001all to order the regular monthly meeting of the Board of Trustees thank you all for attending this evening um as you know we're on a little bit of a different schedule we're usually the third Thursday of the month but we move that due to some board member conflict so thank you all for a packed house this evening um we're going to start off by turning it over to our vice chair Miss Kesler who's going to introduce us to to our students and Welcome to our students from airport High School Miss kastler good evening it's always a pleasure to have some of our students here that you can see in here and uh to get to enjoy this opportunity to speak before this board tonight we have two students from airport high school we have Graham
002Whittle he is a senior at airport high school with the GPA of 4919 he is currently ranked fifth in his class Graham also plays on the varsity baseball team he's a member of the student government Beta Club and National Honor Society he served as a junior Marshall in the class of 23 graduation ceremony Graham is also on the youth leadership team at his church after high school he plans to on attending college and hopes to play baseball at the next level he has not yet decided his major and then we have Octavia Martinez Montes he's a senior at airport high school with the GPA of 4 4815 he is currently ranked 11th in the class Octavio is May uh is has made the Honor soci uh role excuse me made the Honor role all four
003years at airport he is a member of the gifted and talented search program Trio he currently runs cross country at airport and is a member of The Varsity soccer team Octavio is looking forward to being a completer in the electricity program at L2 I and After High School he plans on attending Midland Technical College and majoring in history I was so worried about mispronouncing his name that I messed up on the other apologize for that gentlemen thank you for coming tonight Graham join me in prayer dear heavenly father we thank you for who you are and your son Jesus Christ through him we have forgiveness of our sins and the promise of eternal life we ask that you come come to this meeting and give our board members the wisdom to lead our district we
004ask that you protect our district from harm and would continue to bless our teachers faculty and students God once again we thank you for everything you've done in your name I pray amen please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge obedi to the flag of United United States to the for which it stands one nation God indivisible liy and justice for all thank you gentlemen you can feel free to go on about your business and get your homework done if you'd like thanks for being here tonight all right so next board members excuse me we have the consent agenda under that we have our approval of our agenda the minutes from our September 12th 12 meeting October 5th workshop and October 13th special meeting um and without objection our consent agenda will stand approved
005okay great next is the highlight of all of our meetings that the board loves and that's going to be our honors and accomplishments of students and staff because we are so delighted that we do have so many very good things to share with our community um and we appreciate all the positive things that our students and staff are doing and appreciate everybody in the community for celebrating those achievements of our students and staff so Dr Hefner I believe I turn that over to you okay thank you madam chair good evening all for tonight's honors and accomplishments we will begin with two Innovative projects that both won $11,000 bride ideas grants from Mid Carolina Electric Cooperative the projects are at Casey Elementary and Busby Creative Arts Academy and we have a few people here tonight tell
006us a bit about the vision for the grants if they want to come on up good evening good even Madam chairman members of the board Dr Hafner I'm honored to have the opportunity to introduce you one of our fourth grade teachers Miss hayatt so she can tell you about her project that won this grant great thank you hi so at Casey I'm on the empowered instruction team and my role was to collaborate with the physical environment team on project for the school that would improve the beautification of the school as well as integrate all of our grade levels so I looked into standards for each grade level and plants and animals were sort of across grade levels and I thought that that would be a cool thing to integrate with everybody and involve all of
007the grade levels so I applied for the Mid Carolina Cooperative electric WR ideas for a school garden so that is my plan to implement that in the spring and work with the fiscal environment team to sort of get a list together of what we need to do and carry out that plan and I want to involve all grade levels and since I'm the launch teacher over at Casey for fourth grade I kind of wanted to push on that extension piece for all grade levels not just the launch kids in third through fifth great thank you good evening Madam chair board Dr Hafner I would like to introduce uh Miss Lisa fiser she is the our instructional facilitator for Math and Science at Busby Creative Arts Academy so um our garden started about five years ago
008and it was a student L initiative to have more Hands-On and active learning opportunities so the garden has provided our students to see how food is grown is connected their science curriculum to the real world and it's provided them a lot of opportunities to eat which is their favorite thing um they've enjoyed sweet potato pies and some of the the people up here have enjoyed sweet potato pies um soup salad kale and carrot cakes so we wrote The Mid Carolina the grant to extend our school guarden to a greenhouse so this year we are going to implement the greenhouse so we can grow those vegetables in in year round and they can eat more of course thank you great thank you uh next Brooklyn Casey High School principal Dr Vance Jones is going to introduce
009to of his students who are being recognized as part of the 2023 College Board National recognition program Dr Jones or Mr Bronson Mr Bron thank you Mr Bronson good evening Madam chair board members and Dr Hafner of course I'm not Dr Jones he looks a lot better than I do all right but however every year the College Board recognizes various groups of students based on certain criteria our two Brooklyn casy students have received the national African-American recognition award based on outstanding performance of PSAT national uh merits qualifier high scores on the AP exam and additionally having a 3.5 GPA or high we commend them for their accomplishment and right now I want to present to you hope Bry and Freddy ashbar hello I'm hope bryley I'm a senior at Brooklyn Casey high school I'm applying
010to the University of South Carolina and the University of Pennsylvania and I intend to become a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner either through a nursing or Neuroscience track thank you very nice uh hi my name is Freddy Asbury I'm a also a senior at Brook casy High School and I plan to attend win University and double major in international business and finance [Applause] excellent very good next up we have Saluda River Academy for the Arts is celebrating a special anniversary this year and it includes an event open to the community in November principal Brandon Brantley and some of his team from Saluda River are going to tell us a bit about this special milestone for our Arts Magnet program Mr brandley thank you good evening this is a very special year at slud River and
011for the slud River Community we are celebrating 25 years of Arts Excellence to share more about our celebration I brought with me our art teacher Miss Worman our theater teacher Miss Walker and our assistant principal Miss Dr good evening everyone um for the first part of our evening we're planning to welcome our families and guests around 5:30 for our celebration stations which will integrate literacy with art music poetry steam theater dance and other Arts focused activities in addition our families will have the opportunity to visit the book fair which will be open for the duration of the evening and now I'm going to turn it over to Miss Walker for more information about the evening thank you Miss Worman good evening everybody good evening so following that we have also invited three of our founding
012Arts teachers who played a huge role in starting our arts program and that will be Miss Gail McLoud miss Connie Bowman and Miss Linda link our original founders of our arts school and after this we are going to have some student performances um and this is going to include um a fifth grade mural uh process slideshow um a process of um Jeff lamden who came during our artist and residence week um and worked with our first graders with circus Arts there's going to be a slideshow about that we have some fifth grade bucket drumming we have fourth grade hipop dance and we have second grade puppetry so we're really excited about all those things it's great it's F so as I think we've all said we are very excited to celebrate our school all the
013people who have served at our school over the years as well as those that are currently impacting our students lives to the Arts we also want to celebrate with many of you who have helped start this journey 25 years ago and who have supported us ever since at this time we'd like to Cally invite our school board our superintendent um our district office personnel and Lexington 2 Community to our 25th Year celebration on Tuesday November 14th at 5:30 thank you very good over the next couple of board meetings we will be recognizing some of our very talented musicians who auditioned for and were selected to the South Carolina music educators association's All Region Orchestra so tonight we'll recognize our high school students and for that I believe we have Colin Richardson from airport and Jeffrey
014Shen from Brooklyn Casey to announce their All Region students good evening first thank you for inviting us to this board meeting lexon School District 2 Orchestra program works hard to represent a standard of Excellence both in our school and out in the community we believe that music touches the innermost soul and ultimately shapes us into better people tonight I would like to highlight some of the student Talent we have in our wonderful programs these students recently auditioned and were accepted into the South Carolina music educators Association all Regional Orchestra the process of making this type of Orchestra includes months of preparing material for a competitive audition against students all across the Midlands on Friday November 17th the students get to work alongside a nationally renowned music director and on Saturday November 18th perform a concert
015for the public at the University of South Carolina aan auditorium at this time I would like for each of the students to tell you their name and the instruments they play good evening everyone um my name is Ranna Harris I play viola and I'm also in the South Carolina Youth philarmonic Orchestra uh good evening my name is Joshua Smith and I play violin good evening my name is Jose and I play the bass at airport High School good evening I'm a senior at airport high school and I play the violin good evening my name is zos Shah and I play the bass good evening my name's Caitlyn and I play the violin I am not a student uh I am Mr Jeffrey Chen I am a new phase in the district uh but I would
016like to introduce myself as the orchestra director at Brooklyn KY High School I took up the position from uh Mr M rfy uh i' like to uh introduce my two students uh Unfortunately they were not able to make it to this meeting uh due to commitments but I want to make sure that they are recognized for their hard work uh my two students who were able to uh achieve and uh be accepted into the SEMA All Region Orchestra is uh McKenzie Boatright and Mars Whitney uh these two students are some of my section leaders and some of my strongest students uh they are some of my hardest working students as well uh my Orchestra they were at the same time I had four students um who auditioned and those two uh were able to be
017accepted while also preparing for their fall concert so uh I am an admiration of their hard work throughout the these past couple months uh they are also both involved in a school quartet that we are using for uh for Community engagement and Outreach uh and so uh those two are uh involved in many many uh musical things uh many things outside of Orchestra and music but they are also uh one them McKenzie is also involved in the marching band and was high achieving in the percussion section these past couple weeks wow thank you that's great thank you and finally we love programs like the WLTX teacher of the week that Spotlight the great work of our Educators and one of our teachers was recently surprised with this recognition Saluda River principal Brandon brantley's going to
018come back up with the Honore and tell us a little bit about her I did promise her she did not have to speak tonight so we are so excited to share that our first grade teacher Miss Grace Lambert was announced news 19's teacher of the week on October 10th when the news crew asked one of her students to describe her he said she's the best teacher that you can have she's the best she does such a great job building relationships with her students and their families and we're proud to have her as part of our s River Family that concludes our owners and accomplishments thank you Dr Hafner um next we're going to move to public participation and that is governed by our board policy Beed um and as those of you who follow along
019with us quite frequently know that we've kind of tried to be in the process of um honing that up and making sure we hear appropriate information from our public um I'm going to remind everybody that we would like for you to be respectful of views that may not be your own views and be respectful of other people I'm also going to remind you that we do have children present and we do have children listening um so please keep that in mind uh I will call you down if you become disruptive in this meeting and you will get one warning and then I will ask that your microphone be cut off we're just not going to have that in Lexington too that is not what we are about also um because the number of people that
020we have set aside to speak tonight we have um we're going to have each speaker get four minutes we're going to ask that that timer be placed on the screen that timer will begin counting down at the beginning of your remarks and um then the microphone will just be automatically cut off at at at the timer so um please be mindful that you've got four minutes you might want to check behind you just to see when that's going to cut off um again that's in an effort to be fair uh this is been an ongoing process of us try to get this correct and be fair to everyone um and again I just ask that everybody would be respectful because we're all better than that so with that and we want to hear from our
021public by the way a lot of our speakers I'd like to applaud you and commend you because even though you may have had some different views you've been respectful about sharing them with this with this um community and um I think people have appreciated hearing the way you've handled yourself so if others can follow your lead we'll all be better off for that to begin with I'm going to ask uh that Miss K mean might mean Miss K mean uh if you will please miss Kate thank you approach the stand and welcome this evening and four minutes will begin the minute you begin speaking I do have a quick question for you before the timer starts and clarification for the policy DH um on the agenda it says um five minutes and I I'm kind
022of you know I'm prepared for five yes ma'am so we have a total on the what it says is we have a total set aside of 30 minutes in total that's what our policy reads and if we have more than that amount of speakers then we divide it by the total amount of speakers according to policy bedh It also says additional time may be alloted at the discretion of the board so I would like clarification for that if you don't mind thank you so we're going to limit tonight to four minutes just because of you know we've got a really packed agenda and we have a lot of business on board but it's not to cut off anything from hearing from anyone one um if you don't get a finisher remarks this board is very
023open to calls and emails and we would really love to hear from you and you can please share that with us and then um maybe attend another meeting and maybe less people will sign up understandable thank you for clarifying I appreciate that yes ma'am all right I'm ready when you are M strange yes ma'am good evening board members my name is k mean in 2019 my husband and I withdrew our children due to problems in our zoned Elementary School we attempted to assist in resolving these issues and we're met with with great push back we have not returned however I have watched how you manage this District all citizens are responsible for the input and outcome of schools regardless if you are a parent or not elected officials are responsible for how tax money is
024spent and therefore you are responsible to the taxpayers pursuant to South Carolina statutes title 59 Education Code and title 12 taxation code defines taxpayer and calculations Lexing to two board policy DB annual budget States planning involves citizens of the district policy bedh public participation States a citizen wishing to address the board may do so policy BG board policy process States proposals regarding policies May originate with the board members superintendent staff member parent legal guardian student consultant Civic group advisory committee or any Resident of the district poliy KD public information and communication States the board is to keep the community informed of ejected objectives achievements needs and conditions of the school system I remind you of these laws and policies because there have been people spreading misinformation claiming those that do not have children in our
