

085um I that's a board's decision whether I get all the re reports for how much they raise I would think for accountability sake but this is just my opinion I'm I'm good with anything but I would think for accountability that all of it will be turned over to you board members any comment uh consensus of opinion that all of it be reported no you're still you're still getting the funds this this revenue is still coming through the chart of accounts so it's it's still being seen right her pocket is the audit pocket and if I do a fundraiser and make 900 and you make a 900 and somebody else makes 900 you that that accumulates and I just don't want to get caught up in not reporting those funds so maybe I'm totally off base

086is this money going into our chart of accounts or is this money outside like GoFundMe world that's what I don't understand do you if these funds that are raised um and I'm trying to break this down like through um you know individual doing a Gund fund me or whatever the those funds should be turned into the school bookkeeper and then the purchase be made so it would it would flow through a pupil activity account you know designated for that purpose so the fund so that account would be okay to pass the audit yes that would that would be that would the funds would flow through school the school dist District just like the pupil activity funds they should um Madam chair also that $11,000 threshold Falls in line with donations above a th that I

087have to approve and then the ones that you all have to approve at the higher level knowing that it's going to be count I don't have a problem anymore does anyone else good thank you all right G any other questions any comments GB e be e j i i c [Music] FB j i c f a a j i h a r j i h-r I have a couple of things here um if you will look under uh lockers and other school properties the district P athletic lockers that sentence the second sentence uh we'll continue with that no second sentence the storage areas we need to insert and electronic devices otherwise that sentence doesn't apply and I think you want it to apply to both so if we say that um these storage areas and

088electronic devices domain school property and as such are subject to periodic inspection by the school authorities and the same thing at the on the two paragraphs [Music] below uh at the the third sentence should read inspection of school storage lockers and electronic devices any comments any questions uh jih h e is deletion JJ I do have a question on the um I guess that would be the fifth the fourth bullet even though one struck out students are discouraged from selling items or soliciting contributions pledges or other orders door too how else do you do a fundraiser through the internet asking for donation but you're still asking is the concept here just that we don't have like a movement of kids from door too is that I I had this as kind of a I think

089the encouragement is that it would be from family friends people they know and not necessarily holding their neighborhood's hostage so to speak it's speak on this personally because I'm currently helping my six-year-old sell Girl Scout cookies and we are learning all about safe practices for fundraising with Girl Scout cookies so um I think the idea is what Dr Hafner said is to try to promote selling within the realm of people and groups that you know really do promoting online selling with safe sources and and doing emails with people that you're aware of and teaching kids about safe measures to do that um that's sort of the idea behind that um and from personal experience but I am stealing cookies if anybody wants some cookies I just think we've limited their their ability to fundraise and

090then on this next page well before we go further I I'll talk to I mean so Ashley kind of answer this one when what Miss Kesler said are you know they can go to their neighbors if they know their neighbors and knock on their neighbors doors what what we're saying is don't go neighborhood to Neighborhood to Neighborhood to Neighborhood stranger type thing but you certainly can go if you live in a culdesac or if you live on a street and you know all 10 families well and I think what I'm hearing is there are some differing interpretations of how this reads so maybe we just need to clean it up a little bit um and I think maybe if we talk about promoting safe practices for children within communities that they know of or that

091they have awareness of might be a good um solution there okay this is for up for first reading so can you do that before our second reading thank you we certainly can on the next page uh We've also stipulated that certain groups can handle more of the fundraisers so they they're going to have a rich Nest it seems like to me that pot needs to be spread around is there any way to spread around because if you're like in student government you you're going to do Mr so and so contest Miss so and so contest um yearbook uh and everything else so you've got an opportunity to make a lot of money where these other smaller groups don't have an opportunity to do that can that not be spread around so that everybody has an

092opportunity to make some profit off of those programs or activities JJ it's the third statement on second page school events such as spaghetti suppers barbecues fall festivals so that if you leave that in one one group's organization they they can really make make out good but then some of these others don't have a chance so is there a way that you can incorp incorporate some of the groups that need to make have fundraisers that they might partake of in those activities to share the let us take a look at that and see how we might clarify pleas yes ma'am I I read that as anybody can do the these events minus Mr beat and Aquila but a spaghetti dinner any any of the organizations could do that maybe I read wrong all the others are

