NHCS Board of Ed. Agenda Review Meeting | June 24, 2025

001feel like I need to do this, but I'm going to call the agenda review meeting to order. Uh, Miss Buoie, will you call the role? Good afternoon. Melissa Mason, here. Josie Barnhard, here. Pat Bradford, I am here. Judy Justice, Dr. Tim Merrick here. David Perry here, and Pete Wabbor present. Um, I will entertain a motion to approve the agenda. So, is there want to do the invocation? Oh, I'm so I'm so sorry. I would like to do the invocation. So, we'll wait on that. Let's do the invocation. So, sorry. looking at two different things. Hello, I'm Pastor Lisa Moore from Global Global River Church and I'm honored to give today's invocation. Let's pray. Father God, I thank you for each one of your servants who are here in today's meeting. Your word says in Proverbs

0029:10 that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. So, Father, I pray for each person that they would both know and fear you and thus be filled with wisdom and understanding. Holy Spirit, I invite you to come and invade their meeting with your presence and especially with your kindness, gentleness, self-control, and peace. I pray that every person would be treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve since they are made in the image of God. I pray, Father, that they would make wise and righteous decisions on behalf of our county and our precious children. Father, would you give them creative ideas as they work through each challenge and give them the strategy to enable all the pieces to fit together? In closing, I

003pray this blessing over each person present. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace in Jesus holy name. Amen. Amen. And I've asked Miss Bradford to lead us in the pledge. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Now I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda. So move second. Um Madam Chair, Miss Bradford, I would like to add on the agenda under old business um a recap of what happened yesterday. Would that be under old business or under committee reports? All business. Okay. I'll second it. Okay. Any discussion? M

004Dr. Merrick. Yeah. Uh I know that we have business to attend to. Um we also have procedures and policies and you know this is a last minute thing to be added to our agenda. Normally there's a cut off over a week ago. So this is sort of last minute. Um I'm not opposed to discussing it today but I do believe it belongs in committee reports. That's absolutely. In fact, I would hope that we would get a committee report not from, you know, not from us, but from the committee itself. And that I think that's where it belongs. All right. So, there was a motion to put um the curriculum committee um basically report under you said old business, Miss Bradford. I did. All right. And there is a second. Um, Miss Boo, will you call

005the role on this one? Mr. Wilbbor, yay. Miss Bradford, yay. Miss Mason, yes. Miss Barnhart, yes. Dr. Merrick, no. And Mr. Perry? I. All right. Um, that passes. Um, I I make a motion to approve the amended agenda then. Second. All right. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying I. I I. Any opposed? That passes 6 to zero. So, moving on to the agenda items for the regular meeting. Um, I've already asked Miss Barnhart to keep the time for us. Looking at Yes, Mr. Clarification. I think it is important at the beginning we do point out that it is not next Tuesday but the following Tuesday. Yes, that is correct. Thank you for Thank you for reminding that because of the holiday we moved the meeting to the following week. So

006this is not next week. This is in two weeks. Thank you. July 8th July. Yes. Um so starting from the top I'm trying to get it on both locations here. Um, we have call to order, roll call, approval of the agenda. Um, there was a discussion that was had um with some of our ROC individuals. Um, so if you would be willing to speak to that, Dr. Barnes, that would be great. Sure. Uh, a lot of times when we come into a meeting, sometimes the approval of the agenda can take a significant amount of time. Oh, Just as we're working through, I would ask the board would consider putting the presentation of colors, sorry, the invocation, presentation of colors, national anthem, and the pledge ahead of the approval of the minutes. I can't imagine anyone

007having a problem with approving that on the minutes, but that would allow our kids who have homework or have other stuff to do to kind of get in, do their piece, and and jet if that would be something you guys would consider. I'd like a motion if I can appoint to move the presentation college national anthem pledge and the invocation all to for the agenda. Yeah, just move the approval down. Yeah, second on it would be easier to say move the approval agenda down. This is a per this is a permanent change. Correct. Um is that the will of the board? Is this a permanent change? Um, Miss Barnhartt, putting clearly, Madam Chair, I believe that you have the authority to order the agenda however you'd like. So, I agree with it being a permanent

008change. I have no qualms about this, but I don't believe this requires for a board vote, but I'm in favor of this one. Um, this time I'm going to say that it's going to be a board vote simply based off the fact that we did post the agenda and this is a change to the agenda this time. um moving forward. Um now that I know that the board is okay with this, I I can make that adjustment. Um uh Mr. Perry, I understand uh students wanting to get back, but I mean this is a call of God and however we understand him. This is a a you know the singing of our national anthem. this is our country and why we're here and to not start our meeting with that seems a little off to

009me. No, that's what we're trying to do. We're just for clarification, just so that I can I'll I'll speak to it. Just for clarification, we're not getting rid of any of that. You said you're moving it. We're moving it ahead of the approval of the agenda because when we have the approval of the agenda, oftent times there's a lot of discussion and what happens is the students and the staff that are in the audience are waiting for us to get through our discussion about the approval of the agenda and they have some of the students have other commitments that they need to go to and so we're kind of delaying that with that discussion. So what we're trying to do hang on and then um what we're trying to do is provide them the opportunity

010to get their their service done and then be able to go and and do their fulfill their other obligations. Does that make sense? So, you're basically switching two and five and seven or or six and six. Okay, I'm fine. Okay. All right. Um so, there is a motion to move the approval of the the agenda until after the um pledge. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Any opposed? That passes six to zero. So with that in mind, Miss Barnhart, no. I just m I just want to point of clarity if the policy chairperson would not mind picking this up in policy as well so that it can reflect in our policy the change. So I I just appreciate that if it's going to be a permanent change, I think it should

011be in policy as well. Making sure we policy. All right. So with that change um we have the invocation um that's established we're good with that presentation of colors national anthem. Um who would like to do the pledge of allegiance? Right now we have Miss Justice on there. Um so we can keep we can keep her there. That's fine. Okay. Um, Miss Bradford. No, I was just looking ahead. Doesn't seem like minutes are attached. Am I wrong? Um, the minutes not yet. No. Um, so those are next on the list. Um, followed by recognitions. How long do you need for recognition? 10 minutes. All right. Hang on. I'll I'll let me write this down and then um Mr. Perry just one other thought that I had. It could be a junction or not. I hadn't

012heard back from far. I think especially these days sometimes we can become very disunified and uh I wouldn't mind if possible uh somewhere in our meeting being able to uh sing God Bless America as a group as an audience because that's something that went after 9/11 brought us all together. people used to do it at ball games at seventh inning and and uh we need a lot more of that and a lot less bickering amongst each other. So I was hoping maybe we could squeeze that somewhere in our agenda and find maybe one of our musically inclined people to lead us in it. Um there's nothing in policy that would prohibit prohibit that. Correct. I just want to make sure before anything I'd have sing it I'd have us sing the national anthem, but for

013most people it's very difficult song to sing. So, God bless God bless America's a lot easier. And we do have some some very talented individuals that come and do the national anthem for us. Um, but you're not proposing switching it out for No, no, I'm just saying in addition in addition to in something that we can do together as in unison so people actually sing. Gotcha. Okay. Was that a motion? Yeah. Okay. Um, Dr. Merrick, you had your hand up. Yep. I don't know whether to answer this or to go back to um where we were about minutes. Um, seems to me that it's almost every month that we are behind on minutes and that we don't have an opportunity to I mean, it's hard to go back two months to remember and write everything

014down. And what do we need to do to have the minutes be ready? Is there is there a large agenda I don't know about? Well, I believe the minutes are ready by the meeting time. They're just not necessarily hosted by the agenda review. I will speak to that a little bit. You guys have gotten much more complex in making a motion on top of someone else's motion that rescends someone else's motion. It is taking hours upon hours to go back and make sure they are correct. So, we are spending a good amount of time trying to get there. Um I will tell you if there's anything you guys can do uh the complexity of your motions are a thing that is taking time. Okay. So I would speak to Okay. I I I kind of

015love the idea, but I don't know that just singing is necessarily going to bring us together. I think that we all have some pretty strong opinions and I think they're all important. Uh that we hear everyone's opinions and I feel like we already have a lot of time in our meeting that is not actually meeting time. You know, it's important recognition is bringing the public in, but I just don't know if we need to keep stretching that apart. Sorry. And we will be discussing that more later today. Um, Miss Barnhart, I wanted to speak um to my colleague's point as far as the minutes are concerned and maybe it might be something that we can get legal counsel on. But my understanding of public records is so the minutes are one form of it. But

016since also we have the YouTube live stream that could be another form of minutes being taken is having access to that video. And if if you don't mind, Madam Chair, I'd like to ask the attorneys to speak to that. If it's not, then I'd like to have a better understanding. That's accurate. that qualifies. Now, in in the close session part, the statute just says you have to have a general account. So, you know, so the minutes are out there, just not documented. You got it. I mean, we even if we took no written minutes, the fact that we're being recorded recorded like that would would suffice. Okay. Would be in compliance. Um, just because I want to continue to talk all the time. Um, just kidding. Um, I I would disagree with my colleague. Um

017I think that every bit a bit of our uh recognitions and uh all that is extremely important. I mean we got to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. And I don't think that just you know and I don't mean the ugly in a in a really really negative way but I mean I think we do I mean to to be able to recognize and to celebrate some of the great things that we're that not we're doing but the school system is doing I think is really important and I think that for people to see that I think is really important. So, um, you know, I'm just that that's my own personal opinion, but I think it is really important that we we are the school system, the kids, the teachers are doing

018an excellent job, and we just need to really be able to highlight that from time to time. And to piggy back off that, I'm going to and then I'll um what was I going to say? It was there. It was there. I can go. Yeah. Go ahead, Mr. Ripper. And I will just piggy back off what he said. I I know in the beginning, you know, years ago, I thought, huh, that's a lot of time. And then I came to realize that this is a business meeting. We're here to do the business of the board. But if we don't recognize, I think the county does an excellent job of recognizing their people. The county manager actually comes down and shakes hands with everybody that they're recognizing. And we have really progressed over the last year

019in that. And if you looked at the comments that we had after last board meeting, we had fun when we did all of those presentations and everybody could tell that it was fun. It was a completely different atmosphere in here. And I would never want to lose those. Um I think we should do more of them. anytime we can recognize the staff, the employees from from you know the castle to the you know to the wherever the grease pit at the at the bus depot um whenever we can we should because it's it it's such a huge part of what we do and to have to be the second largest employer in New Hver County and to have 3,500 staff we need to recognize them. So, I was going to say something and I'm going

020to hold it. I wrote it down so that I would remember it because we are going to have more discussion on this later on. So, I don't want to prolong that discussion. Um, we do have a motion to add a group group sing God bless America of God Bless America. Um, and where where did you say that was, Mr. Perry? You want to put that? I'm up with a suggestions. If you want to have it during the seventh heading stretch or something, we can do that, too. I mean, if we have a motion, we need to we need to identify where it's going to go in front of or behind national one of the two. You want to back up on each other. Why don't we move the whole break and then do it? That

021sounds good. I like that. Bring everybody back. Whoa. Okay. So there is a motion to add a coral singing of God Bless America just after call to audience Miss Barnhart. So um I I love this conversation. I think it just shows like the true intent of our colleagues parts but I'm also the functionality person of this. So, um, if we have our coral individuals leave us at the the national anthem and we would like to sing, I I I have given my absentee notice. I will not be here at the July meeting, which now I'm very much sad about. Um, but if we are going to move it to a different part of the meeting, I would just like to know who would be leading us in the coral singing. Um, so that is delineated.