025schools should not be allowed to speak taxpayers have constitutional rights and we speak with our voices and our votes I will not be silenced you cannot ignore or select po portions of policies you have to address all conditions of this district and you are to receive input from all persons listed in the policies which explicitly include citizens of this District I have my tax documents here to verify my status our children and what they learn are the keys to a stable society and we have lost that Focus schools have one goal to educate in the course subjects to create a foundation of critical thinking with the goal of being productive citizens however this district has shifted away from its educational responsibilities to promoting social agendas yet my deepest concern concern is that we have friends
026in these schools children that do life with my children what you teach or fail to teach affects the community the recent school report card is proof you are failing why would we want to reenroll our children each month in these meetings I see deception I have hope when I see children Within These schools succeeding yet you are hiding behind them to cover up the magnitude of your failings as a whole while I do not have all the answers to the problems we face I do know the only way forward is to expose the problems and concerns so we can make progress no progress is being made here each month you ignore concerns while you continuously spend money on materials that are not enhancing education you are infringing on First Amendment rights to freedom of speech
027you've cut off speakers for reading from books that were purchased with our tax dollars and available to our children these books obviously have no educational value you are censoring information after the board meeting last month you edited out part of a speech in the middle of the night and don't try to hide behind it wasn't appropriate for the meeting which begs the questions to be asked is it not appropriate for this meeting or is it not appropriate for our children in our schools to read the citizens of Lexington 2 deserve answers you're ignoring real issues poor test scores school report cards and if these books being brought to your attention each month are a part of your standard curriculum then you will never get my children back in these schools our lastly I will remind
028you that policy BB Schoolboard legal status States while the board's responsible to the state Board of Education It Is by law and tradition responsible to the community it serves and represents it is therefore the duty of the board to carry out the will of the community in matters of public education within the boundaries set by the laws and regulations of the state of South Carolina and Lexington County this policy is grounded in statute title 59 and I'll leave you with one statement Elanor Roosevelt said Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being with freedom comes responsibility thank you thank you miss me for your comments next I'd like to welcome to the podium uh Mrs Dawn Pierce Miss Dawn Pierce please come to the stand good evening ladies and gentlemen my name is Don
029Pierce and I am a parent and a taxpayer in Lexington 2 I spoke at last month's meeting and felt I was only appropriate to address some some of the serious issues of board policies not being enforced I've been coming to almost every board meeting even after removing my child from the district the more I come to the meetings the more it is eminent that I made the right decision how can we as parents expect children to be held accountable for their actions when this board continues to be anything but transparent at the last board meeting Mr spers went up to speak and attempted to let other parents know what is inside our schools you interrupted and stopped him from Reading because it goes against against your board policies about being obscene yet here it is
030okay for our children to be exposed to materials that are not educational but you feel it's relatable your attempts to silence him by editing and deleting his speech which I believe is against right to free speech only made him go viral on several media platforms talk shows and podcasts you start stated that you would give each speaker an allotted time of a little over 4 minutes certain people who came to the podium were there for more than 6 to 7 minutes without interruption even after the alarm went off another one of your rules is not calling people out again I guess those rules don't apply to some special people the lack of disrespect this board has shown is shameful I've heard board members sucking teeth mumbling under their breath and have seen them rolling eyes
031while concerned citizens and parents address issues at the podium this is very disrespectful and disheartening I would also like to mention again and your policies in place you have halted the KE policy but por pornographic books like lucky and damsel and many others are being ordered for the children not only in English but in Spanish You're making sure that certain Media Center employees equally taint all the minds of children again no actions being taken against those who break the rules lastly I would like to mention about last meeting a parent who was here to see her child be honored for achievements was in the audience with her grand child she was totally blindsided by what was in the media center I've known her for 15 years she has had five children go through Lexington 2
032and had no idea what kind of materials are in the media center her comment for those who didn't hear her as she took her grandchild out as quickly as she could was this is what happens when you take God out of the schools she's absolutely right thank you and thank you Miss Pierce so we're not sh those books give me one second oh I'm sorry next I'm welcome to the stand Amy Amy Young Michael I was I was thrown by the young and Miss Amy Michael please welcome to the stand and I was a former English teacher so I should have been able to read that thank you I think the young thre me thank you sorry Miss you're so welcome I mean I forgive you okay good morning super I mean good afternoon superintendent
033hner school board members and District staff my name is Amy Michael normally I'm here to observe meetings on behalf of the League of Women Voters but tonight I have something to say and I promise not to clutch my pearls I spent 41 years as an educator 12 in this District I taught everything from seventh grade Engish English to 12th grade AP Literature to teaching future English teachers at USC I am grateful that I never had to teach through a pandemic I never had to deal with technology overload I'm grateful that I was never accused of misleading or corrupting my students I'm especially grateful to my parents who taught me to consider all sides before drawing a conclusion I have and here goes first there's critical race Theory like most people I had never even heard
034of such a thing until the news was full of people accusing schools of brainwashing students with CRT when I dug into it I learned that CRT is a social policy theory that came out of the 60s and is taught only in graduate level college courses K through 12 teachers have not been teaching CRT in truth they've been working hard to teach our future citizens tolerance empathy and critical thinking skills all of which are vital lessons for cultivating peace and democracy as to forcing students to read pornography one can cherry-pick passages from any literature even the Bible and take them out of context to show how objectionable the source is certainly there are books that are too mature for young readers and parents have every right to forbid their own children to read them but everybody
035else's children where do you draw the line it's important important to have at least some faith in the Judgment of experienced trained teachers who select texts that will help students better understand the world around them I wish to thank my fellow leag members who came from all over the Midlands to lend their support we are as the bab to say of like Minds on these issues I especially thank you for the privilege of speaking here tonight I commend you for the hard work you put into making P quality public education available to students in our district you deserve our community's respect and support and thank you Miss Michael next I'd like to um invite to the stand Mr Jamie sers Mr sers before my time starts I'd like to ask about the policy again about
036the 5 minutes um you know and also about the comments earlier about I feel like those were directed towards me and me just trying to read a couple sentences from books that are available in our school district so I just wanted to throw that out there um and I think that if my comments were bad then I feel like you know maybe we shouldn't have the books in the schools so just FYI all right over the last year there has been a growing fight for our children in the school district one side is fighting for an abundance of caution and another side is fighting for freedom to read and freedom to teach whatever and however they please this fight has exposed inadequate policies poor transparency and moral cowardice in the school district this anything goes
037ideology has infiltrated our school district Beyond just instructional material it has metastasized quite quickly to district office employees School staff members administrators and Educators and to my surprise and many others it has brought it same delusions to some of you on the school board who we voted for a quick and easy example of this delusion H has my mic been turned off no okay a quick and easy example of this delusion did you turn me down no okay is when one of you stated that you wanted a copy of young a is woke a young poet's called to Justice in every school and another stated that you couldn't wait to attain a copy for your future grandchildren the authors of this book mahogany brown Olivia gatwood and Elizabeth ESO are all staunch supporters of black
038lives matter and all that it represents according to their website BLM for years has stated that one of their goals is to destroy the Western nuclear family construct just over the last few days BLM has launched an init in a quote Innovative campaign called defund the police of action calling for the eradication of school resource officers in in all schools and to the dismantling of all police forces local state and Nationwide if some of you if you support and promote with your own words those associate with BLM why do you have a police officer standing out in front of the building shouldn't you change the policy to discontinue the police presence here at this meeting and shouldn't you remove all resource officers from our schools and if that's not good enough many BLM chapters throughout
039the country have called for the support of Hamas and the terrorist attacks on Israel most notably the Chicago chapter of BLM posted a picture of H of a Hamas terrorist hangliding into Israel with a Palestinian flag with the caption that is all that is it so apparently most of you are okay with numerous materials and educ in your schools blatantly supporting an organization that wants to destroy the family structure that provides the best foundation for our children to succeed opposes any policing policing and blatantly supports terrorists in the extermination of Jews this organization is not pro- family pro- discipline or pro-education it is only pro- indoctrination of marxist ideas they seek to divide and not unite they seek victimhood over self-governments they are not pro minority only Pro Marxism those of you have stated in
040the past that you strongly support works that this organization has produced are either absolutely clueless or morally inept in either case your position on Lon County School District 2 should be questioned you do not understand the times that we are living in and the battlefield in which the fight over our children's future is taking place we need materials that show the horrors of racism past and present but from organizations that do not support terrorism mutilation of child sex organs and the dismantling of police departments furthermore over the last year parents and community members have been doing what we voted you into office to do these same parents and community members have also been doing the job of some of your District employees we voted you into office and we pay the tax dollars of the
041District employees salaries and we still have to do the work to protect our children from a destructive ideology in the middle of April you were all given a notebook of a sample of concerning materials in our schools one book provided to you was a court of M and fury it took me only reading a couple lines from this book and an astounding five months for this book to be removed what is even worse is that I read from another book called Red Hood redhood was brought to your attention in April as well and this sexually explicit book is still available in our school system if those examples are not bad enough recently this very School Board unanimously voted to pull the book Gran out of circulation this is still available in ebook form in our
042district what is even worse is that in May a different district office employee emailed the complaintant of the book book doing it stating it had been removed from circulation well it's October and this book is still in circulation in this notebook I'm giving Dr hner I have over 12 still 12 sexually explicit books that are available for our children and it's paragraph after paragraph detailed sex after detailed SE I tried to read two lines two lines and it got completely edited out but you're telling me that we can provide these these materials for our children that is absurd and I have multiple copies of this back here that if anybody would actually want to see what's going on in our school district I can't remember sir we appreciate that your time is up please leave
043that at the back with um people the district officials that'll be excellent thank you so much you that have so the what I can tell you Mr sers Mr sers is that those two titles you mentioned are not in our schools no they're not so no they're not next I would like to invite to this um Podium Mr Cliff okay yes sir um we will free feel free we'll triple triple check that and please feel free to contact district office tomorrow morning um and we can give you those answers they're not in circulation Mr Cliff Springs I'd like to welcome you to the podium Mr Cliff Springs he mentioned in public by my by my calculations there are at least two and a half minutes that have not been used by other speakers can I
044have one of those minutes and we've let people go well beyond when the beepers have gone off sir had been used if you I'm going to try to limit you to the four but we'll be glad to um see how long you take you might not take as long as you think my name is Cliff Springs and I have had kids in this district for 14 years the last two of which twins will graduate in May unfortunately like many people in this District I just uh find myself scratching my head at some of the choices the painfully slow processes and the confusing resolutions come out of these meetings the last six to eight months everyone in this room knows is an absurd hypocrisy that we have books in our libraries for children to read that
045are too salacious to be read to a room full of adults either it's too salacious for children to read or it should be permissible for the public to hear for themselves the content being selected to educate our children but that's not surprising when you have a school district whose actions are not driven by a clear set of values I looked online found a mission statement a vision statement a list of beliefs which were more like academic goals without values to guide your decisions each and every circumstance becomes this aimless flailing attempt to to extricate a solution from one's posterior a frequent defense of some of the questionable books in our libraries is that children need to see themselves reflected in the books they read but without values one never stops to ask if those Reflections
046are good Reflections do they Inspire children to rise above their challenges or do they simply affirm and encourage children to embrace a lifetime disposition of selfish immature thinking this is the psychological equivalent of giving a child candy for supper and for some reason it's the adults who want to give kids the candy I'll let you draw your own analogies there even with this type of short-sighted worldview I'd ask you to examine logically whether your book selections are doing more harm than good is it harmful to withhold access to sexually explicit material from miners I remind you in a Scholastic environment or is it more harmful to say that anything and everything goes in the realm of sexual activity and expression under the guise of being real never mind that real usually means crass or vulgar
047and Falls far short of classic literary standards never mind that real never seems to include supplemental instruction that teen sex outside of marriage teen pregnancy and children growing up without the stability of a married two- parent family or historically the most reliably proven predictors of poverty in our country where are the books to talk about that is it harmful to deliberately use misleading words like diversity equity and inclusivity to constantly point out the handful of ways that were different rather than embracing and pursuing all the ways we're alike in our beautiful albeit flawed Humanity to me these are easy questions because I believe in truth but I also believe in kindness truth and kindness I would hope we could all agree that those are great values if I treat you with kindness and civility it's