093only allowed one fundraiser but they could they could all do that event because it's not C that's the way I'm reading given to one group gotcha I was just reading it as you can do one fundraiser but then you can have these community events and these are what community events are I don't know just if you would just look at to see if there's a way to spread that out that's my two concerns anyone okay let's moving on to to U ajj e-r which will be deleted brings JJ e-e jld D there are a couple of things there I'd like to bring to your attention uh on page [Music] three at the last last statement of mine uh it reads that um counseling uh Personnel will include certified school school counselors we need to eliminate

094one of those schools okay on page four the first paragraph the district will provide students in middle and high school that is a repeat so that whole statement needs to be removed any comments okay a r j r a-r page two the first statement after the bullets except as proof is provided in paragraph four of this section look at paragraph four it doesn't make sense so we need to just take that statement out of there unless you all can tell me how it is applicable that was a a r j r a r Student Records yes ma'am J R A- R second page second page and which portion again please okay thank you I'll go back I thought we just went through it okay we did just go through it uhuh J of location M

095okay thank you yeah J R and then J R A- R okay so do we need to strike that did anyone see how it applies I could couldn't find the paragraph no we'll clean that up yeah just take it out so all you have to do is just scratch through it and then um on page seven I think it's page seven yes page seven it may be marked out but I couldn't decipher uh requesters re e quu s t e e ER I think it's just an e r seven yes it looks like a typo okay um that concludes it for me if anybody else has comment Miss brandham um and Ashley this may be a question more for you um looking at policy jic cfaa uh under the harassment intimidation or bullying obviously our

096purpose here is to establish the basic structure for maintaining a safe positive environment for students and staff that is free from harassment intimidation or bullying so obviously that's a great purpose and it's something we definitely want to have and promote in our district my concern or my question for you and I don't know if other districts have addressed this but I realized that J deals with students G deals with staff do we should we be looking into having a policy that actually because this is about this isn't doing anything in this policy to protect staff from harassment intimidation or bullying so you know in the in the sentence up you can leave it in there because I understand we want everybody to be aware of it but I guess what what is governs what governs

097the policy or what policy would govern that we don't want our staff harassed intimidated or bullied and what rights they might have under that and I get it if they think they are they can file a grievance but if they file a grievance and then they're told by the policy that it's been violated and so they so you you you know you've got more sta policies to talk in generalities about conduct and what's acceptable conduct and what's not acceptable conduct I think about like GBE rights and responsibilities GBE um Dr H can probably speak to this and it's better than I can just reading them off um you do have some other ones in particular about title n for example but that doesn't speak directly to bullying and harassment that's not related to title n

098issues because that's very specific so I think what we could do and maybe this is a great thing to collaborate on with Dr Keeper's office is to look at what you guys have existing and if we can't find that language that tracks similarly maybe thinking about creating something like this for the staff section which would go in G and it could pretty much almost mirror this but maybe be directed specifically at staff and what the expectations are with regard to staff Behavior does that help yeah I just I mean I I hear about this I think every board member sitting at this table hears about this and um our our staff deserves to understand that the board at least identifies that they have a right to work in a workplace that is free from harassment

099intimidation and bullying or bullying and I just say that because I want them to feel like we support them and when they sometimes feel like they've gotten awh to turn because we're not being as specific in this policy we refer to them but this policy doesn't apply to them other than says that the staff can't bully students which nobody need to be bullying students either but I mean I want I want our staff to understand that we care about them we hear them um and that we also want them to feel protected okay Madam chair um I was just looking at policy G BB staff conduct and it's um harassing intimidating or bullying a student or an employee so maybe you know maybe we can look just make sure it's all in there right yeah

100I think I looked at that one because which which one GB GB is just GB EB is that staff conduct yes yeah but what I'm saying is I I think that that's rather generic and difficult to identify and we might want to consider a stronger statement based on okay or put gb- or put one that may Mir a more specific policy related to that particular area and I think what's important for staff members to know and this is why you have different policies you've got different types of harassment that can come about because of violations of federal rights that you have so you have track those languages in things like your equal opportunity policy things about like for example race discrimination age of discrimination those things are already in there so we're talking about this

101is separate and apart from those already protected activities that we're discussing so I it's a good point and I'm happy to help out with that however y'all deem is necessary this board member would like to see maybe the language and the J policies explored and maybe applied to a g policy but I mean I'm one I see a lot of head shaking yeah I agree and when we're working on policy we need to do it just go ahead and do it yeah as soon as we can as far as my concerned so y'all can work on that very good thank you Miss brandom thank you all right any questions concerning any section um new business a any questions or comments hearing no Madam chair I'd like to make a motion to approve first reading of