022Or if this is going to be an annual July meeting, which I think could be fun, too. I just not it the functionality piece of me thinks that leaving the musical people out of it is a bad idea. But I could be wrong. I could be wrong. All right, Mr. Wore. And I've already said no. I nose goes like I'm good. Done. Nope. Not doing it. I'm not doing it. Sorry, Miss Bradford. Chair, what about look at in front of the invocation. So it go call to audience, roll call, God bless America, invocation, presentation of colors, national anthem. So I've separated it, but whoever is coming to lead the singing is also going to fall in that ROC category. They're probably not going to want to stay for the whole meeting to be here after

023called audience. That would be torture. Okay, I'm okay with that. Okay, so there is a motion to add God Bless America to after the roll call. I'm just going to say it that way. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? All right. That passes five to one. And Dr. Van, can you find us a director? Right. Right. Oh, yeah. Get in the thing. I'm a little unclear. Are we singing take me out to the ball game or are we doing God Bless America? Got it. Got it. All right. Back on track here. So, we have recognitions. Administrative introductions. How long do we need for that, Miss Galler? You're fine. How long do we need for administrative introductions? I can do that. And I can name that tune in five. I can

024name that tune in 10 notes. So, which one? Five or 10? 10. Okay, that's fine. All right. Do we have a teacher voice individual? I do not believe for July we do. Okay. So, we'll move that. Um, I don't see anything for student voice, so I'm guessing no. I mean, it is July, so that makes sense. Superintendent report. uh board chair report call to audience. Um and this is where we get now we get into kind of the meat of things as far as questions and things like that. So um under information we have the new Hannover High School master plan update that we have set to take 30 minutes. Um anybody have any questions? Excuse me, Miss Bradford. I see it's under information. Um Dr. Dr. Morgan, don't we need to have to vote

025on this at some point? Are we Because if it's under information, we don't vote on it, but don't you need a vote from us? I think we will need at some point. Yes, ma'am. But not necessarily ne two weeks from now. This is just to inform you of the results from the survey in the Okay. All right. Okay. Right. Continuing on to consensus items. Uh contract with Public Consulting Group LLC. Does anybody have any questions about that? Nope. Okay. Uh, Young Scientist Academy. Miss Burnhart, I'd like some clarity on that. Um, it's my understanding. Uh, I would like to understand to make sure that my understanding is correct for the Young Life Scientist Academy. We had been partnering with them and this is just a formalized so that we can continue that partnership. I don't

026know who would be. Okay. And so, um, was there specific schools other than Freeman that I know they're working with? That one passed on. Okay. Because I see it's a three-year agreement, which is I feel atypical from um, ourUS. So, I just would like some clarity on that. I will go ahead and get the clarity on what schools. Okay. Thank you. I'll write that down. Sure. And to be clear, this is a continuation of anou. This is not a it's brand new item, right? So, the attorneys have looked at it, right? Yes, the attorneys have looked at it and this is a newou. Uh, we're formalizing the agreement with the Young Scizers Academy. Okay. All right. ESSA Title One Part A and Head Start Act. Anybody have any questions about that? Okay. Um, and just

027so that everyone knows, uh, the D, the CFCC and marine science at Ashley High Schoolouou 202526. I am going to pull that separate so that we can vote for that separate. Um, and I will not be I will be recusing myself from that. But does anybody have any questions about the CFCC and marine science at Ashley High Schoolou? Okay. UNCCW and Marine Science at Ashley High Schoolou. Dr. Correct. Could we maybe just see if if there's any concerns about any of these, maybe we could just Well, the reason I go through is because I want to just I don't want to have random and that way if we're going through the list, we can make sure it's been covered. We can know what we've covered and that way we're kind of keeping some order. Miss

028Bradford, I just realized that if you're doing this online in parentheses it says renewed. Thank you so much. There it is. Now we don't have to wonder if it's a continuation or if it's brand new. It's right there. If you're looking online, it's not going to be on the printed version. Thank you guys. I didn't catch that before. All right. Uh contracts and per Oh, Mr. Perry, I know I was a little late. I I would just uh can we I I I don't I I I'm I'm happy to vote on the on I know I should have sent it something when we were on a but um will we get any report about this the public consulting group stuff about this can we get when you give a presentation or whatever and or be

029able to address any data security concerns around this IDP system if we have any a that goes back to a yeah I'm sorry for not bringing you up. So the um PCG is the the company that built the IEP system for the state and we use the IEP system called ECATs that the state developed and we have to use it. Yeah. So but we still have to sign a contract or something or anou or whatever. Okay. I'm sorry. I I thought your question was about IEP data security. Yeah. So we have to sign anou or contract even though the state the one with the contract. So this is specific. So PCG if we're questioning the the data security around theou and not IEP security data. I can answer that a little bit separately. So um

030we use PCG for Medicaid billing for thei the information that is already in the state system. Okay. So can you address briefly the from the the part we do have a choice in can you address any data security uh issues there? No. So um all of the data security measures that are required by the state are included because it is the same development from the IEP system. So all of the information, all the student information sits in the IEP system and we use the same company to do our Medicaid billing so that everything is attached in the same so it doesn't go into a separate database or a separate cloud. Okay. It is cloud built. Yes. Sorry. You're good. I'm just taking notes on something. Um, so back to where we were, contracts and purchase

031orders. Anybody have Miss Barnhart? Oh, um, never mind. H is my question. I will ask, um, Miss Bradford. Um, one of them is a roof at Carolina Beach, but the other one it doesn't say. Is that just like going into the routine maintenance of all the roofs? Yes, it's just annual maintenance agreement. So, as issues are identified, we have a contract in place to be able to act on that. All right. Um, did you have a question, Dr. Merrick? More just a note for the public to remind us that this has already been budgeted. This is already there. This is just letting us know of a certain size contracts that you're required to tell us. Just letting the public know that this is not something new. All right. Um, child nutrition supplies. Any questions on

032that? Okay. Child nutrition produce contract. Miss Barnhart. Um, my question is to Dr. Morgan for Hing J. Many of the people who placed bid were US um, goods, but I noticed a few out of the country bids. So, I don't know if we have a process in place to solely use like US produce and contracts with food services. Um, but I don't know if there's something to speak with that realm. Well, like I said, a lot of them say that are manufactured in the United States, but some say Chile, some say Italy, some, you know, coming in. That's a great question. I don't have the answer to it. Okay. Can do it. I do know that's the only way some of that fruit can be delivered because they don't make it in the US anymore.

033So, I would think that that would might be the reason we might want to research that a little better, but I know that some look into it more, too. Okay. Just to point out to anyone that's interested, that's $664,000 worth of proof that we're about to approve. That's a lot of fruit. I love some fruit. Uh, Miss with that. Do we use any local farmers, Dr. Morgan? And is that something that we can, you know, work with our local food co-ops that to support this initi healthy eating initiatives? Yes. And I think some of them are connected with some of the larger companies as well. Um I know we went out and visited Lewis Farms a couple months ago and learned a lot about and you know they're local. We learned a lot about the

034way that they partner with other distributors as well around the country. Um, so I think a lot of it comes down to the bid process and what some of them depending on whether or not they submit a bid or not because I I mean I would love for us to be able to grow that partnership locally to support um local farmers here and and to maybe have even better impact. So I I that's maybe something for to look into as we move forward. And yeah, I mean I think anytime that's an option, I think it's considered. I think it's a question of whether or not if we're bidding something out, if they're responsive and responsible and they're the lowest bidder for things. So, um, but I always think there's an opportunity for us to look

035into those partnerships and continue the discussions. It's also a question of the the USDA requirements, too. The farms have to do certain things to be able to qualify to deliver to school lunches. Okay? So, some farms have that and some don't. It's also a question of volume. Um, some of them just can't get to the number of strawberries we need, you know, kind of thing. Well, but I remember that one of those is specifically about the the food service requirements and guidelines. Well, and I I guess where my question from the dialogue has come is if there needs to be a policy change that we can actively support local farmer farmers, I would be in favor of that for us to have that discussion as a board to make sure that we're doing that. So

036I that's something I would check but I don't think we're allowed to order for farms that don't meet the requirements for school lunches. That's true. And I think too we are also beholden to the state requirements for in terms of what those what those requirements are as well. Thank you for that clarity. Um child nutrition food contract. We touched Miss Barnhart touched upon that briefly but does anybody have any questions about that? and the milk contract. Okay. Um SRO contract with uh NHCSO. Miss Bradford. Um just for fun if maybe it's you, Dr. Morgan, or maybe Dr. Barnes. Just while we're talking about SRO's, I just always like to put out there how many SRO's we have. And I know we get two of them from Wilmington. we've get um safe schools grant but just

037cover how many SRO we have in the schools please you want to take that one yeah I I can give me just a few minutes I can check I know this contract is specifically for um we have way more than that yes we do and if you'll give me a minute I can tell you okay thank you so we'll come back to that when Dr. Morgan is um Mr. Perry the the contract and the next one which is the MO are pretty related. So think we can talk about that at the same time. Is there any substantial changes to the policy of the MOU between this uh last year and now which one for this one and for for K and L. Are there any substantial changes to either of those contracts? No. Okay. And

038the answer is that thanks to And then so I should have known. All right. Um Dr. Merrick. So on K um it looks like it looks like we uh helped to find a grant for $417,000, but the money basically goes to the sheriff's department, right? So, we're Is there any other way we could have used that money or or was that so conditioned that we couldn't uh use that because the sheriff's are paying for us to to It's a school safety grant from the state. It's specific for school safety initiatives and only for SRO's for Well, to be honest, that's that is how we've applied for it. And so, yes, when we applied for that grant specifically for SRO, it has been awarded to us specifically for that use. We've also used it for interchrome

039intercom upgrades and other camera upgrades as well in the past. Okay, that's what I'm looking for. It sounds like, you know, the the SRO's actually come out of the sheriff's budget ultimately. And so when we get a grant, I would love it if we could use it and lend a sheriff's campaign for the SRO's if you if you follow my logic. Uh so each year we write that grant each year. Um it's every two years I believe. Does that sound right? It's every year, I think. Well, this specifically was funded for two years, but it's renewed each year, but we have done a variety of different things with it. I I would love to Yeah. see that something that comes back to our schools next time. And I'll also remind the board, too, the the

040county commissioners also approved a $1 million safety initiative as well. That's for safe and civil schools and for upgrades at the high for traditional high schools. So I what I was trying to get in before we got into something else as Mr. Silverstein pointed out there's two separate grants. So the things that Dr. Barnes is pointing out that was for equipment. The SRO the SRO grant is specifically for that and that's what I was saying previously. That's the only reason we've applied for it is because it's awarded for that purpose. But they are part of the same submission. So we've submitted them at the same time. Okay. My my recommendation simply is that next year when we write them, we write them for a way that we can use still get some help. Fair. Fair.

041All right. Thank you, Minister Perry. And just as a general thing since I'm new to the board, so do you believe that um getting our school resource officers through the sheriff's and in in Wilmington are the best and most safest option for our students or or how would they compare for us hiring a private security? Give me ask, Mr. Well, I I'll speak to that. I part of this is a cooperative agreement with the sheriff's department. If we employed those people ourselves, they wouldn't have the same authority that the sheriff's department would have in regards to charging folks tickets, things like that that that um we want the sheriff's department for. If we're going to trespass someone or if someone is is on school grounds illegally, having an SRO there is much more secure. It

042also streamlines the communication between us and the sheriff's department, the DA's office, all those together work collaboratively together. And just um if we were to hire from outside of that, one, it would cost us money. One, we don't have, but two, wouldn't we also have to have some additional insurance on those individuals? I haven't looked into that, but I would assume that would be the case, right? So, I mean, overall, one, it's going to be a cost that's more than we can, but what we're trying to do is just create these relationships with the government agencies, and I think that this is a really positive relationship the the district has. No, I know. I'm just saying I think that this is a very positive relationship that the the district has with the the sheriff's office.

043So, I think that's part of it. Some members of the community who don't think that we are getting the best and brightest from the United Sheriff. This is from the community. I have no I have no personal knowledge of that. Well, and I don't see any evidence of that. I I've found very great relationships with the sheriff's department. I talked with uh Major Smith. I talked with the sheriff um you know, not constantly, but very frequently and I've been happy with the service we've been providing. And echo that. I've talked to several SRO's uh some of them, you know, most of them go above and beyond. A lot of them go well above and beyond. I mean, the kids, you know, just love them. They learn from them. So, it's just a great great relationship

044overall. I would say based on personal experience from having worked with them in high schools for decades, they're usually among my favorite group of people to have in the building. They're very supportive. They're very willing to offer suggestions. is really it's all about I agree it's all about the relationship but I think if you approach that relationship as your resource you know I used to always tell them you can do your job without me but I really can't do mine without you and so what can we do to make sure that we're working well together for the safety of the staff and students so I I would say that that partnership is incredibly valuable well thank you for letting me know um m renewing board of elections usage agreement Miss Barnhart. Thank you, Madam Chair.

045Um, looking at our school calendar, we will be in session for the municipal election. So, this is again, I believe you, Dr. Morgan, or maybe Dr. Barnes. Um, are all of these facilities that we have for polling places, separate voting sites, a separate entrance for voting sites while we are in school in school sessions so that we don't have individuals potentially just open access to our schools? Yes, there's so there's I think there's 12 on that municipal election day and they'll have separate entrances set up so that they will not be mixing in the students or staff. Okay. And this is something I've said before. I'm happy to um engage in conversations with you and the board of elections to see if there are potentially alternative sites so that we are not having the opportunity

046for potential concern on election day cycles. We've discussed potentially calendars as well, but um I do know they have among their list, I'm not sure if you're seeing that, but among their list they've got um another dozen places that they have listed as well. Mhm. But I understand I understand what you're getting at. I just wanted to say I know for the municipal elections they're they're limited the number of schools that they're using. That's good to hear. Thank you. And we also will continue to make sure that schools are not in session on on national election days. Thank you. Uh, Miss Bradford, that was my concern. I think it was it's been within the last two years that we had a major complaint of a voter just wandering the halls of a school. So, somehow

047they got access into the school and that's what Miss Barnhart and I are pretty rabid against. So, um, you know, whatever we can do to make sure that doesn't ever happen again. Uh, Dr. America, I I share the concerns of having uh unvetted public in our schools. Um I think also it's worth noting that I think it's actually a wonderful civic lesson for our students to know that this is happening, that this is something that adults do and they go out and they cast their votes and they they do their civic responsibility to choose their government. So if there's a way that we can keep it safe, uh I'd like having it in the schools. Um 2025 budget amendments. Anybody have any questions? Um we have a request, Miss Sutton, for you to go through

048the 2025 budget amendment. Sure. So um the first amendment is to the state budget. Um it's amendment number three and we're making that adjustment because we've received some additional um revisions from the state. And so I've got listed in that paragraph the the big areas where we've seen some increases. So it's increases and decreases is going both ways. the increase. Um, one was related to school safety grant and we received 411, um,576. That was actually the SRO grant. So, we knew we were getting the money and we've just been waiting for that money to come in so that we could move the expenses from local over to state to use that up because that was the plan for that money. Um, we also received $12,000 for the stop arm camera. Um that once again that's

049a grant that we applied for through the state and we received $12,000 for that. Um we received an additional $71,000 for um children with disabilities. Once again, we were anticipating that money come in. We were just waiting for the state to release it. So we've received that now. Um we received seven um $76,000 for homeless and foster children transportation. This is also another area that we were able to apply for the states um released an application. So if we had children that we were providing this service for, there was additional funding if we applied. And so we did and we received that funding. Um we received $272,000 for children with disability funds as um an additional aotment. Um once again we had planned for um to receive the money just waiting for it to come

050in. And then the biggest adjustment that you'll see is um the red reduction related to the AI pilot that the board chose not to move forward with. So the state took those funds back. So we had to make that adjustment on our budget side. And then we received a small additional amount for behavior support. Um $7,656 you see there. And so that's it for the state budget amendment. Do we have questions about that before I move to local? So the safety grant was a positive. The um stop arm was a positive. The children with disabilities was a positive. Homeless and foster children transportation was a positive. The two negatives were the reduction to the AI pilot and and I apolog I misspoke. The behavior support was a little bit less than what we had budgeted

051would come in. So that's um almost $3.8 million in negatives. Thank you. 3.1 but also too those positives aren't new money coming in. That's money repaying that we already paid. Right. Closer to 3.1. I'm sorry. It's closer to 3.1 than 3.8. A good reduction because it's only 7,000 in behavioral support. So when you add Oh, you're right. You're right. Good. Good catch. 85,000. You're right. And 7,000 is closer to 3.1 reduction. The uh local current expense amendment that you'll see that net um looking at all of the changes together, the net amount is zero. And so, um, what that is is that's us moving within our local budget. So, we did have some lap salaries during the year and we were making some adjustments to cover local supplements were higher than we originally budgeted for.