048not necessary that I believe what you believe if I treat you with kindness it's not necessary that I affirm your agenda and unlike many of the people pushing these agendas I know that disagreeing with you does not mean that I hate you and that often disagreeing with someone in the name of Truth can be the most loving thing one can do so here's the thought what if we removed anything overtly sexual and anything that clearly pushes a political or social agenda of any side from our school libraries would our children suffer irreparable harm of course not they would have those conversations with the people they should be having those conversations with they're parents parents who are free to raise their kids with the values they believe schools should teach our students how to think not
049what to think without values to guide our district we're going to continue to pursue this false undiscerning ideal that every opinion every belief every lifestyle every agenda is equally valid equally true and equally good that'll lead us right where we are now and when it's driven primarily by one ideology who has the means the access and the unprofessional lack of shame to promote their personal agendas to our children you'll end up with rooms full of good people across our state saying enough you our elected School Board were chosen by us to represent the best interest of students and parents the two are inextricably linked you have the power to correct this mess or 12 months from now those of us who've had enough we'll be glad to correct it for you thank you and thank
050you Mr Franks thank you next I'd like to call to the podium Miss Melissa go forth Miss go forth good evening since last month's meeting our school district has endured attacks for many that do not call Lexington 2 home and those that do thanks to a Lexington 2 parent and public participant that sought shock value rather than solutions for our school district reading from a book that hadn't even entered the book challenge process and has since been clarified to not be in the district I read over and over afterward in social media messages about the hypocrisy that the passages were censored at a Schoolboard meeting full of adults but minor children were permitted to read them just wanted to clarify that what these people didn't see online as the camera was only focused on the
051speaker was that there were very young children in the room and that they were with their grandparents to watch their siblings be recognized right before public participation all students are recognized before public participation and a quick reminder that many of these book appeals that actually do follow the process you all have the right to vote to retain them at a higher grade level than may be in attendance at an at a meeting the speakers family longtime members of this community encourag these attacks on our district urging them to go viral and celebrating when both the Heritage Foundation and Newsmax picked it up ever the questionable resource for news Newsmax confused Lexington South Carolina for Kentucky maybe that's why almost every Lexington 2 Facebook post from September has a post of the comments from a resident
052of Kentucky it's no surprise that many in this family are also active pace for Le two participants and supporters while reviewing the policy for challenging books within the district in the appeals process I read only about appeals being submitted as written comments to the Board of Trustees nowhere in the policy does it state that book Challengers should be given 15 minutes to rant about every title appealed who decided this was the Right Way Forward I don't remember a vote taking place on changes to the policy and I come to every meeting at the last meeting I shared concerns about conflicts of interest with the parent participants on the school Improvement Council specifically a complainant's husband and also a board member spouse being permitted to participate I see that as a conflict as the spouse already
053votes on already has a vote on the final say for the District of any title appealed after the meeting that sic member spouse or excuse me that sic member reached out to me directly saying I don't think a parent right to express their opinion on their children's educational materials should be taken away because their spouse is on the school board I was asked directly by the principal to participate I also wanted to mention that last year I was the only parent to be on the sraa student School Improvement Council and for that role I also weigh the implications but at the end of the day I didn't think my spouse being on the school board should prevent me from being involved in my children's school just as any parent has a right to why should
054one household get two votes when so many others don't get a say at all just a couple weeks later it was interesting to see my point proven once Sr AA parents were given the opportunity to assist decision makers and a proper election process was announced five parents but their names in the Hat to help parents can't help if they're not properly motivated about notified about an election and and are instead privately appointed by a principal the principal already possesses the right to appoint through sic community members rather than parents I hope future policies will allow any lex2 parent to submit written comments and that these comments are available for public review on board doc so long as they adhere to Lexington 2 standards in other nudes congratulations on a successful Hispanic heritage celebration at Northside
055Middle School earlier this month we love the tasty authentic food the dancing the food selection the SP painting and the bilingual Story Time most of all I appreciated seeing Liz castles and Trey Bray there as well I've been to Riverbank several times this month for PTO fundraiser duties while in the library I've heard classroom story times on the rug it is so awesomely refreshing to hear our Librarians speak to those students that are learning English as a second language so fluently it can only help to lead these children to a love for learning reading and the library while handing out PTO fundraiser items I watched our district interpreter stay late with the school's High highest producing fundraiser to translate for us ensure that every product prize was there and then help them get it all
056carded out and loaded up finally quick reminder for Lexing two constituents early voting has begun if you are registered to vote you can vote early in person Monday through Friday 8:30 to 5 P p.m. until November 3rd at the lexan County registration and Elections office your voice is your vote and if you can't make it to early voting please vote on Election Day Tuesday November 7th thank you thank you Miss Gart and thank you for the reminder about the upcoming elections um next we have Mr Josh Malin malcin Mr Josh Malin did I I probably butchered your name I'm sorry we're right on I apologize in advance I'm not used to reading off my phone I had a few technological snafu so apologies um my name is Josh M in I'm grateful for the chance
057to address the board this evening I appreciate your heeding the call to public service and all you do for Lexing to diverse student population I'm a lawyer with and Senior advocacy strates for the American civil liberties Union of South Carolina in another life I spent five years teaching middle school and high school math in South Carolina tonight I wear both hats I woke up early on the morning of October 2nd 2014 I wanted to review my e8th grade math lesson on scientific notation one more time before I presented my kids and while doing that I caught the headlines that the federal government decided that they weren't going to charge short Zimmerman with the murder of Trayvon Martin so I walked into my eighth grade math classroom with a plan to teach my kid scientific notation
058and what I encountered was a room full of black children with their hoods up and tears on their faces they saw themselves in Trayvon and the fact that Zimmerman would not be punished sent the message that their lives didn't matter we held space for them to share if they wanted while hearing their truth was heartbreaking it offered both I and their non-black classmates an opportunity to hear how they were feeling and learned about what it meant to be black in New Orleans because the reality is if you're white what my kids went through that day and so many other days is something I'll never innately understand it's something I had to learn something I had to be open to hearing about so that I can understand my students better so that I could be a
059better friend Mentor neighbor and Community member I now try to be more thoughtful about my race and how race affects our society I think developmentally appropriate learning experiences that help students learn about each other and our past and present help everyone develop deeper friendships bonds and Community therefore I was dismayed not to pile it on yall you've had a long night already I was dismayed to see that this District recently banned multiple books aiming to do exactly that I understand that some parents may not want their students to learn about uh or confront difficult realities but to take that opportunity off Library shelves for all students is an attack on their ability ility to think critically about society and critical thinking should be celebrated and not suppressed put on my lawyer hat for a second
060uh the Supreme Court last considered book bands in a case called Island tree School District B Pico the Court held that local school boards may not remove books from library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books it goes on to illuminate the threat that censorship poses to the first amendment in society at large just as access to ideas makes it possible for Citizens generally to exercise their right to free speech and press in a meaningful manner such access prepare students for active and effective participation in a pluralistic often contentious society in which they will soon be adult members the court recognized that all First Amendment rights accorded to students must be construed in light of the special characteristics of the school environment we have trained experts public servants who have dedicated
061their lives to ensuring that special characteristics of the school library make that environment especially appropriate for the recognition of the First Amendment rights of students I worry many no longer want students to be ready for an understanding Society they want to impose a worldview where certain history should be ignored and certain realities taken off the shell because they are hard to stomach I imagine many of you might be surprised to find yourself on the front lines of Defending diverse democracy and public education it's not easy but the right thing rarely is I hope you all have the strength to defend public education all the students eling and to I thank you for your time thank you Mr malcol okay next board members we are moving to administrative divisional reports and I'm going to turn that
062over to Dr Hafner for our superintendent's update thank you Dr Hafner thank you madam chair as we are all aware there have been concerns surrounding parent permission and some of our advanced uh course opportunities clubs and school libraries advanced placement or AP classes are college level courses that high school students can take in order to earn college credit stand out on their college application and develop College skills while still in high school so these courses are optional and due to the fact that they uh the content is above and beyond State Standards we have attached as of last year a parent signature page teach course sylli for the parent to review prior to taking the course in an effort to give parents some input in regards to their child's extracurricular interest this year we placed
063a link on each school's web page with a list of clubs being offered and also an opt-out form for the parent to utilize should they feel it necessary similarly we are creating an optout form for the school's library this will be posted on the school's Media Center web page in the near future the schools are continuing to review their inventory and continuing to um make sure that the destiny system is is clean of those that have already been removed if they've been removed Lexington 2 believes in the right of each parent or Guardian to decide what is best for their child so we believe these measures will be helpful to that end you recall that policy ke was temporarily suspended until further review of our I policies which will begin at the beginning of November
064and the K policies that come at the end of the month to include ke we continue to advocate for our students safety and awareness last night we offered offered a class as part of the good to know Series where we partnered with the Taylor Watford Foundation to educate parents about the dangers of drug use and some of the current issues that we face in our nation and in our community it was a free event and dinner was provided there will be other sessions in this series so please look forward to those down the road be on the lookout we want as much participation as that in that that we can get we will also be hosting a series for parents called becoming a love and logic parent which is a six- week seminar that parents
065can sign up for and it's a minimal cost of $10 and if you're interested in that event please reach out to our Student Services Division and Jan scarberry can assist you uh We've even arranged for some um limited child care to to help out with that and last but certainly not least we had the release of our state report cards earlier this month and I know that Dr Brooks is going to speak to this later in his presentation we had three schools whose ratings came up at Pine Ridge Middle they Rose 9 points point to go from unsatisfactory to average which is a two category jump Norths side middle gained 13 points raising them from below average to average and Springdale Elementary School had a Sixpoint gain taking them from average to good so we
066had other schools who shifted points a little bit to the positive and a little bit to the negative but their ratings maintain the same category as the year before and we do have um three schools that are at below average and we know this and intentional work has already begun to get them headed in the right direction and I recognize that there is a lot to do but we absolutely feel we have the capacity and potential to make those things happen and um I look forward to working with our schools we met today and had more conversation about that and uh I think good things are are in our in our future so this concludes my report on that portion I'll be happy to answer any questions thank you that's exciting to hear board members
067any questions about the superintendent's update okay Dr H we're GNA leave it in your hands I think we were moving on to the Fine Arts update so along those same lines of building capacity one of the areas that is developing is in our district is our fine arts program and the Performing Arts Center so Mr LeBlanc is going to give us an update on that this evening yes ma'am thank you madam chair Dr Hafner members of the board audience it's good to be with you this evening I have a few updates regarding the the Leon 2 Performing Arts Center and programming first if you'll notice on the first slide a lot of work has been done on the interior of of the Performing Arts Center you can see um the drywalls really coming together and
068um just a lot of work's been done this past month we'll get more about that in a little bit um and on the left hand side as mentioned prior in other meetings um in October beginning yesterday we are um we have begun our process of getting nominations for our Hall of Fame for Fine Arts in Lexington 2 this is something new for our district and Lexington 2 has a very rich culture and history of alumnus um alumni in the Arts as well as other areas so this is an opportunity for us to really showcase them I've uh put all the criteria in here for who can qualify to be nominated the nomination process a link to the nomination Google form if you prefer not to complete a Google form I will be happy to have
069copies in the main lobby of the district office for you to come by but this serves multiple purposes we want to recognize those folks that have uh come before us and really been integral in the Fine Arts and Lex in 2 but also it helps myself to uh begin to form a strong network of former uh artists and uh Educators that can help those that are currently in our programs as with any program building on that tradition really is something that helps us be success successful we will be accepting nominations through the 15th so please I'm asking for your help in completing the nomination form whoops sorry about that a little bit more information you can see a snapshot of what the Google form looks like on the right it's pretty simple to fill out
070I do ask for a little bit of information and for transparency sake we will have a committee that has wide representation from across the district to help select the um inaugural class of of folks in our Fine Arts Hall of Fame we will be introducing them in the spring also um as we begin to transition into the new facility in early spring um we are looking forward to that I wanted to bring before you a few dates DET tely look like look at of course um once we do have the ability to occupy the building we will uh need some time for our students and staff to get acclimated to the new equipment to rehearse in the facility time for our visual art uh group to Showcase their uh items across the lobby and so