102the policies listed in 14a all right I have a motion do I have a second second second by Mr key any discussion all in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion carries I said earlier we're pulling um 14b so moving to 14 C uh all of the GBA GCE AR uh GCC and GFA have been a little bit revised since the last one hopefully everyone had an opportunity um to read through those if you would turn to GCE I've got one correction it's very minor but on page two um under the um documents you need see a space between section 591 520 and section 59 26-44 just need a space there and that cleans that up any concerns or any comments Madam chair I make a motion to approve first and second reading of

103G policies five all five of them listed in 14c I have I have a motion to I have a second by Mr Bray any discussion all in favor signify by saying I opposed motion carries Madam chair I'd like to take a little liberty here if you don't mind do not um earlier everyone got a calendar that we going to follow in getting these policies p through because it's been a very long process and so we can get back to some things that we started last January and February um and had a report on in March it would be nice to get back to that that comment those comments so we understand and everyone understands that we're behind schedule and we got a new sort of a revised schedule but that can Linger on and I

104want to propose to you all or just plead with you that we need to get every policy completed by the end of March we do not need to go any further than that even though those policies may not go into effect until July we need to get through with policies yes me thank you man' madam chairman i' would have to concur on that we've we started this under Miss Rucker a couple years back and and I know we we've done a good job of an undertaking and I actually was gonna take a moment of personal privilege she'll punch me but I wanted to thank Miss Kesler for her hard work already in this area over the last year or so um we all spend a lot of time reading these policies but I can tell

105you even as a former English teacher I don't read them as close as Miss Kesler reads them she really spends a lot of time making sure like we've got grammatical ears dots but I have to praise her because we need that and you know we all have different um I don't care and I just want to make sure I want to make sure she's not not going to quit doing that before March that's why I said March okay Madam chair uh I can assure you we are working as hard as we can on those policies that are remaining there are two heavy portions on district code of conduct and our leave policy which has some financial implications so we want to make sure that we get it right but our team is working to bring

106you absolutely as much as we can in by March yes ma'am I think the thing is we do know that there's always going to be new policies or the state department is going to do something or the you know they're going to give us new policies School Board sends them to us all the time model policies but in terms of really doing the bulk of the Hefty work of what we've done on the heavy lifting on all of this I think that's what we're just all bogged down on and we want to really get back to spending the majority of our time seeing things like what we saw tonight and and deling into that and how we can make things better too for our students this is important for our district to run but I

107think we want to be concentrating our efforts on on new and innovative ideas with you thank you all right so we now move on to item D under new business and that's presentation of financial audit for the physical year ending June 30th 2023 and I'll turn that over to Dr Hafner yes ma'am Madam chair thank you I would like to invite Mr Andrew Coleman from Green fny and Collie to the podium to share his findings thank you madam chair Dr Hafner this is figured the best thing to do now is go through all 168 pages of the audit line by line okay at least I got a few shuckles out of you now uh hopefully you do have a copy of the audit um you should also have a separate management letter but what we're

108going to go through now is a summary here um and I'll reference those other documents here as we're kind of going through and U looking at last year's audit so the first thing I want to do before we go through and look at the results just kind of remind everybody what an audit is uh what it is not and who's responsible for what uh throughout the audit so what is the district's responsibility so in our opinion which in the audit there's really only one item that's mine and that's the opinion and in that opinion it states who's responsible for what uh so the district is responsible for maintaining effective internal controls uh the district is also responsible for the financial statements uh that includes the accuracy of the balances um and all the disclosures that

109are in the financial statements so what am I responsible for what what do we come in and do so in our opinion we give reasonable assurance that the financial statements are materially correct we want to you know reiterate reasonable Assurance because we did not go through and look at every transaction that took place during the year uh we looked at the material transactions and then samples of others um the other thing want to make sure everyone's aware of our opinion does not address the financial condition of the district our opinion merely States the numbers that are in here are materially correct um also the purpose of my audit is not to detect fraud um our audit is designed and the procedures are performed to ensure that the balances are correct now obviously if we were