052So, we're just making that adjustment um to um not have any overages by program. And so, that's what you're seeing there. But the net impact to local was a zero change. Any questions related to that? And you'll see those similar things will happen when I bring I'll bring another budget amendment um in August where because we're still working on closing out the year. So you'll see something similar to that again in August. Then for the federal amendment, this is also um the third amendment for federal and you'll see here that this is um recording on our budget several different things. Um once again you'll see several increases here. Um the prek um children with disabilities um was one area where we received some additional funding and that we have been waiting for $67,000 approximately. Um

053a small increase the title one budgets $35,000 approximately. um children with disabilities targeted assistance um you'll see is $36,000 and that's also an area where we apply for additional funding and that's for a certain students that we have enrolled and um so we applied and received that funding for those students. Uh children with disabilities prek targeted assistance $6,400 once again we applied for that for a particular student and received that funding. language acquisitions 20,000. Um that's the last allocation for that program for the year ch and ch and um the overall children with disabilities. The last allocation for that program for this year was 170,000. Um so we that's it for our federal amendment. Any questions related to that one? But again again these are all things that we anticipated and now they're in. Yes,

054ma'am. So, we we don't budget those um until the funding actually comes from DPI, but we have it in our budget plan. Um and we just are paying for those expenses with local until the state releases the money so we can actually move the expenses and use a federal um capital outlay. You've seen um some amendments through through the year. Um we've had several of those. We're actually on budget amendment five for capital. Um, and the biggest thing that you see in this area, DPI actually allocated funding for a replacement of 18 buses. We So, the funding is there. We've we've gone ahead and ordered those buses. We haven't received the buses yet. So, this will actually carry over into next year. We'll make the actual payment once we receive buses. Um, but I wanted

055to go ahead and get that budgeted here. So, this is actually an increase. We didn't have this originally planned. We applied for those replacements buses and we received um that funding from DPI and we also had um some savings. So we we also have a decrease there related to some lottery projects where we had savings in projects. So, um, how that works is we we do final reporting, um, related lottery projects and once we do that, DPI pulls that lottery money back from those projects and it goes back in the big pot for us to use for other future projects. So, um, that amount went back to lottery. Any questions about capital? Mr. Perry, um, are these are we in need of buses or existing ones or is this part of the electric bus move?

056No, these are just replacing high um mileage buses. And I don't know, Dr. Morgan, if you have anything to add to that. No, the I I think you're right. I think it's just on a rotation the replacing buses, the older high mileage buses. Okay, great. Mhm. and they have to meet that certain criteria to be eligible for replacement through this program. Thank you. And I know our bus drivers will definitely appreciate that for sure. Well, I think it's wonderful seeing 2.8 million coming in for capital because we've talked about how can we secure more funding for capital from the state and this is a great way to do it. So, kudos to the staff for getting that done. Um for child nutrition, this is actually the first budget amendment for that um fund. they have

057a little bit more um sales, food sales than they had originally anticipated going into this last quarter. So, we wanted to get that budgeted. And then also, we had decided this year we were going to charge them for indirect cost. And so, they hadn't set up that indirect cost line item in their budget yet. So, this will set that up for them. And then um the last fund is our other restricted revenue fund and that is the third budget amendment this year for that area. Um you'll see here the bigger items are um and I say bigger, it's actually all of those items make up that dollar difference. Um CTE actually sold some um equipment during the auction sale. So, we are budgeting for CTE, that $2,600 you see there. We received an additional um

058reimbursement from Medicaid um administration. Um this $1,700 that is a little bit more than we had budgeted there, Medicaid direct reimbursement 341,878. Um that is also in addition to the budget that we had in place because the Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement it varies like it's it's harder to estimate that and so normally what we do and if you remember in the budget process we collect the money this year and then we budget and spend it in the following year. So that if I didn't receive everything I was anticipating receiving by the end of this year I would need to adjust next year's budget. So, we have that built into next year's budget already. Uh, CTE agricultural grant was received. So, our CTE pro um area applied for $100,000 grant and they received that and they're

059using that for two green houses. Um, and I can't remember the schools where those green houses are off the top of my head, but Holly Shelter and Rolling Rice. So, they'll be getting green houses at those schools. So, we're working on that. Um, Ogden Elementary PTA provided a donation um for playground equipment. So, that's the $8,200 increase you see there. Uh, we're also partnering with Katefir Community College. Um, they actually have a summer career academy program and this isn't the first year we've done this. This we've been doing this for several years. Um, however, this year, because most of the people that are participating or helping out with this academy are our employees, they've asked if we would be willing to pay the employees for them. So, we have an estimate here of what we

060think the payroll cost is going to be. And so, what we'll do is we'll budget this and then we will bill Capefir um for those charges and then um we'll reimburse oursel. So that's what that budget is going to be used for. We also received quarterly funding from the new Hannover County PEG grant. So this goes to our um TV studio. Uh we we and this is about the amount we get every quarter. And um as we have needs in the TV studio, they can use this funding. And we budget this as it comes in because once again that it's usually a smaller amount as you see here about $6,200. But because it varies, I budget as it comes in and they spend the money after it's received. So they don't spend until the money

061actually comes in. Does that make sense? Um and then we have community use funding that's also come in during the year that we needed to budget for the schools. So this is anytime activities are happening at the school. Part of the charge for using the facilities is to reimburse schools for custodial supplies um and custodial help. So, this is budgeting that for the schools to use for next year. Uh, Dr. Merrick has a question for you. Yes. I'm so sorry. It might just be one of those wonderful coincidences, but that number 46342 is exactly what the summer career academy was. Is that is there maybe a different number that's supposed to be plugged in there? Let me look. Let me look. I mean, I love it when the universe does that and just makes it

062all special, but it's probably not. So, hold on. Let me look here. Um it is a little different. It was a transposition on my number. Good catch. The um community use number should be 46,637. So 637 instead of that 342. My apologies for that. No worries. Thank you. And then we also are having uh summer camps this year for art. And so we're collecting the fees from the parents to provide um that summer camp. And so we've collected uh 24,769 for the summer camp. And so that'll be used to pay for that program over the summer. And technology um equipment repair fees are also charged. and we've collected $837 that will be budgeted to reimburse technology for the expenses that they incurred in um repairing that equipment. Any questions? Miss Burmer. So, just to recap

063the additional funding that we were not planning on that we received, we got an additional 2.8 8 million for the capital for the buses. And then under the unrestricted funds, the 1,777 was an additional from the estimate we were anticipating as well as the 341,000 was additional from the estimate for Medicaid reimbursement. Um, yes, there's two. Okay. And then the CTE grant for Let me go. Let me No. Okay. So the 371,000 we've already budgeted in next year's budget. And so that it's um it's not in this year's budget, but we incorporated um we have an estimate in next year's budget. I don't remember exactly what we estimated. It might have been like 500,000 in next year's budget. Um but I am anticipating additional this will carry over and be used for next year's budget.

064So that is an addition to the 500,000 that we were estimating. This is part of the 500,000 I was anticipating. Does that make sense? Yes. With Medicaid money, we're careful not to spend it until it gets here because sometimes it shows up at all different times. Yes. From 25 years ago. I'm just I'm exaggerating a little bit. But then the CTE grant, the 100,000 was a new fund received that we got. Where did that come from? From the state grant. So, yep. So, that came from DPI as well. Um there was an application and um Hamilton if you Yeah application. So once again there was an opportunity to apply for a grant and we certainly did that and we received it. So shout out to our CT we wouldn't have moved forward with those green

065houses without the grant. So that would help fund that. Miss Brefordick. Um, and on recapping, just going back when the DPI had allocated, they reduced their allocations of the $3 million for the AI pilot. Had you budgeted that were you? I did. I had that budgeted. So, if the contract was approved, we'd be able to just move forward. Um, so then that's why I'm having to reverse it out. Thank you. Just want to make it clear, every year we hear a story about a district in the state who has to go back to the county commissioners and look for more funding because they can't balance their books. There's a story about that out there right now. There was a a question about one specific number and you had the exact number in your notes. I

066just want to remind you that she knows this budget to the penny which is incredible. Yeah. So just kudos to you for keeping me out of prison. Okay. Any other questions? Okay. Continuing policy policy chair, Mr. Wdeore. How long? Yes, ma'am. Well, we have several. Most of these have uh little uh just changes in wording. Uh adding a couple letters on on on a uh something at the bottom cross reference. There are I would say to my thinking there probably are three that are pretty substantial. 2210, 2330, and 4150. So I would imagine we probably need at least 15 minutes to talk. 15. Say 15. All right. 15. No, 50. Sir, I'm kidding. We'll let you hear. No, none of that. Mr. Bradford, do we have No. Um, down below the 1720, 4030, and 7235

067title 9 non-discrimination on the basis of sex. Did the attorneys have something for us on that today in in open session? Um, there's some things that have changed or something. No. Did I make that up? Because that's on the budget. excuse me, the agenda for July in two weeks, that policy. Um, we we've we've kicked that we've kicked that thing around a while, but it's it's still there. It's been kicked down the road, but it's still there. So, has something changed that we would then need to know that by this by this vote for the last policy meeting, has that discussed? Um, isn't this a hold over from last year? It's a hold over from June 30. Put it back. That was that was the reason it's back on there. It's coming back to me

068now. Um, I I can't recall what the discussion about that was though, but I can look and figure it out. I think this is a continuation of it. the conversation about if you say sex, it includes you know uh pregnancy, it includes uh gender uh uh you know roles, it includes all those things when you talk about harassment and discrimination. Anything is covered by the name sex. The question was whether or not we needed to remove certain words or not. I think the the discussion on that recollection is for time purposes we balanced that Yeah. Right. Correct. So, has anything changed in the last month that we need to look at that for just be ready in two weeks? I mean, I haven't seen anything through the NCSB or anything. Um, it wasn't one of

069the three policies that I was going to be looking at following my last policy meeting. There was three that I was going to study for the Okay. Now, there was a Supreme Court case out last week on um transgender issues that may or may not impact title 9 going forward. Um but we again haven't gotten guidance from the school board association on how that changes things if at all yet. But the state school versus Miss Burnhart, did you hear that? Um yes, I did. I I know there's been a lot of discussion with the school assignment policy 4150 and like um like you know manager I won't be here at our regular board meeting and so I just wanted to make clarity because when I was looking over theus for both our cooperative innovative high

070schools and our prek programs there are weights that we utilize um to show preference and they're outlined by the state and so in here I see the caveat and I appreciate the policy committee putting that in there in 4150 this does not include the cooperative inov innovated high school programs. Um, but I think there's a lot of question as far as the details of a lottery, but we do have um student criteria process in place currently. And so if this is saying that we are changing to a lottery, I do think um we should look at prek and make sure that that gets addressed too because most of I well my understanding is all of our NC prek slots are servicing high-risk high need students. And so I just wanted to make sure that we're

071not going to be jeopardizing anything in that area as well. Um and then my other question around that is about lottery assignments and slots if there's an opportunity to expand any of those so we can serve more students. And so I'm just putting it out there now because I won't be able to add that to the discussion um in two weeks from now. Mr. Sure. And I I would um like to address the 4150 uh briefly just to uh to uh take into consideration uh my colleague to the left's uh comments just then. Um and I think that this is something you know that we're going to have further discussion on uh as far as other but I think this is a good change as far as getting rid of the weights for now and

072we can still have a discussion later as to you know what we should have hardships and what what the hardship should be and we can also again discuss you know what about the the high school programs and all that and so I I I imagine we're going to bringing it back to policy for further consideration. But I think for now I think we I think we all pretty much uniformly decided that what we're proposing now is a good first start. Mr. And I'm just going to make real quickly that I had a situation between my left uh and she let me know which I didn't realize. So my fault uh but that there's no uh not spouse uh sibling um clarification for the the high school. Yeah. Cuz that is Yeah. Right. So So there's