071forth and with that um here's three dates that looking at the district calendar Fine Arts calendars and other events that are happening that are open currently we know it's difficult to um to schedule something that includes such a wide range but we wanted to bring it to you in October and hopes that you guys can take a look at it and potentially we can come up with a final date in November to begin communicating with the rest of the community also as we began last year Miss Angela hail has been integral and and helping us uh with this but I wanted to uh put before you all the Fine Arts uh calendar of events starting today um through the next couple of months we have a lot going on as always we greatly appreciate your
072um support at those events uh last week we had some awesome opportunities at some of our elementary schools with artists and residence programs but coming up um Busby has our dessert G cavaret coming up on Thursday we have many uh fall uh performances and musicals coming up of course you heard earlier about Saluda Rivers uh 25th anniversary celebration and as you can see from these slides there's a lot going on in lexon to with the Arts and a lot to be excited about so uh Community come out show your support of the hard work that our students and staff have been doing all fall I wanted to just share a couple of pictures these are from uh last week as I said more progress has been made but you can see um it's really starting
073to take shape very very exciting I also wanted to just give you a few pictures of some of the happenings around the district uh within Fine Arts I want to give a huge thank you our inaugural dance program at BC high school on the top left Miss Lucy Leonard and um I hope to to let her speak to you guys also in the future she's doing an amazing job as a first year teacher and I'm thrilled to bring dance to the high school level this is um a tapestry that she put together with all the dancers Feats showcasing um their cultures that they come from and it's something we'll be able to keep for a very long time of the inaugural class at BC high school dance below that you can see some theater work
074Miss Walker Saluda River we have Casey Elementary music on the right some of our state fair art winners if you had a chance last week or so to go through the uh State Fair you can see some of the pieces from our very own Lexing to um students that that won and then on the left here we have our BC high school students who were selected to be um vocal students of the day at the University of South Carolina School of Music and on the right um You Met many of these U fine young men and women this earlier this evening but uh members of the airport High School All Region Orchestra and that's my update for this month I'll be happy to answer any questions just ma' uh on the application if I can
075squint and make this out but is it true that you have to be a member of The Lex Comm to community currently or have that you someone that has been an integral part of the so if they have been in the community but they don't they still don't have to be a resident in the community if they've had a large impact on the Fine Arts in Lexington 2 and played an integral part in that during their time in Lexington 2 okay because I interpret that as meaning they had to be presently living in Lexington 2 thank you I'll be happy to clarify that on the form if you feel necessary yep Mr BR Madam chair thank you uh with the Hall of Fame nominations how are you going to be pushing those out have they
076been pushed out already so we send an email to all stakeholders yesterday we'll be on social media the website and so forth but I'm also here today asking that you guys help me get the word out um across our community perfect thank you board members any other questions thank you thank you so much looking forward to great things coming up I know got exciting time thank you um okay Dr having I think next on board members on our agenda is finance and we're turnning that over to skott Strickland good evening tonight I have our September financial report if you will look at the monthly Revenue summary our total budget for Revenue is7 milon $263,700 we have collected as of September 30th 2,527 66296 which is 6% for local sources we have collected 12,193 377 and
07736 which is 19% from State sources and that total is 7 is 14, .32 for 14% of our total general fund Revenue budget next we have the monthly expenditures again our our expenditure budget for the general fund is17 m263 719 we have expended 9,260 341 which is 18% of our general fund budgeted expenditures I have the um referendum project commitments the Performing Arts DEC the guaranteed maximum price 53 million $183,900 um expenses year to date is 2 million well expenses this fiscal year is 2 million 940,000 777 which it leaves a remaining balance of 14, 6.38 a contingency remaining is [Music] $83,200 increased by $75,500 board members any other are okay and I also have the um the Esser the Esser report as well you'll see for Esser 2 our award amount was 10,251 192
078These funds were had an expenditure deadline of September 30th of 2023 we have until December mber 31st to claim those funds and within the next month we will be claiming those funds and we have expended 100% of those funds the [Music] sr3 grant the award amount was 22 mil 95833 the total spent to date as well as of September 30th is 11,496 $448 which which is 50% of the grant The Narrative at the bottom of the form gives you a um list of what we intend to spin the balance of the Grant on there're they are divided into the different categories and I won't read through all of these categories um are there any questions about the aser funds ther three funds I believe I see Miss Rucker's hand first and then Mr Bray and
079I just wanted to thank you for this report and the detailed uh categories here and I would like to see those every month like you're providing until the funds are fully spent yes ma'am thank you madam chair thank you uh the only question I have is remaining 11 million 11.5 million but our spend plan is 12.2 million so the the balance was for the fiscal year so part of the 12 million has already been spent so the 11 million is what is left as of September 30th thank you you're welcome any other questions board members and M Trin is that your entire report that is thank you thank you so much and thanks for your hard work and thank your division for us as well um next we're moving to Dr Cooper human resources coer
080yes um thank you madam chair members of the the board I'd like to call up our director of Human Resources Miss Stephanie hux Miss hux is going to go over our monthly vacancy Report with us and after that she'll be rolling right into the annual Personnel report to the school board thank you Stephanie welcome Miss huon congratulations on your new position thank you so much Madam chair board members and Dr hner good evening I have two reports for you today we're going to be with the vacancy report that you can see um as of today we have 14 regular education teachers that are vacant the positions are vacant we have eight special education vacancies and that gives us a total of 22 when this report was ran I am happy to say that this morning
081we hired a Spanish teacher for Brooklyn Casey high school so we have 21 vacant positions giv us um the total of 256 new hires board members any questions about that questions okay thank you the next report I'm G take this down if that's okay okay thank you um is the annual school report uh excuse me the annual report to the school board and this is our staffing report give us one second we put up next we put up the next presentation we're not going to make you do that one this one will be entitled HR board presentation October 2023 right yes thank you there we go perfect thank you I'll just make sure my clicker Works yes okay so we will be again um you have the full report in your packet we have prepared
082some visuals for you this evening um I will not take the time to read through the mission and the vision of our HR department however we are definitely working hard to recruit retain and develop our new employees moving on to the first report in your packet is the certified new staff hires for 2324 this is broken down by male female and white minority and this was as of August the 31st this includes all classroom teachers uh media Specialists school counselors and psychologists so as of August 31st there are 153 new hires the second graph shows the demographics of our new hires and you can see that we have 53 induction teachers which I'm going to talk a little bit more about the induction teachers in just a minute the average years of experience of our
083new hires is almost n and a half years which I think is really good um one thing to note about this chart is that we have a lot of new hires are who are certifying through alternative programs and this includes Pace American board teachers of Tomorrow teach for tomorrow and Carolina cap so jumping back to our induction teachers um as of October the 12th we have 8 um that number continues to rise and we're very excited about that um 43% of those induction teachers are going through an alternative certification program and this is important because we are going to have to really focus the on the needs of those teachers since they're not coming through a traditional pathway um for certification and so as we plan in the future this is going to be very
084important but you'll also see that our student students sorry our teachers who have been hired through traditional Pathways that's it's going to take me a long time to adjust to that um we have a good collaboration with the universities and recruiting through the universities you can see that we have um hired 14 from the University of South Carolina so that's really awesome but 33 from the traditional pathway our new hires qualifying for stiens we have this broken down for you by school and all of these teachers were qualifying for the $2500 assigning bonus on the second page you will see the administrative new hires and the support staff new hires this is um from the fiscal year so it would be June 30th 22 through July the 1st excuse me July 1st 22 through June
08530th of 23 um administrative hires and of course we have had some new administrative hires since then so that number is not quite accurate there but as of the June 30th that was our numbers the support staff hires we have hired 79 again this is broken down for you so with 153 new hires four administrative new hires and 79 support staff um we at the time of this report had 23 six new hires and as I just reported on the vacancy report we've hired 255 so you can see we've been working hard in the human resources department trying to get new um employees in our district so the next two pages in your packet will reflect the C certified and support transfers the first one is the certified transfers and they are listed by school
086the second is the support transfers and they are also listed by school and the last page of your report is the certified staff who have left Lexington to so we're going to take a minute and look at these numbers 49 teachers accepted a position in another district and I have those districts listed on the screen 52 teachers left due to personal reasons spouse transfers Family Matters um getting out of Education or simply moving on to graduate school 26 teachers were non-renewals terminated breach of contract or had certification um concerns and then we had 11 who retired from the district so I give them a little shout out for their service to education given us a total of 141 teachers who did not return in this year so underneath you will see the little Aster with
087the numbers this is is um our first year teachers from last year so we had six induction teachers who moved on to a different District three who left due to family reasons seven non-renewals or terminated or breach of contract or simply didn't get their certificate and of course none of them retired so um a total of 16 of our induction teachers and later on in the spring we'll give a full report on what we are doing to really support our induction teachers and all teachers in Lexington too so that we can lower these numbers and I will say that these numbers are in line with the human resources uh performance goals which are outlined in the district strategic plan and the last page of your report is the number of Administrators and professionals staff who
088left and that concludes my report if you have any questions I'll be happy to entertain those board members any questions any questions for this report um my only thing and probably you or Dr Cooper either one um I would just say with the 26 with the certification concerns I think that's just always a concern obviously with the certification issues but I want to just really make sure that we try to have a focus on because I think some of these young people particularly those who are doing alternative certifications I don't know they always it gets from here to here cuz their heart wants to be in the classroom but I'm not sure they know the steps they have to take to be there and just really a little bit of handholding um on their certifications
089weekly reminders monthly reminders go take and I know y'all do this I know y'all give them support I know y'all get them tutoring um but just when you see you know that number of people we lose because of certification I hate to lose anybody who wants to be in a classroom but can't just because of something like a certific ification concern so just you know extra handholding there but thank you for this hard work and a great report Okie do great and moving right along we're going to go to um Dr Brooks administrative divisional reports instruction and um Dr Cooper thank your team as well for their hard work Dr Books thank you madam chair members of the board Dr Hafner tonight I get to um provide some highlights with our annual school report cards
090and happy to answer any questions as we uh move through it um I wanted to really start out by highlighting the fact that our teachers and administrators are working very hard and diligently to make sure our students are achieving and I think that's we're saying from the beginning when we talk about Elementary and Middle School uh school report cards there are five different categories where schools earn points so I have highlighted those here just so we're all um understanding where the points come from but the academic achievement category is our SC ready um third through e8th grade ELA and math scores preparing for success is our science that is offered at fourth grade and sixth grade for 10 points our elll progress or multi-lingual Learners uh that's progress toward being English proficient and that is
091points where um that schools can earn student progress this is the growth piece we've talked a little bit about this um at the last meeting it is changing for next school year but for this school Year's report card it is based off of two factors uh student growth for all students is the first calculation and then they take the lowest 20% or the lowest 20% of the Performing students and add in additional points for that for a total of 35 possible points and then lastly is the school climate which is the um surveys which is based off of the teacher and student surveys but we also do include parent surveys but they do not count toward these 10 points so in looking at our performance on the report cards um I have highlighted here but
092didn't it didn't show up I did highlight on the copy that you'll see on board dots in the future I in the first category the overall rating is the rating that the schools got for all of their combined categories uh Springdale will be green on there because the green indicates that is an improvement over last year school report card so last year as Dr hater mentioned earlier Springdale um received an average score this year they are good so then underneath you can see academic achievement where the schools fell preparing for success and all of those and again the green highlights where our schools moved up over the category from last school year in our middle schools um as Dr Hafner mentioned earlier um both Northside and pin Ridge moved up in their ratings overall and
093you can see where uh those increased scores came from as well moving into our high schools they have six categories where they're earning points and so I've broken them out here so that we have a common understanding the academic achievement comes from our English 2 and Algebra 1 EOC scores there's 25 points there our preparing for success is our biology and US History EOC scores for 10 points points and then our elll progress is our again multilingual students making progress toward their English proficiency uh School climate again is um just like Elementary and Middle based off of teacher and student surveys for five points and then uh new or added to the um High School categories is graduation rate which is 25 points and College and Career ready there are four measures um that four
094opportunities or measures that they look at for students to be College ready and five measures uh where students can earn college ready so there's 25 points in that category so as we look at our high schools you can see here our overall rating and you can see also in green where they made gains over the prior year all right Bernie if you'll click me forward we have I've shared had an opportunity to share earlier the um middle school and elementary schools performance and at the time the high school information was embargoed so I wanted to highlight that for you so this is our um elll progress toward proficiency toward their English proficiency you can see that both of our high schools um had Improvement there you can also see the state improved um a half