110to find fraud we would make sure everyone here was aware of that before uh we got to this meeting so obviously we did not find anything as we're were going through and doing this year's audit uh the good news is we did Issue an unmodified opinion and again unmodified can sound a little strange but that is the best opinion that you can receive so now getting into the results of the audit uh looking at your general fund uh you can see for this current fiscal year uh the total fund balance increased 4.5 million uh to 21.4 million and really the balance that everyone keys on is that unassigned fund balance remember unassigned uh means there are no restrictions on those monies and they can be used at the board's discretion and again the unassigned fund

111balance was 20.7 million uh June 30th so when you look at purely that unassigned fund balance uh that is 21.7% of your 23 actual expenditures we often get asked what's what's an appropriate balance to to have in your unassigned fund balance uh so what we kind of go off of is the gfoa and that's the government Finance Officers Association uh they've come up with a recommendation of a minimum of 18.7% or two months uh the other thing to know about that recommendation is that is across all governments um so school districts you get the bulk of your property taxes December January and you've got to have an adequate fund balance to make it all all the way around again other governments municipalities counties cities they have other revenue streams they're getting Revenue throughout the year

112um so that uh two-month Rec recommendation is across all government types uh the other thing to remember the state uh does require a minimum of one month so looking at uh major reasons to maintain we talked about that first one um and really just want to talk about the last bullet point you know even though inflation has eased off um I know at least we're still seeing costs go up across the board for pretty much anything that we do um that's what a lot of our other districts are seeing as well whether that be personnel and Fringe related to personnel and we'll talk about why some of those have gone up here in just a little bit but also construction costs in the past year have gone up significantly so looking at your uh general

113fund revenues you can see they were 98.5 million uh for 23 when you compare that to the prior year that was a 8 .3 million or a 9% increase see the biggest portion of the increase was a 4.6 million increase in property tax revenues uh due to increased sucess values when you compare that to your budget uh you were 6.5 million or 7% better than your budget uh looking at your expenditures uh they were 95.5 million you can see that was a 7.6 million or 9% increase from the prior year and this was 87,000 or 0.1% um over budget so just taking a brief global view at all funds throughout the district um the other thing to keep in mind about all the your special Revenue funds your eia funds remember the bulk of those

114are restricted on what you can actually spend those on um so just so you get these revenues through your eia fund your special Revenue funds doesn't mean you can kind of spend it anywhere you want to typically the state um or the federal government tells you what what area and how you have to spend those funds but looking at all um funds uh your revenues were 16.6 million and your expenditures were just briefly I want to mention pension and opep accounting since you all participate in the state retirement plan uh you have to record your portion of the state's pension and opab liability um is this an a a check that you're going to have to write to the state down the down the line hey here here's your portion of liability we need you

115to give us give us this big dollar amount because you can see the total pension liability for you guys is $116 million no you're not going to have to write them a check however what they have done uh when all these um accounting standards were implemented they looked at how big their liability was and they said how can we lower that liability so what did they do they increased the rate that you all are having to pay um so for the past four years they've increased the retirement rates that you're having to pay for each employee by 1% um and that there was another 1% increase for fiscal year 24 um as of right now that is the last uh rate increase that we are aware of um however there's an OPB liability and they

116haven't changed the rates on your retire Insurance in a very very long time um so if we were to look forward in the future and kind of guess what they would do they're probably going to do the same thing they did for pension to lower that liability as well which again means increased costs and increased budget uh that you all are having to pay year couple other um items to note you can look at your uh total Capital assets you can see you had 320.50 million you can see the increase there um and then you had remaining construction commitments at June 30th of 17.6 million and we've heard presentations um earlier on what some of those commitments were and how those facilities are coming along uh you can also see you had 9.4 million in

117depreciation expense so depreciation is a non-cash item you you put your assets on and you depreciate them over your useful life another way you can think about depreciation expense is for us to maintain our facilities year over year we're we're going to need to either put away put aside or spend 9.4 million in facilities just to maintain what we have because again all of these buildings um have finite lives unless you come in and do something to them um so another way you can think of depreciation expense is we've either got to put away or do some capital projects during the year um of 9.4 million just to maintain what you currently have um looking at your total debt outstanding you had 27.3 million see there a decrease of 8.6 million from the prior year