073no no sibling exception. Right. I actually had somebody that came and said, "My other child's in, you know, we got a denial." And I said, "Oh," and I I I thought there was I stepped back and said, "I let me investigate." I said it only because it's rubric based. The non-ooper, sorry, non-ooperative that doesn't sound right. The innovative cooperative high schools have their own rubric basis for that. Right. I'm going to ask Julie as well to email specifically to the board a copy of all of the um procedures for enrollment and I would just ask the board to make sure they've reviewed those so they have a clear understanding of what our current policies are just because it's very complex. I mean there's a lot in there and I do have to say that Miss

074Barnum did an excellent job and and said, "Hey, let me talk to the first director so that um Miss Bar, did you have anything?" Yes, I did. And as as far as speaking to that, I mean, I know this says no weights, but I my understanding was the siblings would still be grandfathered in. And so I guess there's some clarity from my end as well. Um, I I also had sent um to my comments to the policy committee to consider should we be making exceptions if you're zoned for a failing school and should they have a higher priority to get into a choice school if they want. I think these are considerations that we should openly discuss and consider when we're when we're offering different choice options to say why are we why are we

075offering them and are we trying to do so in an event to elevate the educational environment for our students? And I think uh if a child is currently zone for a failing school and a parent wants a different option to keep them in the public school, I think that we should consider that um as something to potentially grandfather in a preferential treatment. I I don't believe that that's a lottery if you if you have a weight. Um and so I think we need to be more clear to say are we going to have a list of criteria of things that you automatically get into one of these schools? If we do, are we going to consider um do we allow students who have outward behavior issues? Do we allow them to be accept? I mean,

076there are lots of things that we should be considering if we're going to have a criteria. And so, I I would look forward to seeing that, not only for the high school portions of the rubric, but also our elementary schools to see how that looks um moving forward because I think it's going to be an interesting conversation. Um the student assignment plan and enrollment handbook that I will um share with you has all of the um hardship guidelines that have been um board determined over the past several years. It also includes the timely attendance and behavior standards for open choice and for maintaining open choice. And then um it also clarifies which privileges are intact by which schools and sibling privilege is intact for every school except for our cooperative innovative high schools that are

077rubric based by individual student as Dr. Barnes explained. Dr. And there was some confusion about it last time when we talked uh when we began this conversation around uh is it a lottery or is it a needs-based or some hybrid and I had said that I want to find a way to uh to give a benefit to our our educators that they would have some waiting that would allow them uh maybe a better chance to get in. We we need to we need to give our educators every leg up that we possibly can. And so again, is that I don't know how you have a hybrid of lottery and waiting. So I'm eager to see someone solve this for me. Go for it. So employee benefit is also explained in the handbook that I will

078share. It's in your um board newsletter, but I will send it to you separately. Um, it explains employee benefit and the assigned schools, but there's also the employee hardship option where employees can request a hardship assignment and the standard for employees receiving a hardship assignment and a standard for a non-employee are different. So um a non-emp employee must show that a substantial hardship in order to that cannot be um accomplished or cannot be accommodated in any other way other than the transfer. An employee only needs to show a an inconvenience. So employee hardships I handle those continuously and constantly. Um but the it'll explain that our um year- round schools are not considered in the employee hardship piece. But if you work at one of those schools then you in you have employee benefit. It's

079very comp. Yes. Thank you though for the clarification. Okay. Oh okay. Um we have nothing under old business. Uh, under new business, we have a discussion of NCSBA masterclass. And I have to apologize to board members. I had a document and I forgot I had the document. I just sent it to you guys. I sent it to Crystal for it to be posted online. But um, NCSBA um, is offering some master classes for trainings um, for board members and it can be anything from ethics to policy to any number of things. And so I wanted us to kind of consider the possibility of participating in some of those. Look at that. They already have it up. They're fantastic. Um, but I did send this to board members and it will be posted on the agenda

080once the agenda is posted for the public to be able to see as well. Um, but they have multiple options and we can get um we can get credits and we can get um I guess like awards. Um so just something to consider and um really I didn't figure it would take much longer than 10 minutes. So uh Mr. Okay. I know as do many of these options include a lot of rules training. So there is a multitude and you'll be able to read through some of those options. Um but there's a there's a list of different courses that that we can take. Um some of them I mean like I said it's anything from working together to policym to you know the different things that that we have to do the different rules that

081we have. So there's a lot of options. Um, but I wanted the board to be able to consider some of those. So, I I um I sent that to you and um again, my apologies for not doing that sooner. Um that was that was on me. Miss Bradford, remind us what our educational requirements are per year. Does anyone know? So it is two we have to have two hours of ethics training um every two years and 12 hours of board of training every two years. Is it two years or one year? Two years. Is that okay? Madam Chair, Miss um you and I had a conversation about just different opportunities that we could create for the board. And so this is this spawned from this is we had a conversation with some of the NCSBA

082directors of just opportunities that we could create to work together through some things. Um, and so we we were able to compile a list of things that we could say these might be interests for us to work together and do some of these trainings because many of us come from very different backgrounds and so the only opportunities we have to come together are usually broadcast live stream and media is here and so this is just a way um to bring that forward. So thank you for bringing that to us. Yep. Um, next on the list we had an individual offer to do title six training. um because they're not on the list of individuals that we have that are already pre-approved. They're not under NCSBA or Kalen. Um we we're bringing it forward to the

083board and I it is my understanding that either the I I believe the attorneys have more information about it. So, can you remind us what that is? Okay. the former um board attorney Jonathan Bogle has put out a series of seminars on title six and their updates and we feel the board would benefit from such an update and and it would also count I think as your hourly class if the board so chooses. Um, so he he laid out the options of doing a webinar, which is much cheaper because you wouldn't have to travel to and forth, or he offered to come here and do it in person, but I think the expenses, you know, the additional six or seven hours that would be involved with that might not be palatable for the board. So,

084it's something for us to consider uh think about mull over in the next couple weeks. And uh, Mr. Wilbur, I I question it, you know, sparked something. We used to do have to do title N training to be able to hear have the title N hearings. We haven't heard about that recently. I don't know if we don't have to do that anymore or if that's if you guys maybe could look into that whether we have to continue, you know, because we haven't done it in the last few years. We certainly can look into that. I I wrote down to identify all the requirements of the various CLE for board members. So, we have that on hand for you guys. Thanks, sir. And I would remind board members that the kalen offers it's like a 30

085minute or 45 minute um training like there's one Friday. I don't even remember what the topic is but I found those to be very helpful and I'm I'm acrewing them to these hours because they count because they're an approved um training source for us. Um and I'm hoping to rack up my hours so I don't have to do any travel. Okay. So, um, we'll definitely have more discussion on all of this in two weeks. Um, but the next thing on there is the, uh, 202526 board meeting schedule. Um, so this is the proposed meeting schedule. Um, there are some different caveats and some things that we have to consider. There's some things that are set in stone, but I wanted to kind of present this to the board so that everyone has an awareness of

086some of these um concerns, exceptions, and then that we as a board can wholly decide what what we would like to do for alternatives. So that's what that is for for us to consider. Um I didn't figure that would take much more than 5 minutes either. So we need to be ready on that in two weeks. So it yes, everyone needs to be ready on that. and on the NCSBA discussion um for the master class. Next is um the superintendent's listening tour which we have for five minutes, but also um Dr. Barnes, if you could address the um discussion we had about the town hall. Sure. You guys have policy states you're going to do three town halls in the year. Um I've already set myself up to do a listening tour with the public

087in the summer. uh last year. Obviously, you know, I met with all of the staff throughout the beginning of the summer and and and beginning of the school year. I'm going to recreate and do that again. Uh but I want to add in the opportunity to speak to staff and the public uh in a forum like this. Um if you want that to take the place of your town hall, it's a great opportunity. I want to talk to them about strategic plan. I want to talk to them about my goals for next year. Uh the direction the school system is going. If you wanted to make that a part of what I was doing, you could certainly come and be a part of that. If that wanted to be something, you wouldn't have to do

088yet another thing on your own. You have I will have them for you for next for the July 8th meeting. And do we need a vote on that next week when we need to vote? I would say yes. Okay. I mean, I'm going to do them anyway. I think you're voting whether or not you The question is, do we want to substitute that for some of the town halls? Correct. And those have been those were so much more effective than the town hall model. So yeah. Uh oh, you both simultaneously put your hand on Dr. Barrett. Uh so we have in policy that we need to hold what three town halls per year. So if I understand you, Dr. Brown, you're saying are you recommending that we could use your listening tour as one of

089our town halls? You've only had two in the 2024 2025 school year. So I know it'll be in July, but if if you wanted to use this one as a jumping off point to close out your 2425 school year, all for it. Thank you, Mr. K. If we're still on a new business, I don't know if this would be come under uh correspondence or new business, but that's why I'm mentioning it now, just in case. Um, at our last regular meeting, I had there had been a last second edition of a a letter that M. Barack wanted us to approve, and since I hadn't read it, I voted against it, but I've read it now, and I think it's great. So, um, I was wondering if we could add a vote on that to either

090new business or to corresponding, whatever is better. I mean, I wouldn't probably put it under new business as it was something that was already previously discussed. Um, if it was going to go anywhere, I would say probably call a respondent, but at that point, we don't have there's nothing to vote on, and I believe at this point, it's been a month since that letter was sent. Um, will of the board, Miss Bradford, um, is there any reason why we can't go back and amend today's agenda and do it today? We do have a pretty full agenda and I'm actually going to make some I mean it's it's kind of a timely thing and if we wait another two weeks it's kind of like old eggs but I think if we have a supermajority we can

091make it right quickly. I would move that we add it to the agenda and just it take longer than we've already talked now to do it just to add it. Okay. Under um old business. Okay. So there's a motion to add the letter from Dr. Barnes. Um, under old business. Second. Okay. All those. Uh, Dr. M. I I I I see we've already a couple times today been a little bit what I would consider fast and loose about putting stuff on the agenda. Um, I have been chastised in the past and told no, the time has gone by for putting something new on the agenda. And I recognize that sometimes we have things that that we do want to put on the agenda last minute. I'm not arguing against it, you know, straight up, but

092I want to I want to remind this group that we should probably be a little bit more judicious about if we're going to have rules about putting things on the agenda, we should stick to it or expect that there's going to be some push back. Miss Gerber, I hear what my colleague is bringing to attention. However, when it's the majority of the board having a conversation to amend the agenda, that is the purpose of the governing body. So, I do want to caution us by saying playing fast and loose when we are bringing it to attention of everybody. This was something that I wanted to do last month and it would did not come to consensus. So, it's something that I support. I think it's outdated, but I do support it. I I'm glad that

093Dr. Barnes stood up for our students and stood up for our staff in an event that was not of any of our own fault. We were told we have to test on technology and when an issue arises to be openly communicating with the organization that we expect to work with us while we're doing um everything they've asked and it's so I mean I support this and I don't think it there's anything wrong to bring it to attention. now for what it's worth. Okay. So, there is a motion to add the letter to old business. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. I. Any opposed? That passes six to zero. Um and then so depending on how long we take today in close session, we will keep close session on there. Um personnel

094report. We would need close session anyways tomorrow or tomorrow. Two weeks. Okay. Not tomorrow. Sorry. Um so personnel report uh correspondence, announcements, and adjournment. Miss Barnhart, what is our time? We are at 3 hours and 20 minutes without a close session. Madam Chair, is that including a break? No. So 3 hours and 25 minutes if we include a break. Okay, M. Yes, Mr. Wilar. I'd like to make a motion. Uh, we have a great group of young young people over here. They're waiting patiently. Um, they're here now and ready to go. I have checked and um they would So, I'm going to I would like to make a motion that we allow the turnaround task for the former turnaround task force. I I'll be send correct corrected uh to uh speak to us before the

095um Close session. Second. Yeah, I was actually thinking the same thing. So, great minds think alike. Dr. Barnes, can I ask that we also add an early learning facilitator presentation as well? No, no, no. Sure. Absolutely. C. Okay. So, we're wanting to I mean, I can't I'm just asking you to amend your motion. Oh, I'll amend the motion. Yes. For C and D to be before close session so that our these individuals can do their presentations and get out the door um and aren't waiting on us. So, uh, D then C first. Is that D then C? Yes. All right. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? That passes six to zero. Come on up. Come on up. Well, he needs a mic. A mic and a clicker. Here. Do we

096have a microphone for him? You don't need a mic. Just so that the just so that the public can hear you, too. We want to make sure that they can hear you as well. Wondering around. Yes. Stand right in the middle of the room. Okay. We good? Yes. Okay. Uh, good afternoon. Thanks for moving me up. My name is Scott Listen. Um, I'm with the uh what was known as the Turnaround Task Force. Uh, first of all, I want to thank this body here for allowing the Turnaround Task Force to do its work. We've gotten tremendous support from almost every one of you here. I've been to one or more meetings. You know, I've been very attentive and very supportive of that and encouraged us to move forward with our work. And so it's with

097great pleasure I bring you a sort of a an end of task force report but with a an eye toward looking at the future going forward. Uh we were founded by Stephanie Walker who's right here now county commissioner and formerly one of you all uh two years ago to look at what Steph and I talked about is probably the biggest issue facing our schools and um so it was two years ago this month uh had 21 uh members of from the community education nonprofit business and we're looking at the disparity between school among schools within this district. uh we were formed as a board advisory committee. So we were kind of under the jurisdiction of this body right here. And our goals were to figure out what the problem was, what led to it, what's