095a point and our performance at both of those schools um taught the state in that still under the state average however our graduation rate you can see what that has been over a period of time um you can see where the highlights were where the growth was over the years you can see that we certainly have work to do in this area College and Career ready you can see here um where we have gained you can see also that the state overall lost um 6% of a point and where we fell in that steps that we're taking to improve our school report cards because obviously um we have work to do with our school report cards and student achievement because as somebody mentioned earlier what students accomplish in school absolutely does impact the community moving
096forward and so we want to make sure that we do everything we possibly can to make sure our students are prepared and so the first thing I listed here is the instruction team continues to support our teachers working them working with them both in groups and individually and that is a wide variety of things that happened um we have had teachers come in to work um with the team on assessments we've worked with sending coordinators to um work with grade levels where teachers have fallen a little bit behind and need some additional ideas on how we can get the content covered we have been in um spaces where we have supported our Educators with um the pressures and um that they're feeling both from Community to internally all of those kind of things trying to
097make sure that they feel supported and that we also give them every opportunity to make sure all of our students are um successful and then the second thing that I put was we're continuing to work with our lead District leadership team we met with them today which is our principles as well as a teacher representative um working with them to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to possibly keep up with how our students are progressing so that when we recognize that they're falling behind or they're areas that we need to address that we're doing that also as part of Dr hafner's goal our mtss processes whether it's academic Behavior or attendance um that is another area that we're working on and we um set goals for our second set of short-term goals
098working toward our overall goal toward the end of the year and then lastly here um Dr hner superintendent is meeting quarterly with our High School principles as we um concentrate on making sure our students are a college career and as the state department has now added military ready as well and with that I'll be glad to answer any questions that I can miss Rucker thank you Dr Brooks I do have a question when you were on um the slide with the elementary and middle school you mentioned that there would be a change for next year can you tell me what that is again and any other changes um if there's going to be any changes at the high school level or if it's going to stay the same the um change that I was talking
099about was in the growth model calculation and so last month um I think it was last month or Workshop I can't remember I provided you and and tried to explain how that new growth model is going to be calculated and we'll continue to work on all of that but essentially what happens in the new growth model is that every student earns there's two growth met metrics the first one is making sure they meet the 50th which is representative of a Year's worth of growth and then also depending on where they are on their achievement level meaning a student who is a high achieving student obviously can't doesn't have the number of points possible to earn that a student that is performing lower needs to earn to be met by the time they finish eighth grade
100that is ultimately the goal of the new growth model is to make sure students by the time they get to 8th grade are at met in all categories and so therefore the metrics that they use is broken out so a student that is um low performing has a low score in third grade for example there is a score that that student needs to earn in fourth grade to make progress toward being met when they get to 8th grade and there's a points that will be awarded for meeting that goal the state department has not shared with us um at this point what those points are going to be I'm sure they're using this past year scores to try and calculate all of that and and see how it shakes out but that will not impact
101high schools that will just be Elementary and Middle School you're welcome um Miss alred Whitten yes um so Dr Brooks I can't you know I'm sure you and everybody else in this room um our community this board I'm sure every Cabinet member or superintendent you know how disappointed we are um so I have to ask when I'm looking at this Elementary School report card rating 29 areas stayed did not move up only seven moved up I believe I'm correct on that I just counted it again okay so we've listened to the presentation sure y'all have had a lot of meetings since this came out we have too um so you say we are addressing the problems you're talking you want to help the teachers again I'm going to ask like I've asked several times at
102several meetings I am concerned about when our teachers are at actually teaching in the classroom and not doing paperwork um so if you would please give me an example how you are addressing some of these problems it can be any example first off I'm not sure when you mentioned that they're doing paperwork in the I mean like you we discussed you know the forms you know we've talked about the tof forms when do when do they teach when do they teach when do they read to their kids they help them so when you have an elementary that 29 did not move only seven went up of the areas that we had and you have said that you've talked to everybody the principles and everyone concerning because we're all concerned as I know you are just
103give me an [Music] example well for example um with recent forms for example with um trying to think of a grade level that we've had specific issues with let's say it's fourth grade and when we look at our end of unit assessment there's there's two things that we're looking at the first thing is whether the assessment was given or not and then overall what the results of those were sometimes the conversations that we have had as a followup from that information has been that teachers haven't been able to get through all of the material and so that is a concern the reason that that is a concern is because when we put when teachers work on this curriculum our skeleton plans as you've heard us refer to them we build it not on 180 days
104that we have in school but they're built on 155 days and the reason that we do that is we know that with many of our students we need to do some filling Gap gaps that they have in their learning that takes time to that we also build into our schedules which you'll hear from BC address intervention and enrichment time we also know teachers are going to be sick we want them to take field trips so therefore we build 155 days so when we get behind on a unit because we have a scope and sequence which is nothing new we've had this since probably one room classrooms always having a plan for that whole entire year year when they when teachers fall behind what that means is if we continue to not catch up with where
105we are in that scope and sequence then they're not going to cover all the state standards and so if we don't cover all of the state standards when they get to the assessment our kids don't have a fair opportunity to show that they have mastered the material because in some cases they haven't seen it so when that happens and and we're made aware of it we go out we meet with those teams of teachers and talk about okay where can we shave some time off of days to try and get caught up where can we shift some things sometimes it might be into a different content area so all of those things come forward as ways to make sure that our kids are seeing the content that they need so who goes out it all
106depends sometimes it's the coordinator sometimes it's Rob sometimes it's myself sometimes it's all of us it just sort of depends on what the issues are and when when we get to when they're telling you I didn't have enough time to complete the standard how are you addressing that what what can we expect again it depends on what the reason is I mean if they don't have enough time right well I mean just because you don't have enough time means that could come from a lot of different reasons it could be that you have an abundance of students that are lacking one skill that you've got to address it could be that you've been out sick or we've had testing or I mean there's a wide variety so it really depends on why they didn't get
107the material covered as to where we start and and what strategies we start offering to try and fix those sometimes I mean the the beauty of um the T forms that we started last school year and the monitoring that we're doing this year is for the first time in the time that I've been in lexon 2 we actually can see where we have issues that we haven't seen before and so therefore it gives us an opportunity to address those amongst schools I mean our principles is just like today we allowed them the time to talk about it this isn't being directed by me and my team it is the principal sitting and having conversations the coaches that were there this morning they're the ones sitting there and having those conversations and it the support that
108we try and offer is please involve us please let us come and help that if we don't know we can't problem solve I mean one of the things we learned last year from the taco forms for example is that we were listing strategies in those to help our teachers they didn't know how to do some of the strategies that we had listed we didn't know that until there was a problem and it came to light so that we were able to then be more intentional this year to do that um another issue that we tried to do and our teachers are do this doing this work over the summer is when they provide us information like last year for example Le when it was updated over the summer we incorporated those things so we tried
109to do a lot of frontloading in our skeleton plans to help teachers really understand what strategies what resour resources were successful last year so that they can be a little bit more proactive but what we found because of being able to monitor at the end of the units is that some of the material didn't get covered because teachers didn't realize because they had not looked at the skeleton plans that we were we wanted them to start teaching the material during that first week was it the standards sometimes yes sometimes no a lot of it was frontloading but what teachers started telling us was well we wanted to spend the first two weeks getting to know our kids we want you to also that's hugely important but there's also skills that we can be reviewing and
110helping our kids move forward while we're doing that but I to be intentional but if we're not using those resources then that that doesn't help us and it puts us behind so if all right so where are we moving forward we're continuing to do those things I mean it's just like today I ask principles when they're issues let us know talk to us we talk about being collaborative but if we don't know where problems are and if we don't put on our hat and try to solve problems if if we just talk about the issues that we have the gaps that kids have we already know those things David Sims this morning looked at me and said you know we don't always have the right the answer you're right we don't either I don't have
111the answer either I mean that is the whole entire point of making sure we're collaborative because if we work together we can come up with a whole lot better ideas than if we're just working independently so it's meant to put us together so that we can brainstorm and come up with solutions that help all of us help our kids we don't want teachers working in isolation because as you've heard today we they need to be supported I mean there's more accountability for teachers and superintendent and everybody else than there ever has been before and so if we're not supporting each other it's even more incredibly difficult work so do you feel like that the that the communication is a big problem we got to all the way down we we've got to make sure that
112everybody is communicating with the next person communication is always the issue we have a saying Clarity precedes competence and if we don't know what issues are so that we can clarify them communication is a problem and if we just you know what frustrates me a lot of times is I have issues to solve but I don't know where coming from so people will come and say to me Dixon you know there's this we're hearing that teachers are whatever I don't know what school I don't know what grade level I don't know what subject that puts us and my team in a very difficult position to be able to offer support and to help our kids and so that's frustrating when I just feel like if we would all communicate and work together then we could
113do a lot of solving issues for our students okay thank you board members Miss Rucker thank you madam chair so just kind of listening to that thank you Miss Wooten and thank you Dr Brooks for that so it kind of sounds like with the process that we're using that this might be the the hardest year for the process I might not be taking that the right way but it's something new um and it's something we're doing districtwide so at sounds like um we need to be real intentional about encouraging our teachers to reach out quickly if they're struggling or starting to get behind so that we don't get so far behind that it's even more of a challenge to catch up and then maybe the principles need to be quicker to reach out to you
114all when they don't maybe know exactly the the best way forward or just want some feedback on that so what can be done to help with the conversations the communication so that we can move forward move forward M Rucker I appreciate you saying that um I was in a achievement team meeting at Wood Elementary I guess about two weeks ago and one of the things that I mentioned to the teachers and I was there just to to listen to them and try and learn alongside them and one of I finally got to the point where I needed to say something and what I said was please put that information in the skeleton plans because we absolutely do look at that and I was so appreciative that one of the teachers who took her time this
115summer to work on the skeleton plan spoke up and said he's not just saying that we looked through every one of those things and we added it and I can also tell you that my outstanding team took the time to email those teachers where they knew where it came from that it did not get included to explain why it was not being included because we wanted everybody to understand because I'm serious and I have said this multiple times we want everybody's voice to be heard we don't do this like a lot of districts do and that is that we allow our teachers to have a voice not all of them choose to take that opportunity but we offer it to all of them and that's what bothers me a little bit when there seem to
116be surprises because there shouldn't be any surprises we work hard to make there's make sure there's not surprises and there's still surprises but that's one of the ways that we communicate um is asking them to provide us that information we've we tell them if it's urgent email us call us um and typically that's what principles do with with me and then with coordinators they typically teachers will reach out to them um directly and that's what we want to do because there's some things that can wait until next year skeleton plans if it's high school there's some things that need to be modified before we get into second semester because we want second semester to go better than first semester and some of it is we needed to have fixed that yesterday and are there issues
117that we find yes we were talking about one today uh Jennifer wise was in my office talking about an algebra 1 uh test in um 8th grade where we didn't catch everything that should have been caught that teachers were working on as far as um indicators are are essential standards and question alignment in that one that's something that we need to fix today because it's coming up 4 days from now but the frustration is is that our teachers have had the opportunity to look at that for a while that's not true in every subject science for example is where we're developing them and so my point is is that if their questions and their concerns we're very honest I'm very transparent I will tell you where I know we have problems and what we're doing
118and if I don't know it I'll tell you I our team's going to come together and try to fix them so you know it is hugely important to me that our teachers have a voice because if teachers don't have a voice then they're not likely to teach the material and there's several different different types of curriculum and that is what's presented as going to be taught and what happens when teachers close their door and we all know that and we and we try to talk about that but the communication we certainly uh try and work on and make sure that they have an opportunity to do that the last question in our principles our leadership agenda and even our principal meeting is what questions concerns thoughts do you have that's intentional we want them to
119be able to share during those times thank you so it sounds like the teachers can reach out to the principals or the coaches anybody anytime anybody anytime and I've also said also to this board board and I didn't answer part of your question um this doing this professional Learning Community work where you have to collaborate and you have to be vulnerable is not easy in the beginning I have said that from the beginning when teachers reach out when staff members reach out tell us who they are so we can support them and tell them to hang in there I have done this work multiple times in multiple schools in Lexington too and so I know what the issues are but I also know that when we work collaboratively We can brainstorm and come up with