118due entirely just to your regular principal payments made during the year so looking forward to fiscal year 24 uh your total debt payments will be 17.1 million there we go looking at uh compliance um again a single audit was required again for fiscal school year 23 just as a reminder a single audit is essentially a separate compliance audit uh that is required any time you spend more than 750,000 in federal Awards as a school district you're always going to have a single audit um so this year we looked at your Ida program um and your Esser program and happy to report no uh findings or issues were noted as we reviewed those programs um also in that separate management letter um really no comments in that Management's really BR Broiler plate uh language that's in

119there if we did say we had a disagreement with an accounting principle with management or they were difficult to deal with we would include that in that management letter uh but I'm happy to report we had no such disagreements so again um in summary received unmodified opinion um and we would say you're in good Financial condition um as of June 30th um also want to say thank you to miss Strickland and her staff for putting up with us as we come out and do the audit we know we know having an audit performed is not fun I know it's something not something you look forward to uh but we do appreciate um your cooperation and getting all the things that we ask for over there and any questions any questions M councelor I would like

120for you to explain to me Revenue 160 million 1606 million expenditures 173.000 million Capital project so if you during the year you guys had about 30 million in uh CIP construction process additions for the year so if you look at your capital projects fund um it decreased about 18 million this past year so we need to tighten our belts well you had those were four um planned expenditures that you guys all had for your planned projects yeah so essentially you had accumulated some balances and this year were following through and building those uh buildings any other questions Miss brandom yeah I think that is an important distinction just for any public who saw that slide um but I would just say too that uh Miss Kesler and I as chair and vice chair leer had

121the pleasure of working with Sky congratulations on this audit um I always thank you and uh am so happy you're with our district dist and your hard work in getting this audit completed does not go unnoticed so if I could get everybody just to give Sky a hand Round of Applause I also would like to thank my staff we have an outstanding Finance staff and we all worked very hard to get this done but thank you great J great job thank you so much I'm chair yes ma'am I do have a couple of concerns since we're in the audit and I can legally bring this up we as we pass through the policy I I brought a couple of things to the attention of several people in here concerning um some issues I have with

122the audit uh in policy DD is f uh funding proposals grants and special projects and then there's another one here um di d-r we the administration struck out some material and I I think we need to decide where it needs to be there or the reason for taking it out but it was struck that the superintendent will notify the board of all funding uh proposals that are accepted such gifts will be approved by the board administered by the superintendent and used as instructed in uh is instructed in the terms of gifts or uh bequests it may not be applicable for this Administration or for this year but in the past having that accountability was important in multiple well several occasions and I would hate to see that struck just to so that we have protection

123when those situations arise and then on um d I d-r is U fiscal accounting and audit um it's the same thing that the this on page two the board chairman chairman will appoint an audit committee annually that was also struck and that uh Committee in several situations have saved this District a lot so I'm I'm not sure strike and I Mr Strickland has no problem with leaving those in there but I I think we need to go back and revisit those two and put uh put those comments back into the policy thank you Miss Kesler I'm not saying we have to I'm just saying that's a su all right anything else that's see it okay okay all right next we will go to item okay I'll entertain a motion to accept the financial audit as

124presented Madam chair I move that we accept the financial audit as presented I have a motion by Mr Bray a second by Miss Rucker any discussion all in favor signif by saying I opposed motion carries all right next we will move to item e last part okay all right Madam chair uh back in the fall Dr Brook shared calendar options with with you for the 2024 2025 school year U as he promised we have since surveyed our staff and with 690 responses a majority of our staff felt that calendar B was their most Des desired calendar for the new year of course the final decision is certainly at the will of this board but I wanted you to be aware of um their their selection and their feelings about the options so calendar B Dr

125Brooks was the majority do you have a vote on that or a number on that yes ma'am there were 290 votes for calendar a and 400 for calendar B okay and Dr books is is there any particular thing they loved about B over a not that I may know doph most of the comments were the additional questions that we asked for your information I just wondered because b gets out two days later so I thought um I'll make a motion to approve calendar be uh based upon the votes of the employees have a motion by Miss brandom a second by Mr Bray any discussion yes ma'am uh updates I know sent a while back but any further updates for the following year for a more modified year round concept no not I don't have any