098an overall response to it, what are individual tactics to get to that response, how much would it cost, and then where would you get the funding? The problem is the most pronounced disparity of any school district in North Carolina. I mean, there's 155 elementary schools. We have the third highest achieving school in our county. We have the third from the bottom. Um there are other schools clustered at either end and that's something we need to fix now for turnaround task force uh purposes a public school in the new county system majority minority populations. So more than 50% minority at least 50% of the students receiving free reduced lunch. You see the list of schools there that fit that criteria. Gregory sort of we had to bend a little bit because Gregory's a special situation. It's

099a disparity within the school of uh the immersion program and the rest of the school. The rest of the school looks a lot like the schools we're trying to turn around. This is a very I'm going to go into this a little bit more. These are our five primary pillars. Uh this is what elevate every child is what we've became. I'll talk more about that in a little bit, but these are the pillars that are driving the work that we're doing. And essentially what we're saying here is if we could get every kid coming to school at kindergarten at grade level having reading by third grade have a positive experience in every classroom in every school which is another way of saying teachers understand trauma and understand how to meet them where they are. If

100we can get them to see a future when they graduate, either enlist, enroll or employ so they see the point of high school in later years and they see a future. And then later we've added can we remove community barriers that are keeping them from getting there. If we could do those things, we've reformed not only these 10 or 12 turnaround schools, we reform we've reformed the whole school district and we've made it probably one of the best if not the best in North Carolina. So I want to talk about early education. There's been a lot said about that in the last couple of weeks. Um couple of studies I want to bring your attention. The Darian study in Chapel Hill 50 years ago, they have monitored uh these kids who did get preschool and

101who did not. And they found at age 21, they're a lot more uh likely to attain educational goals, like less likely to be teen parents or report depression. At age 30, you start to get into they're more likely to hold bachelor's degree. Uh they're six times less likely to have received public assistance for at least 10% of that period. Then you get to age 35, uh you start to get inly to have high blood pressure or coronary heart disease. Uh the males have lower instances of of um hypertension or obesity. So that's in Chapel Hill, a 50-year look back in Gibson, Michigan. It was a the Perry project found that for every dollar invested, $7 was returned to the community. That's probably a low estimate based on what others that you'll see. Um, this one

102looks at the children of the kids who were part of this project, the preschool kids, kids, and they are far more likely to be born to married parents. Uh, 17 points less likely to have been suspended. Uh, and you see 26 percentage points more likely to be employed, 8 percentage points less likely to be divorced, and the children of the male participant, 18 points less likely to have been arrested to adult young adulthood. Um, I don't think you would find a community that regretted investing in early. Now, here we don't have good data on who's been to preschool and who has not. So, it's hard for us to get good statistics on how successful the preschool is, but we're trying to get that. We also know kindergarten readiness is tested at all the kindergartens, but

103it's not tested. The word I hear a lot from the staff is fidelity. Uh they don't do it very consistently. So, you get some outcomes that don't make common sense. However, it tracks higher r higher ratio of unprepared students are attending lower. I expect now this our group at J Maro is starts leading national facilitator we're trying to get answer some of these questions we surveyed parents of preschool age kids who were not whose kids were not in preschool and they were almost all very low income what was interesting is 82% said preschool was important but they had barriers trying to get enrolled they they didn't couldn't get the information they needed did they got you know somehow they got frustrated and gave up. So we know we need to get people in the field

104who can help people enroll into preschool uh and meet people where they are. Uh they need transportation after hours care. Um we got to be able to define quality preschool. Uh so we understand what that means. Um uh we need to be able to define what kindergarten readiness means probably in the time it takes to run up these stairs out here. that that that simple and that concise. The kindergarten teachers we've talked to is will tell you it's not about academics. They don't care if they know can tell you where they live or can identify colors. It's about are they socially ready. They'll tell you that the kids who didn't go to preschool are the ones who don't know how to play on the playground. They don't know how to sit still. They don't know

105how to take in a lesson. It's about socialization. Uh for the most part, as we do this, we're going to have to pay uh preschool teachers more. they make typically make a wage that's um that's embarrassing and as that becomes more then the overall cost of operating one becomes more. So if that gets passed on to the enroles, we got to be able to subsidize or scholarship them so they're not able they're able to afford it. And this needs to include transportation and after school programs. If the school day ends at 2:30, we really haven't done much to help a lot of these parents were having to work. On the flip side of that, if we can solve that problem, think how many uh not just women, but primarily women we will release to the

106workforce if we could take care of their kids long enough for them to do a shift. And I'm sorry. I just want to make sure that the public's aware and also the board's aware that preschool pay teachers at preschool in schools. They are paid the same salary as teachers and then there is no enrollment fee for parents who participate in right. That's a function of the private system. I just want to make sure we clarify that that's a private that's a function of the private system. Yeah. when they attend a public school, yeah, the teachers pay like a public school teacher. And frankly, our recommendation would be that all preschool teachers at least make what public school teachers make. If we were able to do that, that would radicalize the preschool system in this county.

107And you would have people from all over the state, if not the region, I'm trying to come here. Now, if you're able to add say 500 kids, we don't, as I said, we don't know exactly how many we can add. Where do you put them? Uh I'm pleased Dr. Barnes and I are on the same page as far as using existing schools with classrooms there whenever you can. It's a great way to do it. Other communities have done this and that's typically what they've done. They've used the schools that they have. But these are questions we're trying to solve. We hope to have at least a preliminary grant or planning grant uh put together by this fall that would lead to a bigger ask. And this is without question the most important of the goals

108I'm going to talk about right here. We've got to fix this. I'm not going to go into research for all these goals. If you need research that reading at third grade's beneficial, let me know and I'll get you some. Um, what we've done on literacy is uh the literacy coach uh that came from the previous administration is a great program. If it were up to us, we might have staggered more of them into schools of need and not spread them to every school. That being said, this is a very good program. Full service community school at Freeman is also was funded by the endowment also. So that is a program at Freeman that allows the school day to be longer for some kids and they get more instruction. Uh they only used it for like

10930 kids, but the third graders, fourth graders, and fifth graders were like 10% 14% 17% improve per no not percentage points improvement on their um interim reading scores during the year. It it worked fabulously. I hope y'all can get more information on that in and of itself. They also uh did a much better job of engaging with parents and they had a 600% increase in parent engagement with their specialty nights at at Freeman. So we hope that program grows in its second year. The freedom schools just started at um uh over at communities and schools over at Gregory. Uh those are schools primarily aimed for minorities for self-esteem but also is math and English. And those kids do better. They were able to double the capacity through a grant with the endowment. So, those are

110things that we've done. The future, we'd like to replicate successful reading programs that have been done elsewhere and maybe look at some other ways to get uh some more structured tutoring, positive culture. uh uh Julie Barnum who's been our primary liaison is fantastic on this uh subject and she can tell you more uh than I can but we've already accomplished the CPI reforming behavior training which is a way of saying helping stu uh teachers understand trauma related behavior in their classroom. Uh the district has funded a leader and me program at Snipes that can start next year that's going to uh focus those kids on that leadership program and sort of well yeah it's going to um raise the culture there. And we've also uh worked with our vendors at the county and coastal horizons

111to reduce weight time for mental health services and that was accomplished. Safe and civil schools is is not even pending. It's underway right now and Julie tells me that teachers are very excited. This is um if you look Agna, Mason, Ritzel Beach are in the top two percentile in the state of North Carolina as far as 155 elementary our top 12 schools are within the top 18%. If you look in the salmon colored over there, these are the grade the percent that are passing those end of grade tests. A lot of 90s, high 80s. Okay, if you look at the bottom, there's four schools that are below the 10th percentile. And one, like I said, is third from the bottom. And less than 10% of those students are passing third grade reading and fifth grade

112reading and some other very low scores. This is all happening within the second smallest landmass county in North Carolina. This wider discrepancy. Look at a different way. If you group the top 12 schools, compare them to the bottom six, and bottom six is almost a quarter of your elementary schools, the gap in average score on or average uh pass rate for end grade is astounding. At the middle school, this same thing happens. We've got six schools at the 70th percentile or higher and then Willis's at the 11th. uh it's not as pronounced at the high school level because schools eventually start merging after a while into the same but still the handover lags the others. We talk about race, we're really talking about poverty uh generally speaking although race is a predictor of poverty but

113the scores come to us in terms of racial. So that's what I'd go with. And if you look at the individual race racial scores by each integrade test and then look how uh blacks compare to whites, they're not within 46 percentage points of whites on any of the elementary school tests. Same thing happens at the middle school level, a little less pronounced at the high school level. The Hispanic column to the right is not much better. So, we're leaving our minority kids behind in our schools and particularly some schools more than others. I want you to pay particular attention to this. This is um racial breakdown of each test at each school. So, I can tell you that at Ogden Elementary, 97% of the white kids pass the math test, whereas at Freeman, 15% of

114the black kids pass the same test. Uh same kind of thing happens in reading there. Grab circle third grade reading. You're up in the 80s on those three schools. And then there's four schools down there that are one's less than 10%. Others are right at it. I want you to look at that. Well, there's a lot of blanks in there. And that's because our schools are so um segregated that there's not enough black kids at those class at those schools to even have a subgroup that's statistically significant. And on flip side, there's not enough white kids at some of these other schools to have a significant subgroup. However, at Masonboro, there is a group of Hispanic kids, and Mason Burough, I believe we said, was 11th in the state overall. How are those Hispanic kids

115passing the third grade math rate at 93% of them when they do poorly, so many other places and other minority kids do so poorly? that's open for debate, but I suggest sub submit to you that when you have a school where the overall majority is focused on learning, uh they're not having to deal with large amounts of trauma in the classroom and they've got parents in a community that supports overwhelmingly the school and teachers are allowed to just teach and not have to deal with some of the other things. Kids will learn anywhere. If we could get to a a situation where all kids could be in that situation, I think you'd start to see those kinds of performances. So, do we fund our potential? That's the question that should be asked. Could we be

116doing more? Uh, the North Carolina Public School Forum has a metric for measuring how much taxable uh real estate wealth per student versus how much local revenue per student is allocated. And you'll see in Hanover County, and this is before the most recent budget, obviously this is the year before. It's ranked 82nd out of a 100 counties in terms of funding effort, the word they use. Now, if you look over to the right, there's the top 10 counties. And you see Guilford, Wake and Mechanburgg are right around where the handover is, but Guilford, Versythe, and Cumberland are are funding a lot more. But if you remember, and I showed you um how they ranked on end of grade, they did much worse than us. I have a theory there. I have a theory that these

117counties didn't get serious about funding their schools until they got really bad, which is not a really good strategy to follow. Uh and then you look at some of our regional counties. Now, some smaller counties will come out better in this metric because there's some fixed cost every county has to do and so that will end up taking more of a smaller county's budget and so they'll come out looking ahead. But, you know, Bladen's at 12th, Columbus is 36, Donzo 14th, but we have the ability to fund more based on the wealth of our county. And with that, I will thank you for your time and be certainly take any questions you may have about anything I've shown you. Okay. Um the old committee has been reconstituted as a new committee and then there's a

118new committee. So you've got two committees going at the same time, right? Uh the old committee turn around task force is now elevate every child. Uh we always had four pillars uh four committees. What we've done is taken two of those pillars and said all right school system run with that literacy and positive culture. you run with that. We're not going to have a committee on there. We're still going to have a preschool committee or prek, still going to have um post-graduate committee, those two, but we added a third subcommittee comm which is committee committee connections. And then my second part would be the funding. How how are you funded when you say we got a grant? How did you get a grant? Are you in competition with us uh to the endowment? We're applying

119for a grant. the endowment you're applying for grant. Explain that part. Well, sort of a royal we some of that was the um school board, the school system getting those grants. Some of us community schools like with a full service community schools, community schools got that with the granter. Uh same with the freedom schools. They were the granter. Uh in fact, they were also the applicant for Friends of Public Schools. So different agencies that are eligible. We are not eligible as an entity to apply. Oh. uh for granting. Um and if we may one day down the road become a 501c3 or we may apply through another nonprofit such as community schools. Um the 26 literacy coaches was something that this school system got through the endowment. So I didn't delineate which uh agency was

120the actual funer. I just sort of lumped it in as an overall part of our overall effort. So my second my second question would be um the 42 positions that we're we're asking the endowment for now um have you guys can you help us with that? Can y'all help us with that? And we we've been asked entities for endorsing us endorsing our ask. Yes. Uh the endowment attends all of our overall meetings and our subcommittee meetings and they've heard us say over and over again we need more adults in the building. Um, so I'd be glad to write a letter if that would help. I I whatever on behalf of the committee, whatever would help do officially, but they know where we stand that Yeah, we got to have these people. Those letters help. Well,

121I'll be glad to letters and emails help. David Stagall, who y'all probably met by now, is now the education director at the endowment. He's been very responsive. We've met with him oneonone, as have all of you all, and uh we've made it clear that yeah, that's they got to have that. And if you know like there's behavioral health specialists that we decide if it comes that way that's just as good as any other way. So and that's right now is the way that's on the table. So yeah we would definitely support that. Cool. We kind of need that now. Thank you Mr. Perry. Hi, I had one more question about you mentioned the racial disparity and you said wow it's really I was just wondering if you had statistics on how many of our uh

122low performing students single parent families they simply just don't have enough time because parents working and with their child in order you know for them to be successful the data is not listed that way. Uh the people at this table will tell you better than I can. It's way over half in the schools we're talking about. Is that Julie Robin? That sounds about right. Single percent of single parent families in these low in high poverty schools. Um I don't we don't have any data per se. I know many years ago they did a survey at Willist uh how many of them had a father in the room in the home and it was less than 10%. That was several years ago. Back when we got Head Start stats it would it was listed there was