120some pretty awesome ideas to get through it and in those schools where the culture has turned into one where we collaborated it was not a culture where we were losing teachers and I'll I'll just be frankly you go back and look at my um school report cards the first year when I went into different schools and started implementing the this stuff yeah there were teachers that left the first year but by the end of it teachers were trying to get into the buildings and so I think that speaks to the culture but is it tough yes because we have to be vulnerable and we have to be honest with each other well since we are talking about the you know the report cards tonight maybe and you know the community you know is all is
121out there you know there's we've made some gains but we have a lot of work to do um you know maybe tomorrow would be a good day to just do a reach out to the schools the teachers and just maybe set a you know a fresh REM some reminders some you know encouragement and then let's try to just feel like we're at the point where we need to kind of you know and I also want to say Miss Rucker when we bring teachers in to work on the assessments and I know that has been an issue that y'all have heard a lot of comments about the teachers who come in um are very excited about the work that they're doing they see the process they feel like it works I was in a coaches meeting
122two weeks ago and the coaches were sharing how they are teams within their schools transform themselves talking about backwards design for those of you who are Educators it's just the B business model of knowing what you want to produce and what steps it takes along the way to make that happen that's the backwards design piece for us that means knowing what that Summit of assessment looks like knowing what the the state assessment looks like but at our end of unit and this is one of the things that um we talk about things being added the summatives we've had those we've had them do them we've done them in three benchmarks over the past few years you've heard me talk about those before last year those went away and we started in elementary school with having
123the units high schools were allowed to work on their common formant assessments themselves at each of their schools and then this year the only changes that were made was in high schools adding in the unit ones they're still doing their common formative assessments just trying to make sure that the learning that students are doing through that unit when they get to the end of the unit they've mastered the essentials that they need to um same thing in in elementary and middle school there's not anything new and in fact one of the things that we talked about earlier on is elementary schools especially in uh third grade for example where teachers have their teaching off four contents we backed off of some of those because it was brought to my attention and said Dixon there's a
124whole lot of these that they're having to do they were right so we backed off of that so is it tough yes is it rewarding for those teachers who are seeing success and certainly for our kids it absolutely is but is it require being vulnerable having tough conversations having to sit here and answer for school report card scores absolutely but you know what if we didn't care about kids and and how they were perform we wouldn't do it and now you know and I'll just add I take it very seriously am I happy about it no because any kid that can't leave our schools and find a good job or go to college that bothers me personally thank you I appreciate that and um you know I know we all want to be here to
125be supportive and um appreciate your report and the feedback um so that's it thank Youk you m um Miss Miss castles one question our first question all the eoc's are they all high school or some eighth grade I feel like I've asked that before but I foret not a problem um it used to be that 8th grade took English one and Algebra 1 but it's now English two and so that's taken at the high school the only one in middle school is algebra 1 okay and uh you said you don't like surprises I do not either and I I'm just concerned I feel like we have some of the best teachers around and I get that we have to follow the kids and track them but we already have state tests we have so many
126things if if we put in this floor what some of our teachers have to do it it would blow your mind and that's some of the things that they have to do before what we're doing but I just want to remind us that we have things to track things to put in charts but we also have Warm Bodies sitting in front of us and I think it's very difficult when they get a group and every school's different we have some with that that don't speak English more at some schools so I feel like it's hard sometimes for them to finish at the same time and if they're not getting something and we keep moving on I just I worry that we want to make sure they're getting the skills we want to make sure they're
127reading to their children we want to make sure they're cutting open pump and doing things like that this month but uh I also just want to make sure our teachers don't feel frustrated because I was very surprised too but that's it well I agree with you and that's one of the reasons that we ask them to work together because it's impossible to do everything that educators are asked to do these days by themselves you're absolutely right another thing that I feel like is worth saying here that I've had a lot of conversations with my staff and schools about is one of the things that I believe is happening which impacts our scores is that teachers are unintentionally sometimes creating additional gaps and what I mean by that is sometimes teachers teachers understand their kids they're
128the ones who know them best because the kids are in front of them every single day and sometimes they see gaps that kids have and they want to fill them and that's what we expect them to do is to try and fill those learning gaps that kids have so that they can be successful but sometimes what happens is they'll begin filling a gap for a student that really does not impact the standard that we're trying to teach them and so it becomes time spent there versus time where it should have been spent and it creates an unintentional Gap because then we don't get through the material and so as you do that year after year it continues to create gaps and so that's another reason that I feel like having these unit end of unit
129assessments so that we can see where we are with pacing and all those kind of things to know where those gaps are board members any further questions on this section um I don't want to sit at school report card time and play any kind of blame games for anybody I definitely don't want to blame the classroom teachers who I mean everything you ever hear is if you think about the person who makes the most impact on your life and everybody in this room could close their eyes for a second at least one of those people who made the most impact on their life was a classroom teacher and I don't know that filling out forms and assessments and all that is what made the impact on that kid's life what made the impact was that
130teacher being able to sit with them hold their hand walk them through it and I give you that example because I think that's also what some of our teachers need and are craving from us sitting around this table I think that they need the support and instead of just call me you know tell me let us know if you're having a problem or if they call us let us know who their names are and we'll make sure they're taken care of well sometimes I think especially younger teachers they don't hear that we'll make sure they're taken care of is they're going to be helped I think they feel are here for whatever reason and they could be wrong for feeling this way but I think what they feel or here is you're going to get
131taken care of and I just want to make sure that if we know um I know our principles a lot of y'all are out there doing it already you know if you've got struggling teachers in your classrooms I know that our instructional coaches y'all are out there doing it already your department heads your your grade level teachers who are your leaders they know which teachers are needing those supports and struggling and they're reaching out and holding their hands and it might help just sometimes to have like a highlevel person you know swing by your classroom and say hey you know what let's don't necessarily talk about the fact that you had to send three kids to the office yesterday let's talk about the fact that hey I saw you out on the playground with your
132kids today and you were interacting and I saw a little kid run by and you stopped and let's think of the positive messages that we can send the teachers because I sit in an office all day a lot of us sit in offices all day and it's real easy to sit in our office and think of things that would be great to tell other people what to do but I mean they're out there actually doing it and as they're we're sitting there thinking of things to tell them to do their day is keeping on moving and those kids year is keeping on move like moving along and I mean I noticed certified staff leaving the district this past year 141 teachers in the middle of a teacher shortage and understandable there's going to be people
133who have to get married they move they etc etc but a third of those if I did my math correctly and that wasn't my forte in school but um a third of those it looks like accepted a teaching position at another South Carolina District they still wanted to teach they just didn't want to teach here and so that's what I want to make sure that we're doing that we're all committed to taking the time to letting our teachers know that they are so appreciated and that we're reaching out and we're taking the extra time to hold those hands to help them along create that communication create that culture communication is a two-way street and saying that they won't communicate with y'all well a lot of times you're right they are communicating with us and about
134a year ago y'all asked us hey got this new thing thing got these T forms you're going to hear complaints please just keep everybody calm don't kneejerk and we're going to start seeing results and I think that's where right now we're starting to feel a little antsy about it is because a year later we did Tamp it down we didn't bring them right and left as we're hearing from but I think every board member at this table has has heard heard the concerns and it's not just complaints I don't even call them complaints anymore it's not just um people calling up just to moan they actually are concerned and they're concerned about their fellow teachers and they're concerned about first year teachers who walk into a classroom and tell their Mentor With Tears in their
135eyes when's this going to be fun and I just want us to remember those stories every single day when we sit at this board table or y'all walk into y'all's offices and when we go to interact with the teacher and say hey I guess you know we needed this I think it was called sumita of assessment and you know you look like you didn't go on Pace here and you're not following up and your kids aren't doing well let's maybe go in and say hey what can I do to help you get on track what can I do to help you help your kids I think it's it's just a matter of flipping the conversation and the narrative and I think I've said that for a number of years I continue to say it um
136and I just hope that as we move forward that we don't say they won't ask for help or they're not moving along fast enough or they're not doing this let's figure out as a group like you said let's pull together let's work together and let's let's be sitting here awesome next year because we do have some things to celebrate by the way uh we can count how many things we didn't celebrate but we at least had seven that that did move up and we need to give those people a big hand we need to give those areas a big hand we do need to make those celebrations but we want to bring every single School we don't need to be defined by not just our ZIP code but the name of our school we need
137to have every single kid get the chance to be successful in this district and every single kid needs to walk in every day to a teacher who is Happy ready to teach and feel supported and I think that's you know my my passion in this from having been a classroom teacher I was fortunate that when I taught I had a principal felt that way I had administrators I felt that way about and I even had District staff people that I felt that way about I felt like they knew me they cared about me and and wanted me to do well and I just want to make sure we're all operating with that mindset every single day yes I agree with you and I think when we all think of the teachers that inspired us you
138know they knew us they knew everything about us and they pushed us and so the forms that we keep w referencing are supposed they're meant they're not they should not be busy work I mean if that's what they're being used for that's totally inappropriate because the whole point of them is to reflect on what students what's working what's not which kids do I need to help which ones do I need to push that's what those forms are about and the last thing I will say to to that miss brandham is that one of the things that y'all did that I think has been a game changer in a lot of respect is hiring a mentor coach which has another name this year and I'm sorry Dr Cooper I don't remember what it is currently but
139um Philip Raven has the opportunity to go out to every one of his class to every one of the classrooms especially our new induction teachers he comes back a lot of times and shares with us what the concerns are I started inviting him last year into the instruction meetings because it was important for him to understand what we were talking about so that he was as he was supporting teachers he could share that information so it goes back to that communication piece and the other thing is none of this and I shared this today in at the instruction the district leadership meeting none of this is meant to be an I got you we're in this together and I can tell you sitting in my position I have the least amount of control and test
140scores than anybody other than y'all probably sitting here at this table I mean we're relying on others to do all of the things that it takes to educate today's future so we have we have to be in it together it doesn't do me any good I never want them to feel like that it's an I got you we have to be I got you in this and I'm it disappoints me when I hear that that message doesn't get out there because I think that anybody that is around me knows that and you know I've heard it so I know I know people don't always feel that way but um I wish that that was different okay any other questions or comments all right I know we usually try to stop and take a a break
141right before we go to unfinished business but I do see some squirms and we've been going for Miss Brandon we got one more report in okay we'll go ahead and take the one more under instruction and then we'll take the is that what you're talking about yes yes okay and uh board members if anybody has to take a little relief break since we can't just jump up other people have no come in and out this back door is unlocked and so if you need to step out really quickly you may yeah thank you and I'm sorry but we're fortunate to have um BC here tonight to talk about in all of our schedules we have time built into um our schedules whether it's Elementary Mill or High School an intervention and enrichment time and so
142Dr Jones and his team are here to talk about that tonight and so happy to welcome him to the stage good evening Madam chair members of the board Dr Hefner thank you for this opportunity to be here tonight to tell you about the many one of the many great things that we are doing at Brooklyn Casey high school so far this year at the beginning of this year we started off looking for a program a Intervention Program that could replace our old Bearcat program it took several weeks of research as well as meetings with staff and even a field trip with our department chairs down to a high school in Ain to land on what we are calling halftime so what is halftime halftime is a one is one hour during the school day from
14311:30 to 12:30 and which students may eat lunch attend tutoring go to Club meetings participate in inter mural sports or a number of other activities it is designed to allow students to make the most out of their lunch period And so during that time we are offering all of this to students how does it work so every day at 11:30 a bell will ring to signif to indicate that we are starting halftime and so with that we have two halves of it we have part A and Part B and so right at 11:30 part A starts and we have students at that time who will go to lunch or they'll will go to an activity or they'll go to a club and then those other students will be um at lunch and so Part B
144we have the same things happening you can go to lunch activity or to a club a unique bell will ring right in the middle to tell them that half half of the period is over students can eat lunch participate in activities or attend tutoring during these times activities are scheduled for 30 minute periods and so if I have a club the chess club which um Mr goetti has that's 30 minutes so part A he may be doing this chess club for 30 minutes when those students leave the chess club they have to go to lunch or if I'm a student who needs to be in math tutoring during Part B part A I should go eat lunch and so our students should not leave early for third block or wait in the hallways we have