126do you have any we did collect um comments from our staff who participated in the survey on that and there were comments that ranged kind of across the board I felt like um I can definitely make sure you have that shared again but they were con they were either yes that would be great or no uh child care or I mean it was it was a wide range so but we did get that feedback and and can share that with you again right so all in favor signify by saying I opposed motion carries all right next we have um item f um consideration of travel request for Riverbank Elementary School uh psychologist to attend the nasp 2024 annual convention and Regional leadership meeting in New Orleans uh Louisiana February 13th through the 18th 2024 and

127then we also have item G consideration for overnight student travel for the airport High School golf team to attend the palmata high school championship in pully's Island in South Carolina March 27th through the 30th of 2024 and I'll entertain a motion to combine those at this time Madam chairman I make a motion to combine FNG G and to approve the um travel requests that have been submitted and are recommended by Administration all right and I have a motion by Miss brandham a second by Mr key is there any discussion all in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion carries next we have announcements uh January 27th 2024 is the board workshop at the boardroom at the district education center at 9:00 a.m. and we uh pleas on being finished by one January 30th 2024

128as Dr Cooper has already uh shared with us is um the Lexington 2 teacher fair at the Lexington 2 Innovation Center from 4 to 6 and again we will please uh reiterate come one come all and February 1 is 2024 is the BC high school education Hall of Fame Gayla at seols at 6:00 p.m. M and I will remind all board members if you have't RSVP to miss strange please do so as soon as possible um then on February 2nd 2024 interims are issued February 7th 2024 is early release day February 16th 2024 is teacher ins service day and February 22nd 2024 is the next regular meeting of the Board of Trustees at the Lexington 2 Innovation Center at 6 o' um thanks everyone for being here tonight and we just also remind everybody who's

129here and watching at home that that is not going to be the third Thursday that we moved that meeting yes we will because uh of the third Thursday we will all be in Hilton Head at the State Board convention for the Board of Trustees all right so at that being said I'll entertain a motion at this time from Miss Miss castles to enter into our second executive session I make a motion that the Board of Trustees enter close session for consideration of personnel appointments and resignations consideration of student expulsion appeal I have a motion by Miss castles a second by Miss Rucker all in favor signify by saying I oppose motion carries we are now in executive session okay we are now back um and I will entertain a motion to come out of executive

130session I make a motion that the meeting be reconvened in Open Session and the appropriate affidavit be executed I have a motion by Miss castles a second on by Miss Rucker all in favor signify by saying I I all right I will entertain um a motion concerning Personnel appointments I make a motion that we accept uh the resignations retirements terminations and others for 2023 2024 right I have a motion do I have a second second by Mr key any discussion all in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion carries I make motion that we accept the 2023 through 2024 resignations and through the end of the school year have a motion do I have a second second by Mr key all in favor signify by saying I opposed motion carries I make a motion

131that we approve the recommendation for report of breach to the South Carolina Department of Education for Teacher number eight I have a motion second by Mr Bray all in favor signify by saying I opposed no that that it was a okay for voting yes to uphold got it okay all right I make a motion that we accept the recommendations for report of breach to the South Carolina Department of Education for Teacher number nine have a motion by Miss castles a second by Mr Bray all in favor signify by saying I I opposed no 43 I was a no I'll make sorry let's go I'll make a motion for a recommendation for report to approve recommendation for report of breach to South Carolina Department of Education for Teacher number 10 I have a motion by Miss

132castles a second by Miss Mr Bray all in favor uh raise your hand signify uh for I opposed no so you got it Erin okay I make a motion to approve the recommendation for report of breach to the South Carolina Department of Education for Teacher number 11 second have a motion by Miss castles a second by Mr Bray all in favor raise your hand and signify for I I opposed no no all right we will move on I make a motion to approve the new hires and appointments with exception of a pull of teacher number four I have a motion by Miss castles a second by Mr Bray all in favor signify by saying I I [Music] opposed I make a motion to accept the new hires and appointments for support employees for 2023 2024

133have a motion by Miss castles a second by Mr Bray all in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion carries I make a motion that we accept the new hires and appointments temporary part time employees for 2023 2024 have a motion by Miss Cass a second by Mr Bray all in favor signify by saying I I no um motion carries okay so um we will now no I got one more I'm there with you just hang on one second um all right we will now uh do the motion for the consideration of the student expulsion appeal I make a motion to put student a at Newbridge with parameters described by Administration I have a motion by Miss castles a second by Mr Bray um all in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion

134carries I will now entertain a motion to motion to adjourn by Miss brandham and a second by Miss castles we are adjourned