123you're suggesting that's part of the problem. You're exactly right. That is part of the problem. Our position is we've got the kid in front of us. We got we got to meet the kid where that kid is. Um, now I will say also that the principles and people we work with at these schools will tell us those parents try a lot harder than they get credit for. Uh, they are working multiple jobs. They um, they want to be part of the kids' education, but sometimes it's not physically possible given what they have to do to keep the house running. So I think they get overall a bad rap uh, for their parenting when in fact they're trying. It's much harder on them than it was for my wife and I to raise our daughter. We

124add each other. Thank you. Yeah, I agree with you 100%. Uh this was not to disparage single parents families there doing good a job but if not better job it just probably overwhelmed. Other questions or comments from the board? Again, thank y'all for y'all support on this. It's Oh, sorry. Did you have one? Dr. Mer and then Mr. So, I'm I'm trying to follow along with how you and where you can get the data to make all this make sense. But I noticed from your data that a lot of the schools that are uh majority minority also have the highest number of free and reduced lunches. And it seems to me there's a there's a really clear overlap between um you know racial makeup and economic circumstance. At at one time I actually did a

125chart comparing ranking tree roost lunch to great performance. It's almost a one to one correlation. Yeah, that's the real issue. Yeah, it's not no one's suggesting there's some bot uh inherent causes this. It is the poverty that comes I I am suggesting that historically race has been a predictor. U Mr. floor and then we kind of need to because we have a very lengthy rest of our meeting. I want to kind of Well, I just want to thank you personally and everybody that's here from the committee. They did an excellent job and and I won't say did continue to do an excellent job. So, I thank you for all your hard work. You'll indulge me a moment. Mike Pretty is a retired school superintendent. He's on our committee. you know Steph Walker Chris Fur is

126tried to retire eight or nine times from y'all as the principal and then the other is my wife Cydia Ryenbark who is not part of this but she came to support me but they're here so thank you guys thank you so much all of all right now the early literacy facilitator presentation comes head out. Yeah. I don't know. How can I go after that? Right. Good afternoon. Uh thank you guys so much for giving us the opportunity to talk about our first year of implementation with our early literacy facilitators. You just heard from Scott um a little bit about how we're we are working to address um that issue of illiteracy um and the challenge and the barriers that our students and community faces when it comes to that. Um, and so I just wanted

127to give you a reminder about what our endowment grant included. It's 8.7 million over three years. It funds two preK teachers and teacher assistants and 26 early literacy facilitators to support preK through third grade. And this really works in tandem with our strategic plan goal, which I know you all know at heart. I try to make sure anybody who comes in contact with me knows at heart that we are working uh to have 90% of our third graders reading at or above grade level. Um but this works in partnership with the endowment education pillar focus. Um and I really want to just call out what they say, right? That they say that they want to invest in innovative learning opportunities to ensure all students in New Hmer County have access to quality education. And that

128really is the goal of our early literacy program uh with our lit literacy facilitators. As you heard Scott mention, third grade is that hinge point of success that we all kind of look at and think about because we know that in order for our students to be successful in the community, to be successful adults, that they have to be literate and that really uh third grade is really kind of a culmination of that. Um, and so we know that if third graders are proficient readers that they are more likely to graduate from high school, that they're more likely to be college and career ready. And so we want to make sure that that happens for our students. And and we know I know everyone in this room knows and deeply believes that that is possible

129in New Hover County for our students. And so our early literacy facilitators play an important role in that. So third grade transition really is about kids switching from learning to read to reading to learn. And that's that critical pivotal moment. Absolutely. Um and so these were our expected milestones. I'm going to walk us through those milestones today so that you can see how we've addressed each of those um in our endowment agreement. So uh just so you can see too um you know our first and foremost was just making sure that we have early literacy facilitators in that uh spot. We have 25 of 26 positions currently hired. Um the one open position right now is prek and that we had someone in that position and they resigned uh to take a different opportunity in

130another district. Um and so we were sad to lose her but we're working in the prek team's working diligently to fill that position. Um our literacy facilitators have to participate in ongoing professional development. Um we have to look at our literacy data, collect it, analyze it, but more importantly utilize it to improve our instruction. Um, and then part of the way that we're monitoring that is these fall and spring learning walks that we completed at every single school. Um, and then I also just want to let you know those two preK teachers and teacher assistants, they were housed at Johnson PreK. Um, and we got to see them this year and they're just precious and so we're glad to have and that's uh 30 additional students that were able to serve because of that. Um,

131so when we thought about professional development for our early literacy facilitators, we knew that uh this is a brand new position. We wanted to make sure that we all came in with the same set of skills and the same goals and mindset. And so one of the things that we do is we have monthly professional development sessions for them. They come together, we come together collectively as a group. We're completing a course that was designed by the Florida Center for Reading Research, which is just um kind of the end all beall for reading research um across the nation. Um and so um along with a nonprofit organization called Excel and Ed, we're completing this fundamentals of literacy coaching course in person. Um it includes six modules. We uh completed three modules this year. Um and

132that and you can see it focused on building a positive uh fostering a positive culture um having effective PD and um support skills and then collecting data to inform our professional learning. Our literacy facilitators also in tandem in those monthly meetings were also digging deeper into our curriculums because right they are supposed to be the person on site that's supporting our teachers because we know it doesn't matter what curriculum we have there is no perfect curriculum and that each school faces unique challenges to uh success and so they need to learn how to adapt and be flexible to meet the unique needs of their student population. And so our literacy facilitators engaged in curriculum studies and teachbacks. We actually would like practice modeling because they were the ones who were going in and being asked

133to go do model lessons. And so we said we need a space for you to learn and to feel confident in the curriculum because they haven't taught every grade level, every um every lesson, right? So we wanted to provide that. But that also provided this nice opportunity for us to practice giving feedback and support in the moment. So we were able to do that um in real time which was really good. Uh we also uh had our literacy facilitators participate in weekly virtual professional learning communities and this was an opportunity for them to come together with other schools who are like a demographic as them because we know like you know if you're if you're sitting at a high performing school or a low performing schools the challenges you face uh you want to have

134a partner in that work right like you're not alone in that. So each week they were able to meet virtually with schools that were similarly demographic as them and talk through the learning that we did in our monthly meeting and the challenges that they were facing. And this honestly build built collaboration. It's building trust among our learn literacy facilitators and it's really creating that nice community where we're sharing. So like if something's working at Snipes, we don't want to hold that back from another school. Um so it it gave us more space to do that. The other uh thing the way that we were kind of checking ourselves and monitoring progress was learning walks. And this was really exciting but took a lot of time and work. So we uh schools participated in learning walks

135two times across this school year. One in the fall and one in the spring. And this first year our learning walks were really focused on getting to know your school, your students and your building. It was kind of like our baseline data. So what is uh what are each of our schools doing really well and then what are the unique needs that they have. Um and so in the fall along with uh the principal, the AP, the literacy facilitator and members of our central diff uh central office staff, we um visited all preK through third grade classrooms. We saw every single one of them. Um, and we saw so many good things and we got to say at, you know, at your school, these are the things that you're doing really well and here's kind

136of our next steps for improvement. Um, and then we went back in the spring and in the spring we asked schools to say what is a challenge that you're facing and let's give you uh feedback on that. So schools were working to address some of the areas that we identified from the fall and we wanted to go back and return and look back at that issue and give them feedback on their progress. So um we developed a walkthrough tool. We did not want our walkthrough tool to focus on curriculum compliance because we want schools to be flexible, right? And and say what is it that my students need, my community needs. So we looked at instructional delivery and we looked to see is our literacy instruction is it explicit, is it systematic, is it scaffolded,

137and are we providing corrective feedback? And then in the same vein, we looked at engagement. Our students engaged in the learning. Now, this is going to line up really nice with our champs. Uh I just came from Champs training. I'm so pumped and excited. I cannot wait, Julie. I have so many ideas um and that I can't wait for us to collaborate on. Uh but so we used this tool uh to guide our walkthroughs and it was really helpful. We we kind of identified what it looked like in each of those areas. Um, and I think it helped build our literacy facilitator skills and observations, our administrator skills on what to look for for effective literacy, too. On the right hand side of that screen, you'll see the feedback form that we did. And in

138the fall, not only did we identify their goals and their next steps, but we also identified uh goals for their Dibble scores. So, we said, "Here's where your uh school currently is." We looked at their historical data, and we said, "Where do you hope to be at middle of the year and end of the year?" It was just kind of a way for us to check in on that progress. Like I said, we um some of the things that we identified in that fall that were strengths across the district is we're giving systematic instruction. Our learning is building from simple to complex. And so our students are getting rigorous instruction, but we're starting with those necessary skills first. Also, our students are engaged. Our students are participating in learning um and they're ready to learn.

139The area that we saw as the biggest need for us to focus on was explicit instruction. So when we're teaching new skills, are we clear and direct with that uh with that presentation of information? And then do we provide modeling and visual supports and scaffold is scaffolds for our differentiated learners. So like I said we went back in the spring. These were some areas that we provided schools feedback. It's not an exhaustive list but we gave feedback around explicit teaching routines and pacing to support strong instruction utilizing our middle of the year data to address student needs. And then we also looked at interventions. Right? So if students are not successful, what are we doing to intervene? We went back and we revisited the goals that they set at beginning of the year. We checked

140in with their progress and then uh we gave them feedback and next steps for their focus area. Um so one of the other things I feel like my transitions here are weird because I'm just going from like those points, but so stop me at any point. I'm talking fast. Nice. So, uh, one of the other things that we wanted to do with our literacy facilitators in this first year and beyond is we want to monitor how they're spending their time because we want to make sure we're spending our time on the right things and we know that every month that's going to look different depend on the time of year, right? Uh, beginning of the year they were support they were doing a lot of other support just helping K uh teachers get set up

141in classrooms and things like that. But what I've done is uh every month they complete a monthly reflection for me. They have this nice little graph that you see on the screen that's created for them as they log their time across the month. And then I've collected that to see collectively where uh our group is spending time. I was really pleased at the end of this year to see where we're spending our time. So the majority of our time was spent leading and supporting professional learning communities and they should, right? That is where teachers are planning meaningful instruction. And so we want to make sure that they are in those meetings and supporting our teachers as they plan and think about the needs of their students. The other uh the number two spot was co-eing

142and that's really what we wanted to see our literacy facilitators do this year. We want our teachers to know that they have a partner in this work that uh teaching reading is hard. If it was easy, we would be at 90% guys. Like we have in New Hmer County, we have done all the things. We've been leaders in science of reading training. We have strong curriculums and support. We have teachers who are dedicated to the work. But this work is still challenging, right? Uh you put uh a bunch of uh eight-year-olds in front of you who have different uh personalities and attention spans. This work is hard. So uh our literacy facilitators co-taught uh with them. And then the other category really encompassed a lot of things. You just heard me talk about science of

143reading training. We still have teachers who are completing the letters course. Every year new teachers come in. we make sure that they get that letters training. Uh but that takes an immense amount of time for our teachers to do that learning. So one of the things that we did this year, our l our early literacy facilitators, we asked them to cover the class of the teachers who were completing letters. So we said go let that teacher have an hour once a week to take in their letters learning, right? I don't want you doing it at home when you just have some extra time because this learning is so important to us. And so the literacy facilitators covered their class, but guess what? That also really helped our literacy facilitators. They got to teach lessons and

144get more confident in their skills when someone wasn't watching them, right? Um, and so I think that was really helpful. Um, they also have been uh we got some new intervention tools. They've been utilizing those and then they've supported our Dibbles testing as well. So they've been in classrooms with teachers and students partnering alongside them. Um as we go across this year, one of the important things we need to make sure that we have time for is analyzing our literacy data too, right? Uh and so we can monitor instruction, but we need to make sure that the instruction we're giving is making a positive impact on our students. So we uh created literacy profiles, which we've been doing across our district for the last couple years. Uh so after every benchmark, uh we deep dive

145into our data. We break it down. We identify our needs. We identify where we're proficient. And uh we plan next steps to improve our instruction. So, um we just did our end of year data one and I'm really excited for us to utilize that at the beginning of the year. Now, I couldn't come here and not share some of our literacy data with you guys. Um and so, um at the end of this school year, our K3, uh overall Dibbles proficiency is at 70%. Woohoo. Yeah. Right. like we're proud of that and I think that uh it's important to kind of even break that down even further. That means that we've increased by 18% from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. Yes. Explain Dibbles to know. Thank you so much.

146So Dibbles is our reading screener. It's a universal screener that's given to every K3 student. Um and it uh checks uh to see if they what category they uh kind of end up on. are they at risk for reading failure or are they not at risk for reading failure? Um, and teachers can, uh, complete these assessments one-on-one with the students. So, um, I also think it's important, we can look at 70% and think about all the things we didn't do, but I also think it's important to like name the kids that changed over the course of this year. So, by the end of the year, we had over 1,200 more students who were at or above grade level. So, not at risk for reading failure. Also, I took a look at our highest risk, our

147students who come in and they're red on dibble, so they're the most at risk for reading failure. And we moved 887 students out of the red. Wow. And that is wonderful. Like, we're so proud of that. The other thing that I looked at that's not on here is, you know, our strategic goal is 90%. We had um 11 complete grade levels across our district who were at 90%. Wow. And then we looked at the teachers and how many teachers have 90% of their students proficient. We had 70 teachers who had 90%. And so we want to keep calling this out because we're going to that number is only going to grow, guys, right? It's only going to grow, but I think it's important to drill it down a little bit more. Um, this compares our

148district data, our K3 data combined to the national and state data. We don't have the endofear national and state data yet. That probably won't come out until honestly maybe closer to September. Um, but you can see New Hmer County is in that blue that we're above the national and state averages for beginning of the year and and middle of the year. And then this breaks it down by grade level. And so you can see in the blue is the national um averages. Um in the purple it's the state averages and in the yellow it's um our district. Now again they don't have endofear data there but what I want you to see is that New H county is above the national and state for beginning of middle middle of the year in every grade level.