145designated areas that students are to be in our bell schedule during this time and it's a little dark but we run our regular schedule we're still getting our 85 minutes of regular class time with this schedule and then we have our 1 hour designed for lunch all right what can students do during halftime all right deing Hal time um like Dr Janes said um if they are making below a 70 in one of their classes the they will be required to stay for tutoring during either part A or Part B which is a 30 minute um tutorial session with that teacher if they have above a 70 they have 30 minutes for lunch they could technically have an hour for lunch um but most of them will go play soccer or they will go um
146to the media center or they'll go to a club um you know FCA all those clubs are offered during this time as well um so the kids really do have an option with this um the teachers actually have Monday through Thursday to assign the students to the tutoring session so again if they're making below a 70 or maybe they just have a lot of Miss work that they need to make up or they missed a test they can assign those students to come back to them on RTI scheduler and then the students have the opportunity Thursday through Monday to go in and choose what they want um so like I said if they're not assigned they can say oh you know I want to go to chess club on Thursday or maybe I want to
147have an hour lunch and study with my friends you know another day um they do check with their teachers and the um RTI schule scheduler before they pick their classes to know what they need to be doing that week and then you'll see the priorities here on Monday is math Tuesday is English Thursday is social studies Friday is science and we do take attendance and oops I'm sorry we do take attendance during this time and if they get called for skipping a required session then they will do lunch detention on Wednesday with Dr Jones himself in the auditorium so um one thing I do like about this program is it has really the the students really hold each other accountable um and you know like I'll walk around and see some children I'm like show
148me your power school why aren't you where you're supposed to be so because um we did have a little incident a couple weeks ago and Dr Jones took half time away for like three or four days and the students started fussing at the students who Calla that and we're like you need to do what your space to so it really does um hold a lot of accountability um again you know this is just a repeat of what they are supposed to do what they're expect it to do and what happens if they don't and I believe it's your time all my thund you really all over the place it's all good all right um we are closed campus and that's kind of where that issue arose with the um taking the halftime away for a
149couple days but um they got it back so just a reminder for everyone bchs is a closed campus do not leave during lunchtime um and we strongly discourage uh early dismissal during halftime we try to make that a very purposeful hour of the day um and as we have repeated over and over to our kids and we actually had class meetings before we gave them their halftime back just to reiterate this it is a privilege to have halftime we very easily went back to Bearcat time three lunches it takes you away from your friends it takes you out of clubs we can very easily go back to three lunches if we have to but halftime is something that is meant to be positive for you and to give you reinforcement for doing the right thing
150and to encourage you to do the right thing um um there are obviously some days that we do not have halftime tomorrow is an early release day we will not have halftime the first two weeks of school if we have any schoolwide testing days or any type of Pep rallies or activities we will not have it RTI scheduler which has become my best friend and I can give anybody a training if they need it because I'm in it every single day similar to what Tiffany just um spoke about I give so each day there's priorities so Monday is math priority Tuesday is English priority Thursday is social studies priority and Friday is science priority which means if a student is failing more than one class they are guaranteed one day of tutoring in each of
151those classes if they are only failing math each Core Teacher offers tutoring two days a week so they if they're only failing math they could see their math teacher on the priority day and on their non- priority day which is a priority day for another subject um that is all scheduled and placed into RTI scheduler so all teachers need to do Monday through Thursday the week before they go in and they assign the kids that have less than a 70 that need to come back to them and then from Friday until Monday of the following week students go in if they can see if they've been assigned to tutoring and then they can pick any of the clubs or options that are available Wednesday is not a priority day for tutoring so they can go
152back to any of their foreign language business classes anything like that and that's also the day that we offer the majority of our clubs that are not in embedded in the priority days um we also embedded our teacher collaboration time during halftime so we used to meet at 7:45 in the morning 7:45 to 8:15 teachers now have priority days for their collaboration as well so it's built into their schedule every teacher is guaranteed a 30 minute lunch and then one day a week they collaborate two days a week they tutor one day a week they have their duty duty location and then they can sponsor a club um these are currently all the clubs that we I skipped it all the clubs that we currently offer so these were either from student choice or teacher
153interest as you can see there's a wide variety of things we have teachers that offer a quiet club we have teachers that offer a walking Club there's something for everyone we tried to make sure that every student could find something that they can feel like they're a part of and obviously these are for our kids that are passing their classes and have the opportunity to do something like this all right so as far as the overview again we have a on hour long lunch students may eat lunch it's in tutoring go to clubs or participate in sports the halftime schedule of activities posted in the teachers classrooms and outside of every teacher's door it shows what clubs they offer so if a students's walking down the hall and wonder what Mr van Omen is offering
154on Thursday they can look at his schedule and see it we also um strongly discourage early dismissals during halftime because it is very hard to find a student when we have all 12200 somewhere in the building so we've asked parents send information to them saying hey just make sure if you have an early dismissal for your student we know early enough so that we could grab them before halftime starts um students may use their cell phones during this time and this is the only time that we expect our students to have their phones out and then lunch detention is for the whole halftime at the end of halftime I will take them to the cafeteria so they can get their lunch our cafeteria staff has done a wonderful job of making sure um that every
155student is fed quickly um we hadn't had any issues as far as students missing lunch because of all of them being at lunch at the same time and also a shout out to our custodians who make sure that it's cleaned up very quickly after we're done and our students are doing a great job with that as well all right are there any questions for the team board members any questions Miss rocker I was at BC a few weeks ago and heard a little bit about this but hearing the rest of this tonight in detail it's pretty awesome so thank you for the transparency of this any you know you guys are doing this every day and um it's neat to be able to see what you all put together and the thought process behind it
156and how it's going to help our students so thank you so much and I wanted to add to that Miss Rucker I wondered if they were going to mention that they had paused it and then and brought it back you're absolutely right and we talk about teachers having some voice they talked to them about how they felt like it could be better I happened to be sitting in a meeting last week where they were continue to talking to talk about how can this be refined to improve our Student Success and so they are living this and they're doing the action research that we ask them to do try something see how it works if it doesn't work change it if it does keep improving it so kudos to y'all great job and so we will
157actually have a faculty meeting tomorrow to discuss our next steps with halftime um we're moving towards the essential standards in our tutoring sessions um right now everything is a 70 or lower but students will now have to come back if they have um problems with our essential standards in our classes great I think Mr key had a Jones I'm really impressed with the program you have there um I've heard a lot of great things about it it's funny our I'm in a business Network group and his mom was sitting next to me she always sits there and she talks about her ninth grader started BC she didn't know my affiliation from Lex 2 so I kept listening to her and she's talks about the discipline the learning what the student now has invested in in
158the school and the student never was before but now he wants to go to school and he he looks forward to the halftime and she says when he comes home he don't have much homework because he's getting it done during the halftime and he's in the I think you had a life skills class he goes to some learning how to do some life skills and I think that's something we miss in schools and so she is really impressed with program I'm kind of scared to tell her that I'm involved with lexon too because she keeps feeding me information and she has never gave me anything negative on this program it's really a blessing to that student and the school so I just want to thank you yes sir but our teachers have just really jumped
159in and got those clubs going we ask them to give us a club that they're interested in doing and students can also step up and come come up with their own clubs they have to find a teacher to sponsor it and then get approval from an administrator and Miss wayon um refreshing what it just wonderful and um I was just going to get you to most of us know who Ryan and Tiffany are but I was going to get you to introduce your Sidekicks that you have with us tonight and so with me I have Mr van Omen here is our assistant administrator doing a wonderful wonderful job this year um jumped in on the RTI scheduler figured it out we went over to Busby and spent some time with them um just figuring looking
160at their RTI scheduler and from there we brought it back and he jumped in and really figured that program out and got it out to our teachers we've trained them all they're very comfortable with it and then we have Miss all Miss Tiffany all who's one of our assistant principles she works with students last names p through she's very famous for that and so she's doing a great job with those students um I can't ask for a better team Miss Dickerson who was supposed to be here with us tonight had an emergency but she works with the academic um specifications of the program and then Mr Brunson who was here earlier he's still here who's back here right now not looking as good as I am but he's back but he you know worked out
161all of our Duty spots so our teachers do Duty once a week for 30 minutes um they're able to get out there build relationships with our students during that time and so that's just another caveat of this program Miss castles I heard from a parent that you guys are great about communicating and call out so when a kid sitting there in the den we don't have halftime tomorrow I know why because I can read the phone so I do appreciate all the communication so the parents can appreciate how important this is too because even though they're in high school they're you know want to be involved so all that is very helpful good job thank you board members any other questions comments um thanks it's great to hear uh what's going on over there and
162looking forward to seeing the progress that we're going to see out of that program so thank you all so much for your hard work thank you thank you um and thank you Dr Bo for your presentation and for your team as well who works hard um now we're going to take a quick break for everybody because we're about at that time we usually get to unfinished business I know we still have operations but Dr um Mr Warren you don't mind if I put you at the first up next all right so we're just gonna um take we're g just take a seven minute break seven minute I uh we are now back after a short Comfort break and we're um picking up with item 10 uh the administrative divisional reports from operations and I'm going
163turn that over to Mr Warren Mr Warr thank you madam chair members of the board Dr Hafner excited to be here tonight we have with us um Jack Robinson project manager with Thompson Turn Construction also project Architects uh Todd CE and Lori long with jumper Carter CE to provide um us an update on construction uh with the new Performing Art Center and District education center wonderful progress being made and look forward to um seeing the update from the team all right good even good evening Madam chair members of the board Dr hner uh thank you for letting us stand before you to give you another construction update um so two months ago I was up here so we'll give you kind of rund down what's going on and also have some side by-side pictures of
164what you saw two months ago and where we're at now so in the DC um we got miscellaneous ceiling work being completed installing case work you know fin finishing uh finishing up the countertops the bathroom partitions have been installed uh carpet's in progress the offices have final paint on them um the next two weeks the final paint will be in the hallways just because there most traffic we wanted to get as much work as done as can again this is the case workk on the left- hand side on the right hand side is the entrance in the DC up there at the top it's the ACM panels that you'll see throughout you know around the whole entire exterior gives it that nice good you know look that um JCS designed um also some more things
165you can see the ceiling on the le- hand side everything's kind of closed up we got water fountain set um got the toilet partitions and those group bathrooms as well so coming along pretty nicely all right so pack um we got MEP ceiling grid um overhead work throughout pack is it's just going to be continuous uh item uh we'll start the ceiling grid on the little bit of the second floor next week um we have our first floor third party inspection scheduled for November 7th um so moving along with that um the auditorium clouds have been have been installed um with meing in progress you'll see those in a couple minutes uh the auditorium slab sloping you know all this work has been happening off of you know six to seven lists in a tight
166combined area working you know 50 60 F feet up in the in the air hanging sheetrock um painting framing everything else um so we'll be sloping we're sloping the slab now with um we'll be pouring Thursday and Friday this week so that that'll be a huge milestone to hit um also the mil work Puck system I'll point that out in the picture in a minute um and that's the for the P Lambs to get snapped in towards the end um as you can see here the front lobby drywall is being installed um again that that Lobby the IDE of going to be very useful to this District specifically so all right so on the left-and side you are standing uh around the balcony looking towards the prum opening in the stage so again this was
167eight eight nine weeks ago you you saw this picture um you got one Cloud frame to help the the duck guys install their drop downs the electricians installed the um the fire alarm drop downs you've got just framed out radius walls and you got some work going on in the stage and again you're working all on uh leveled ground on the right hand side taking two weeks week and a half ago you got the slope of the dirt work already happening you've got those radius walls with every single reveal cut in by hand there's three layers of drywall and all those due to AC ACU acoustician um Acoustics and um the puck system that had to be shimmed out and everything else to make it just perfect for this to be a seamless trans transition
168and also on the stage you can see some uh some rigging work that's just kind of going on and your final lighting um there so next this is now the stage looking out again the left hand side you see some drywall work on the outside again you you know you're working all up and big lifts on the right hand side you can see a different view of of that slope floor you see the tiered seedings have been poured you can see those two rectangl on on each side are those ACAC draperies and those units are installed um with paint um you can see all those reflector clouds um took a lot of work to get those done you have no idea again you know two and three layers of of drywall at a major radius
169um then painted and also in the back you can see that follow spot booth and then those other um drywall so um kudos to PE walls and everybody else you know all other subcontractors who who put in the hard work working you know six days a week there was six seven weeks where we worked um night shift so we're working 22 out of the 24 hours possible in a day just just to get where we're at because of how important and the layering of this um again the pack again the left hand side that's first floor ceiling grid going in can can lights the duck has now been um flexed in start um setting in uh grills the right hand side is those uh hoist um um that are up there you know 80 ft