149Uh third grade is tough. We realize that we are working to problem solve that. Uh but it is not just tough for us. That's not a New Hmer County only problem. Correct. It is across the state and the nation. Does that number include the retakes for third grade? It it does include our reading retained students who are technically in fourth grade. Uh and so that number becomes a little skewed. Um so we're proud to see that growth. Um and I really want to point out our second grade because they are leaving at 70%. And I want to say we have not hit the 70s since precoid and we should be proud of that. Second grade is tough to grow. They grew them. Um and then the last aspect that I really just want to point

150out for our literacy facilitators that we've been working to support them with is family engagement. We want to make sure that we're connecting with our families. Uh that we are um helping address the unique needs of the community that of the schools that they serve. And we did this in a number of ways. Um and I just want to highlight a couple things. One of the best things we learned about this year was an event that Pine Valley has done historically. It's called Showtime. Um and they invite families to come in in the morning to for students to showcase their work. Um and so uh this year Pine Valley invited um their families to come and they had 450 visitors show up and those kids were sharing their writing. They were reading books with their

151families. They were showing them what they do in foundations. Like it was really um exciting. But Pine Valley, this just shows the the collaboriveness of our group. Pine Valley shared that idea with us. Many of our schools changed their parents event to match that. They said, "Oh my gosh, we invite families to come at night and nobody comes." But, you know, when they're dropping their kids off at school, they'll show up. They'll eat breakfast with them. They'll have that time. So, one example that I just wanted to highlight was Carolina Beach. Carolina Beach typically had about 20 families show up for their events every time. They switched they to kind of this studentled conference showtime model and they had 289 families show up out of 394. I mean just amazing and that just came from

152that and you know it it was just that literacy facilitator having the time and space to go oh let's make that change for our school right what can we do to get our families more engaged in that um and it goes beyond just showtime they're sending uh you can see they're doing a a parent PD so at Rachel Freeman they did how can you reinforce foundational skills at home right like how can you take what your child's learning at school and do it at home. Um, and then there's been newsletters. They're sending out newsletters. They're sending them out in English and Spanish depending on what they need. Um, and they're holding family workshops to equip and empower our our families because, you know, I think the other thing we need to to make sure we

153uplift is that we cannot do this work alone, right? It has to be in partnership with our community and our families um to support that literacy growth. And I'm going to end just with this. I'm not going to read any of these, but just for you guys, hopefully feel-good moments. We asked the teachers who were working with our literacy facilitators about their support. And we said, you know, what could you tell us about that position? And one of the things that I hope you see is kind of the throughline in uh the feedback teachers provided is that teachers felt supported with their literacy facilitator. they were able to dig deeper into their literacy uh data and curriculum more so than ever. Um and they felt like they had a partner in this work and that's

154exactly why we created this position for our schools to have a partner. Um so that is it but happy to answer any questions. Um so board members I I'll nab you in a second but just in the interest of time we want to keep this brief. We do have a very a lot of things to cover in closed and we still have about an hour and a half of stuff to do after closed to make sure that we stay under that 4hour time frame. U Miss Barnhart and then Miss Bradford. So really quick, I love seeing this data. Good job. Kudos to all of our staff. Um as we're um sharing this out with the endowment, what I'd love to see for the year 1, two, three, it's kindergarteners now. Next year they're first grade,

155next year their second. To see that growth and delineation from the groups themselves. I know it's different instructors, but to see that. So, I'm sure you're already on it. We've got addition to the middle end year. I want to see that to see that growth of the three-year, but to see 1,200 students increase that. Um, that's phenomenal. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bradford. Yeah. And and I'm loving this data. And a county commissioner asked me maybe two weeks ago, you know, they kind of implied that the ELF program wasn't wasn't working because we had to spend all the money. And I said, "Wait a minute, it's a three-year." And correct me if I'm wrong, but we started we we we we got the grant, but it took a while to ramp up. So my

156question to you is you just got the end of year data and we're seeing that. But is that a 12-month window or is it more like an eightmon window? It's really like a seven to eight month window. So next year when we have 12 months, it's going to be radically better. Absolutely. And I think that just brings up a good point is that this is a three-year grant and that was a three-year grant for a very specific purpose. We knew we could not change this data in one year. It has to take long. It is going to take us longer to do that. Thank you. Thank you guys. Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm blown away with not only what you've been able to do, but your enthusiasm for it. Just want to thank all the teachers

157and the facilitators. Absolutely. That is who we are most thankful for. They're doing the hard work every day. Oh, Miss Bradford, super fast. Um, in case she didn't introduce herself, this is Marie. No, elementary reading curriculum specialist. I never do that. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. Um, make a motion to go and close. Thank you. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? We are enclosed. We do not have a lot of time board members. So, we do not really have time for a break. by saying I I. Any opposed? That passes six to zero. Um because we do have a limited amount of time and um a about an hour and a half's worth of things still yet to cover. um by my estimation. I

158would like to see if we can condense or perhaps shorten some of the discussions that we do have um because I think that and I don't think I'm alone in this. I think that it's vitally important that we address the prek budget update. Um so I I would move that we take a and move it till next month. I mean we had part of that today. We did have part of that today. Is there a second for that? Okay. For discussion purposes as quickly as possible. Mr. Perry, I don't think we can recommend. Do is that timely, Dr. Barnes? I can literally do it in one minute. So, I don't know if we need to move that one. The longer ones are the ones that I'm more concerned about. Dr. Merrick. Yeah. based on time

159and based on the hurriedness uh that we had earlier put it on, I recommend that we table our discussion uh of the book stamped and put it on the agenda for uh our next regular board meeting. Okay. So, we already we currently have a motion to um to table or to move the discussion for board business to next month. Um, so let's go with that first. August. That would be August. Um, so let's go with that first. Um, all those in favor of uh tableabling that until August signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? That passes. Write that down. Um, so that gives us about 10 extra minutes. Woohoo. Um, and Dr. Merrick, you had a suggestion. Was there a motion? Uh, yes. I did move to um table the discussion on stamped until our

160regular board meeting on July 8th. All right. Is there a second for that? I will second it. Although I think we could probably have a brief brief I know Miss Barhoff will not be here two weeks and I know like weeks from now and that she would like to um comment upon that. So, I'm hoping coming having her being able to talk give her a minute or two on the record, but I don't think we could I'm for tableabling the vote until two weeks just because I don't think my mind's going to be changed, but I think we needed to give the community any opportunity to um weigh in uh before we actually vote. Okay. So, there is a motion to table the discussion of the curriculum committee's decision until um the regular meeting. Miss

161Buoie, will you call the role for that? Mr. Perry, hi. Dr. Merrick, yes. Miss Barnhart, no. Miss Mason, no. Miss Bradford, no. And Mr. Wilpour, no. All right, that motion does not carry. So, madam chair, what about a stall camera update that wait? Is it timely? Uh, it can be timely, but basically I've we've gathered some ordinances from other counties to call it. So, that was pretty much it right there. There you go. So, you could actually put it on for August and you tell us what Cudray said. Sure. So, all right. I move that we move that out to August. Second. Okay. Third. All those in favor signify by saying I I any opposed to that. Um and then the graduations he can he that that cut us let's see 15 15 minutes. I

162mean if you want to keep cutting. No just keep going through the So here's what we're going to do. Um so I'm going to kind of shorten the decorum discussion to be about uh max of 15 minutes. um hopefully 10. So this was um brought forward and before we start I know that this can be a sensitive topic. So I want to make sure that we are all remaining civil and respectful and um that we're not making accusations that we're not making assertions or anything like that. So and I will call out people if that does occur, but I know that this was a concern for for several individuals and so I wanted to make sure that we briefly discussed it. Um and it was brought to my attention by Miss Bradford. So I am

163going to um ask her to start. Um thank you madam chair. Dr. Barnes is constantly reminding us you know that our actions have consequences and our words have consequences and um when I go to the county meetings I see a level of decorum. When I come here it's about half that. And I would like for us to have the same level of decorum as the county meetings have in our meetings. Um, no one would dare get away with standing up and shouting from the back of the room in the middle of a county commission meeting because they'd be escorted out. Um, we got to the edge of chaos just uh, six weeks ago and I don't want to ever go back there again. Um, it was it it was traumatizing for some of the people

164in the audience. Um, so that level of agitating people to support us in whatever we're trying to put forward, I I would like to see that and all of the support by by the all the rhetoric that's out there on the social media to to drum up it just it it it it's destroying our school district. And we worked so hard from, you know, July of last year until December to really, you know, cross party lines and get along. And and and it just has eroded since since December. And I want to go back to where we have meetings with the quorum and we have email and and and text with the quorum and um and and and what do we need to do to make that happen? And we have in policy our a

165code of ethics. And people from time to time will say, "Oh, you don't abide by your policy." We violate our code of ethics every single week. One of those tenants is violated probably every other day. And why do we have policy if we're not going to if we're not going to uphold it? Let's just abolish the ethics code and let it be, you know, the wild west. No, we need to quum. How do we attain that? Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, and in thinking about this and and then I'll um there's a there's a few things that come to mind. Um, we go back to it all the time. The the board norms that we signed and I think that it's really easy to kind of gloss over some of the some of the things

166that we agreed to. Um, but making sure that we're abiding by those. We did sign those and while they're not a legal binding document, we did sign those and we did put our names on those. And for me, I I mean I I have this is my laminated one that he gave me. Um but when when I think about decorum for myself, when I think about whether I'm going to share an opinion on a public platform, whether it's social media, the news, elsewhere, what I do is I think of two things. I say I say to myself, will sharing my opinion serve or harm the students, staff, and families of this district? Because as board members, our goal is to strengthen the schools, not to weaken them. And does what I am about to about

167to say do that? Does that strengthen or does it risk undermining? And then the second thing that I think of when I am posting anything, if I'm posting anything, because I very rarely do, is if my opinion might be considered controversial by some, is it worth the potential consequences, including the trust and morale of our staff and community. So, we have a lot of very strong opinions on this board. A lot of we all got elected because we have these strong opinions. We have these the these passionate ideas of how we're going to help our kids and how how we're going to help our staff. But when we disagree, it's important to weigh whether the point that we're making is worth the impact of what it's going to do to our schools. The district look

168the community looks at us. We are the standard. We set the standard of this district. How we interact with each other, how we interact with community, how we interact on social media, in the media, it's absolutely going to impact what happens with our schools. We have to maintain professionalism. We have these differences of opinion, but we have to refrain from disparaging one another. we have to refrain from or we have to honor the decisions of the board whether we agree with them or not I understand because there are decisions that this board has made that I have absolutely disagreed with I 100% understand that but our role as now board members we are not an individual we are a board and as a board we have to communicate as a board so um what I

169what I am asking of the board members is to just continue to model integrity and unity because my colleague is correct. We have had such an increase in our district morale this over the course of this past year. I don't want that to be messed up by somebody who may not have responded um may not have liked a decision that was made and so then they responded. And I understand we are so passionate about our kids. We are so passionate about our kids, about our staff, about our schools. Um, but we have to also maintain that level of integrity and being that example of what this district should what we want our kids to do. If we don't want our kids to do it, we shouldn't be doing it either. So, uh, Dr. Merrick. Well,

170first of all, I want to um I want to agree with my colleagues that the way we treat each other, the way we present ourselves is incredibly important. I think it does show and does reflect on our schools. As you said, we're very passionate and sometimes it's a person at the back of the room, you know, speaking up out of line, but sometimes it's someone speaking from the dis too and we have to understand that when as a board we make recommendations or we pass a policy or we decide to for I mean let's just get to it. Let's talk about banning a book. When we do that, we inflame a huge number of people in the community. And for us to expect that they're not going to come out and make their thoughts known.