170up in the air on top of the grid iron um that rigging wall is being installed right now and um you know soon to have all I think it was like 60 70,000 aircraft cable feet worth of aircraft cabl is going to be kind of running through this uh site work so DC parking lot started getting paved last week uh we finished about 90% of it that was a pretty big process uh or pretty big milestone to get Scot deceleration lanes are in progress as you can see as you drive by um pack parking lot which is the larger parking lot that one is um getting final graded and you know we're looking at moving some conexes and stuff like that just you know to get that Paving um obviously the gas meter is installed
171as you can see here it's hooked up Dominion everything else um we're doing startup on generators and boilers um and stuff like that that you know that are fed off gas and also irrigation has started all right so upcoming Milestones this kind of like next couple months um October you got a week left but the big thing is prep Place slab Auditorium we're installing that rigging wall we're actually going to start the test and balancing process in the um DC to get that conditioned air going um you know at the right temperature uh over November December overall again M overhead install getting completed pack front lobby areas the the trim like these cloud of your head um the mill work you know again continuing with that puck system and then snapping in the actual Millworks
172mill work panels um front lobby tile starting sometime at the end of November beginning of December um there's a lot of tile in there so it's a lot of work and it was going to be beautiful at the end um and then also by the end of December you know you're the anticipation is complete site work irrigation and Landscaping and then January you know you're putting those final touches is in you're putting that little bit of carpet this way that way um the theatrical components you're putting the speakers in you're testing the speakers you're doing your other inspections or um the remaining overhead inspection um and then the delivery of the uh owner provided furniture will get installed get delivered at the end of January and start get install process so so thank you um
173Mr Warren anything else or board members any questions about his Pres presentation Miss cast I don't have a question about presentation but I do have question about completion date yes ma'am as I talked to you jack I I let you know the bombshell that we got from Mr Warren that's right completion date is in now in March and we were told about a firewall I want I want some explanation about that and I want to know the impact it's going to have on this District as far as completion date cost so contingency fund shouldn't be touched I'll start with the first question okay first question is substantial comption date was January 26 2023 we have every intention to get to that point however with this ad um there is about There is five weeks worth
174of work um this work has to be done it is in the back of the auditorium and those rooms back there that is currently off limits due to the rigging wall install due to safety Etc um we went back over the past couple days uh last week and this week try to figure out what we could do the idea would be to you know B we can start some of that stuff early to where you don't get get the whole five weeks on the back end but we do feel that it's going to be the next two to three weeks after that 26 date which would put us finishing the middle of February but at the same time DEC Furniture can be get installed owner training could go ahead and start because that's not going
175to affect owner's training um so that would help still the overall process of the District employees being able to move in tell me the problem with the wall why why was it omitted Jack Madam chair members of the board Dr Hafner thank you um and and Miss Kessler to address uh your concern and and it's legitimate um but we submit the plans to office of school planning and on multiple occasions we had Plan reviews the plans were appr approved as they were designed when our inspector was out visiting the site he observed a condition on the back of the stage that um he felt like needed to be raided uh so there that that was an ad he didn't catch it in the review we didn't catch it in our design it's something that in
176his uh determination and he is the authority having jurisdiction uh felt like that needed to be addressed and needed to be rated um the district would have incurred cost whether we do it now or whether we would have done it earlier uh and it's basically added additive there there's nothing that had to be taken away to add back this work Jack and his team and Lori and the design team have been working diligently to make sure it's the most cost effective uh solution as well as um has the least impact to the overall time schedule and uh so we're we're working toward that you heard in the financial report my star over there said guaranteed price so is that guarantee price changed at all no and it will not use a contingency fund it so
177there is a cost associated with it that would be covered what through the contingency fund that's what the contingency fund as far for addressing unfor it the company is old as as as many years as you people have been in business for that to have happened to us I I'm I just had to say it I I understand problems or problems we're facing them with report cards and everywhere else but it's very disappointing for members any other questions for um any of our experts here this evening thank you and thank you all um thank you for being here tonight and thank you for sitting with us for a long evening thank you yeah I want to say thank you CE thank you Mr CE and uh team and Jack and team Lori I appreciate you
178being here and the work you're doing for us and look forward to absolutely seeing the completion of this project and getting our staff and and students in there so thank you thank you thanks is that your report Mr yes ma'am that concludes um board members at this time I'm going to take an very unusual step um but what we're I'm going to ask for is Miss Kesler to make a motion to amend our agenda to allow us to move into a brief executive session in order to receive only the human resources report and then um we'll come straight back out and jump into policies um but I think we have someone that's a little under the weather and we want to get her on home so there's nothing crazy we're doing with human resources we
179just want to get her get her report and get her home we should not be in executive session long if y'all want to hang around so um but at this time K will you I'll move for make a motion that the Board of Trustees enter close session for consideration of personnel appointments okay I have a motion by Miss Kesler and a second Bray and um um all those in favor signify by saying I oppos so we are going to move into executive session but miss strange if the minutes could reflect that um by consent the board agreed to amend the agenda in the middle of the meeting to move into executive session take the human resources report come back out and then finish our other executive session business when we normally would so we'll just
180be a few minutes I apologize um but give us just a few minutes to take out that report thank you affidavit executed motion by Miss second my Mr Bray all those in favor signify by saying I I oppose motion carries we are now back in Open Session um after a brief uh break for open for executive session um we've only addressed one section of our executive session agenda so we will do that go back into executive session again at the end of this evening we're going to go ahead and do our um Human Resources um appointments resignations and all of that at this time Miss C rain some motions yes I make a motion that we approve the 2324 resignations uh 2324 uh recommended teacher appointments the 2324 recommended support appointments and the 2324 paid
181hourly on time sheet motion by Miss Kesler second by Miss Rucker all those in favor signifi by saying I I oppose motion carries Miss Kesler do have another motion yes I make a motion to approve the um the administration's recommendation for Aaron Rebecca burus to be appointed as assist principal at um Busby Creative Arts Center second I have a motion by Miss Kesler second by Mr Bray all those in favor signify by saying I I oppose motion carries um congratulations uh to miss buris um and now we are going to move on and you're excuse thank you uh we're going to unfinish business at this time um I know you're all waiting on the edge of your seat to work on policy with us I want to remind those watching at home home and those
182in the audience that the board uh again takes our work on this very seriously we've undertaken as you can see an extreme amount of work to get um all of our policies reviewed some of which have not been reviewed for 20 odd years so we are going to um move forward with doing second and final reading of a lot of these tonight that'll get us even closer um to having our goal met and uh Miss Kessler we're going to start if you want to make a motion and again all these policies were reviewed and discussed at our board Workshop so I don't want you to think we're just moving policies along with that not any discussion we've actually met worked on them discussed them and and had a first reading and this is again second
183and final reading of these proposed policies so miss Kesler with that I'll entertain a motion yes motion to approve second and final reading of proposed revision of to board policies jjjj AB a rjj ab- r i have a motion um Second and a second by Mr Bray any discussion board members all those yes M Rucker Madam chair I would like to look at um policy JJ and I don't know if we would amend it or what we could possibly do um from here but um instead of removing the word wholesome and good and replacing with positive and strong I'd like to look at you just keeping those two words okay do you want to make a make a motion to amend to use make a motion to amend okay the motion to keep wholesome and
184good so as to JJ um M Rucker is now um made a a motion to amend to take back and use wholesome and good is there a second to that motion a second by Mr Bray board members any discussion um okay being none uh I would just say from my perspective that um I mean I think we I think they're all very fine words um I kind of personally liked positive and strong um just because of the visual of that but I certainly can understand the other so um so board members we're only going to vote on the motion so if you want to approve the language to be changed as she has recommended I'm going to say all those in favor signify by saying I if you raise your hand then you voted for
185her change but not the underlying motion yet so you still will vote for the underlying motion if you vote no that means you don't want to take wholesome and good recommendation you want to stay positive and strong okay um I think we all want to be positive wholesome strong and good though all those in favor of um the motion as amended by Miss Rucker signify by raising your hand and saying I I okay we have three all those who oppose raise your hand and signify by saying no no no no so that's three4 so the amendment of that motion does not pass now we'll vote for the whole um motion without the change um all those in faor uh I need all those in favor signify by saying I raise your hand all those opposed
186raise your hand say no so that's a 7 o um on that Miss strange and so I think that takes care of all the ones under Section A Miss Kesler if you can move along for Section B I make a motion to approve second and final reading for proposed revision to uh a r GB a A- r i j k I kjf I KF excuse me ik KF not ik kjf ik kf- R uh JF a BH and j i a-r board members have a motion by Miss Kesler for approval of those uh policies do I have a second second by Mr Bray any discussion on the policies under B section B seeing none all those in favor raise your hand signify by saying I I I oppose um 70 motion carries and it's strange
187um Miss Kesler under section c yes and I'm going to from this point on because there's more num uh letters I'm just going to make them if there's reference it by numbers make a motion to approve the second and final reading of proposed revision to board policy uh section c all six policies okay I have a motion by Miss Kesler I have a SEC second by Mr Bray board members any discussion on any of those policies there being none all those in favor signify by raise your hand saying I I oppose raise your hand motion carries again that was 70 Miss Kesler D policies motion to approve second and final reading for gsection personnel policies uh all 17 policies listed I have a motion by Miss Kesler for all the D policies um and a
188second by Mr Bray board members any discussion of any of these all those in favor raise your hand signify by saying I I all those opposed and that is 70 motion carries motion approved second and final reading for section g Personnel policies all 14 policies in uh group E okay I have a motion for e and I have a second um by Mr Bray board members any discussion all those in favor raise your hand signify by saying I I oppose motion carries 7 oh miss strange and under F motion to approve second and final reading of gsection personnel policies 15 policies listed in section F okay I have a motion by Miss Kesler second by Mr Bray all those in favor signify by raising your hand and saying I I I oppose uh motion carries
18970 and we are moving on to section g motion to approve second and final reading for gsection personnel policies 14 uh policies listed in section g motion by Miss Kesler a second by Mr Bray um any discussion board members all those in favor raise your hand and signify by saying I I oppose motion carries 70 um and then last motion to approve second and final reading in section G Personnel policies the 10 policies listed in section H okay motion by Miss Kesler second by Mr Bray board members any discussion all those in favor raise your hand to signify by saying I I oppose 70 motion carries thank you're hard working again for those watching at home that was a lot of policies but I do want you to know that we went policy by policy
190at our workshop and actually addressed everyone some of them we actually sent back to Legal some of them have been pulled out for the various departments to um make some recommend recommendations on so hopefully we'll get to all of them in very short order next Miss Kesler we're going to move on to new business out of state and overnight student student travel motion to approve out of state overnight travel for Brooklyn Casey High School Coral teacher to chaperon backstage Broadway student trip February 26th to the 20th 2024 in New York motion by Miss Kesler second by Mr Bray all those in favor raise your hand and signify by saying I I oppose motion carries that's 70 for announcements we have a board Workshop November 2nd uh at 5:30 again we'll be taking another bulk of
191policies that you will be um sent uh this evening if you've not already I think actually I saw Miss ke I've already sent them thank you Miss kava also for staying on top of us with these policies you're doing an amazing job um November 7th we have the fall career expo at the here at the Innovation Center so please those of you watching at home um please come out and hear about the job opportunity unities that we have in our district on November 9th we have a special meeting that will be back here at 5:30 um and uh then on November 10th um interims will be coming home for those parents watching at home so please keep that in mind and be aware of that and then our regular schedule board meeting will be back
192here November 16th uh just in time for Thanksgiving we'll be meeting uh in here at 6 and I believe we have a reception prior to that meeting and that's for our teacher teachers of the year and support for our teachers of the year and support staff so congratulations to those um people and we really look forward to celebrating your successes with you prior to moving to Executive session um I just want to take one quick moment of privilege and uh point out um that Mr Bray this potentially might be your last uh regularly scheduled board meeting and I just want to let you know um Miss chair man and also friend and a person who's known you since you were about this big and obviously very close with your father that um I've enjoyed working
193with you uh if you're successful we do wish you well um in your endeavors with the city of Casey and we would look forward to working with you in that capacity as well so if we could give a um Round of Applause for Mr Bray and his service thank you very much we'll be completely content either way you either get stuck with me for another year or you get stuck with me on the Casey side and hopefully we can M some of those fences either true either way we're stuck with him thank you Mr Bray um all right this castler with that I'll entertain a motion I'll make a motion that the we move to Executive session for discussion of legal Affairs a motion by Miss Kesler second by Mr Bray all those in favor
194signify by saying I I oppose motion carries and we're now back into our final executive session thank than she talk me we are now back we are now out of executive session I'll entertain a motion yes I um make a motion to authorize Dr Hafner to enter a lease agreement as discussed motion by Miss Kessler second by Miss Rucker uh any discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I um and that's passes 70 Miss strange and Miss Kesler uh I make a motion that we authorize Dr havner to enter into a limited contract with Mr Montgomery a motion by Miss Kesler second by M Rucker all those in favor signify by saying I I oppose that's 70 motion carries and motion adjourn by Mr brace second Miss Alfred Wooten um all those in
195favor signify by saying I I we stand adjourned thank you