171That's shortsighted. And if we're going to work with the public, we have to invite them in, not shout them down. We have to say, "Thank you for sharing with us." So this idea that people coming to our meetings is an act of aggression and I'm not sure anyone said that but that's what I got from it. I think we need to have the same level of respect for our public that were asking us to have for each other. So when our public comes in and says we are very unhappy with something you're doing, no matter which side, no matter who, I think we have to accept that and treat them with the level of decorum that we're asking ourselves to to give to each other. Um Mr. W the board and I agree with my

172colleague over there. I think that that's true. you need to, you know, that's why we, you think about when I started on the board, you I'm going to do my one of my little stories, but I won't take much time, but, you know, we didn't have town halls. We, you know, we heard from people for an hour and that was it in and out, you know, and and unfortunately, you know, some of, you know, we listen, but we can't interact and now we we've actually opened the door a lot more on that. Uh, but I think it is really important and I would agree with our chair that it is very important. And I had a long discussion with one of our county commissioners the other day and um I will say that he was

173not very cheerful with me and I'll leave it at that. But he also said you know a lot of things that well you know you guys are always attack you are always attacking me on social media and I said well the board has never attacked you on social media but the it's the you of all of us you know the board members of the board are attacking county commissioners on social media and you know it's it's like uh a dear friend said at one time you know uh those those kind of things make the impact you know so when we do come back to our county commissioner partners and say hey we really need this you know well you you just attacked me on social media and now you're going to come back and you're

174going to ask me for something. So I think we need to you know not only to each other on the dis and to our public but I mean I think we also need to think about what's best for kids and that's that should be the first and end of our story and we need to to think about is what we're going to say is this this as what just said is this so important that I have to say this and you know are we frustrated with some of the stuff absolutely I think we all have a certain level of frustration you know I was at the beginning of my time on the board I was definitely in the minority and uh so was I frustrated? Yes, I was. But I didn't go on social media

175and attack people or attack county commissioners or you know I said what I said but I didn't put it you know out there and you know and I with this county commissioner I said very clearly I'm talking directly to you. We're talking manto man about this and here's what we need and and the whole demeanor of the conversation changed from this attack and defense to yeah maybe we can work together. Maybe we can get the better things for your kids. maybe we can work on these situations. So I think you know you know even though we are frustrated at times life brings us frustrations absolutely but we need to think about are we are we moving forward as a board are we moving forward for our kids and our staff. I I will say that

176or are we, you know, or are we moving backwards because we want to have ourselves heard and uh I think we really need to really, you know, when I used to preach, I always talked about having a mirror and looking at yourself, myself, everybody else. Are we doing what's best for kids by doing this, that, or the other thing, or is it because we want to be heard and stand our feet? I think that's really important. Right. Uh Mr. Perry, um everybody knows me. I'm a big free speech guy, but you know, so I think that people should be able to give us their feelings on the topic, but this is what they do out in the street and what they do with out there protesting is is that's their business. That's their first amendment

177right. But and they've got a right to, you know, also to um petition their government. And it's also part of the first amendment, but there's rules around that and a quorum around that. And what happened at our last meeting with one of our speakers who personally came out and pretty much attacked you for Miss Baron for 2 minutes was out of line and there was nothing substantive about what what that speaker was saying. Nothing that we oh it was about a topic we disagreed about. No, it was a hit piece. And I think we need the chair when we have instances like that to to simply just call these people out of order and shut them down because there's nothing good. You know, I can hear all day about somebody who disagrees with me and

178gives a different as long as they're talking about the issue. I might not like what they're saying, but as long as they're saying it respectfully and they can be saying it passionately, too. as long as they're on issue and it's not a personal assault, then I'm good with it. But otherwise, I think we need to shut some of this down. Um, Miss Bradford, and I think we're close to time. We have a point of order. Um, it's in Robert's rules of order. It's 4.40. Um, debate h between ourselves. Debate has to be confronted to the merits of the pending question. Speakers can only address their remarks to the chair, not to each other. Maintain a courteous tone, especially in reference to any divergence of opinion. Avoid interjecting a personal note or debate. So when we

179have in the past said, "Madame chair, point of order." Then some board members have gotten just really, really outraged that we would do that. But we're following policy when we do it. And to address the the the statement my colleague just said, we also have in our policy that says a speaker has the right to stand on the street corner and say anything they want, but they can't come in here our business meeting and a disrupt it or b say anything they want. And it also says they can't come in here and attack a a staff member or a board member by name listing all the crimes that they've committed. So, from now on, I am going to call a point of order and say, "Madame chair, this speaker is violating our policy, and I'm

180going to ask her for a ruling." That's how a meeting goes. Can you imagine somebody doing that at the county commission? We were there twice in the last couple months. Can you imagine anybody doing that? No. It's a matter of setting the decorum and sticking to it. But we as a body can't then attack the board member who pointed out that this was happening, you know, because they liked what was being said. That violates decorum. And I'll be honest, two staff members have been insulted in live meetings this year and I'm still ticked about it. Those I have those apologies have not been made as far as I know. and and how dare we attack our staff members in a public meeting verbally saying something negative about them and expect to have a relationship with

181them just like Mr. Wilder said about the county commission. How can we go to them and say, "Hey, we need 42 positions funded. Hey, we need prek when we were just saying what scum they were, you know, on our social media." So, we have to bring decorum back into this thing. We have to. And my apologies, Miss Barnhart had not had the opportunity to speak. So I will allow Thank you, Madam Chair. Um I was going to contribute nothing to this conversation if I'm being very honest. Um and the unfortunate reality is we are in a growing state of violence in our society specifically towards elected officials. And so I um I do I honestly love whenever we have varying viewpoints and we have discussions about things because we're brainstorming, we're coming together about different

182ideas of things for the school system. some most of the stuff we agree on when we're having conversations. There's a lot of agreement that we have, but when we disagree, what happens is on the back and falling out on a political um vendetta and that that is what creates targets. And I and I I'm getting choked up about this because we just had a bomb threat where they had to evacuate during an active county commissioners meeting. I reached out to every single one of our county commissioners. did not matter the party affiliation because I thank them for their service and understand that political hatred is real. I'm not going to discount that. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. People were assassinated in Minnesota a few weeks ago for it. So coming from this conversation what

183I would like to state is from this das there has been political motive attacks and insults from different board members for different things. Whether you agree or disagree, you we have to be very careful about creating targets. And I was shared a video at a rally where one board member said, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. You should show up and share out." And it's imperative that we are not inciting violence towards one another. Miss Barnhart, I'm going to pause you. Um, we have to be very careful about pointing fingers at any anybody at this point. I understand what you're saying, but I I'm going to ask you not to direct. I apolog I apologize. Inciting violence towards any one of us is dangerous. We are we live in

184this community. We love these kids. We have worked to increase our ADM per students of how much money we receive year after year since I I was elected in 2022. We have decreased our failing schools from 13 to six. We have a proficiency rate goal of 90% reading on third grade level and we are getting there. The reality is there has been times I've sat in the seat that I have been um shared the hatred for when we're supporting our staff and I can't share all the information because it's part of my job. I get access to things that the public does not get access to. And what I constantly and reiterate saying I can't share the whole story with you, but all I can tell you is I'm going to make the best decisions

185with all the information I have at any given time. Does that agree with everyone in this room? It does not. It will not. But the thing that I try to come at every single time is to maintain respect and dignity. And I will say this woman to my left was elected to the chairmanship of this board. and it is her job to guide us and facilitate us when we have issues that are going on. and the amount of times that I have helped in assisting and trying to make sure that her job is running smoothly based on conversations and things that are happening behind the scenes is just really sad for me because I know that we have good opinions from varying varying backgrounds of how we can do great things for our kids and

186for our staff. So I I know that I'm at time and I apologize for that. I'm leaving this conversation. My goal is on and off the dis. I'm going to continue those conversations to make good quality impact. I understand we're not going to agree on everything. Um, but I think we need to be careful not to incite violence while doing so. Thank you. We are at time, but I do believe that I have a right to make a statement based on arrest. Well, I stopped her from continuing that and so I'm I'm gonna because we only have a half an hour and there is some we we absolutely need to be able to discuss the prek budget and I understand what you're saying and I respect your your desire to do so but I'm going

187to have to just keep going. I'm sorry. Okay. Um so sir, this is where decorum comes in. It does. So, recommendations for graduation ceremonies. As one of the people that sat outside on Saturday morning in a black robe, um this is a difficult situation. Obviously, I looked at using TR Coliseum earlier this year. TR Coliseum was just cost prohibitive in a in the same year that we had to cut 300 staff members from our budget. It wasn't good. It just wasn't fiscally responsible. However, we did. We had wonderful graduations. All four of them. Wonderful graduations. Just so meaningful. All eight of our graduations were just great. The four that were outside, however, I'm concerned about the number of families that needed medical attention. Mhm. Um, and one woman very nicely said, "It was really hard

188to hear my daughter's name called when the lady behind me was getting medical attention for being overheated." We have to acknowledge that we're talking about North Carolina in June. Um, I just wanted to let you guys know it's not really for a vote because it's operational, but I am going to be re-engaging with UNCW to find a way to bring us back to TR Coliseum for the four traditional high school graduations. Um, more to come. I just wanted you to know which direction I was running simply because I don't think I can ignore just that level of concern from the public. Thank you. One comment. Yesterday I spoke to principal Madden and not only was he sitting there with us um you know he didn't take the ice, he wouldn't drink the water. He had

189the tie on. He had the this thing and he said he had to go home like I did and sit in the you know he said he slept all afternoon but I really thought he was going to have heat stroke right there in front of us. And so as lovely as outside graduations are and people will complain if we go inside and I don't want to go inside but I don't want to ever have to do backtoback in that heat again and then have to lose the whole day and and feel bad for two days. And I think really if we're focusing what what is the value? We want to make sure people are safe and able to watch their kids, grandkids, family members, friends able to graduate. Um it's a big accomplishment and we

190want everybody to be able to be in a healthy safe. They can have less people go with them and that will be a complaint. Yes. Instead of outside but there will be reduced numbers but people will be safe. Trust Coliseum will not have they will not restrict tickets. There are a lot of tickets. There's a lot of space. Cool. I also talked with the high school principles prior to bringing this to you folks and we will work to make sure that event is as special as it is, you know, individualized for each school. So, um, Dr. Merrick, super fast. Have we considered outdoors under the lights? We did. Um, we have before. The problem that we run into is almost every year, surprisingly, this year we didn't. It's a 50% chance of rain every evening.

191And then what you've got is families who brought family from all over to come to graduation, suddenly go from 10 tickets to two, right? And so this the being high school principal that threat of rain every year is just too much. Mr. Perry, very quickly uh any other convention center, any other other venues that we could use the water? We look not for the number that we got. Um we graduated 549 at Hogard and even more than that at Laney and um there's just no place that fits 5,000 people except for the TR coliseum. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Um I am because we are at 5:32 and that I want to make sure that we have enough for the prek budget update. I'm going to discontinue all of this other conversation at 5:45. I'm letting

192everybody know now. Um the next item on the agenda is the curriculum committee. Um they met last night and um it was a it was well-run meeting. Dr. Hamilton can run any meeting she wants for me. um she was right on point. But um I kind of wanted to share with the board the the recommendations but also a little bit of the background for anybody that wasn't there. Um because I do know that there were a couple members here that were not there. So um when when we met there the committee was given three options for consideration. So I'll share those options and then what I will do is share a little bit of um some of the survey that they had done just so that the board can have some of that information as

193well. So the questions for consideration and recommendation were one to maintain the ban on stamped as an instructional resource in AP English language and composition classes while maintaining access in high school libraries. to lift the ban on stamped as an instructional resource in AP English language and composition classes and rely on the teachers to be the educational experts in their classrooms with a restriction that other materials of the teachers choice are selected to balance stamped and three lift the ban on stamped as an instructional resource in AP English language and composition classes without other limiting restrictions relying on the teachers to be the educational experts in their classroom. Um things that were noted just briefly by some of the members of the committee um were concerns about the AP um designation and uh under number

194three of AP what AP stands for. It says AP opposes censorship. AP is animated by a deep respect for the intellectual freedom of teachers and students alike. If a school bans required topics from their AP courses, the AP program removes the AP designation from that course and its inclusion in the AP course ledger provided to colleges and universities. And that was a concern that was cited by um a couple individuals um on the committee. As far as the survey that was taken, um it was given to five of our AP English teachers. Um four participated in it. And so, um, there were, hang on, seven questions. Um, I'm not going to go through all of them. Um, but it said because Miss Hamilton, she did a great job. But so, the first question was, did

195you use the book stamped in your classroom prior to the board of ed's decision um to temporarily temporarily remove it? Um, and of the four that responded, one said yes and three said no. Uh, number two, would the reinstatement of the book stamp enhance the quality of your AP language course and/or increase student access to depth of knowledge needed for this AP course? Three said yes, one said no. Um, the committee asked for recommendations or what they used actually when the request for reconsideration was filed, the book stamped was used to teach rhetorical skills. Can you please list other books you use to address these skills in your class? And so some things listed were Enrique's Journey, uh, Killers of the Flower Moon, uh, one teacher said that they use speeches, um, Frederick Douglas, Man's

196Search for Meaning, and Blood Sign My Name. So those were some of the things that had been brought forward by those the three individuals that responded to that question. Um the they also had some recommendations um that were given. So the board voted that stamp would be removed until they update their policies with the addition of a balanced book. And do you have suggestions for books for the board to consider? Um, some that were suggested were The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, 400 Souls by Ibram X Kendy and Ashley Ford, The Half has never been Told by Edward E. Baptist, Blue Highways by William Lee Heat Moon, A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, and Strangers in Their Own Land by Ale Alexis Co. guess I am going to go through

197all them. Um, and then they the committee itself offered some alternatives. um well, I don't necessarily know if it was the committee or if it was the district uh recommended um some alternatives to the book um and asked if any of those would be considered balanced by these teachers. Um one indicated that Educated by Westover would, one indicated that Democracy in America by Dtoqueville would, and two recommended that um Long Walk to Freedom by Mandela would. Um, if the book number six, if the book stamper reinstated with the addition of a balanced book, would you use it in your class? One said definitively yes. One said definitively no. One said maybe it depends on the additional book. And another said maybe depends on whether two books would fit into pacing for that unit of study.

198So those were um the the findings of the survey. Um a vote was done and the recommendation from the curriculum committee was um 7 to2 uh to lift the ban on stamped as an instructional resource in AP English language and composition classes without other limiting restrictions relying on the teachers to be the educational experts in their classrooms. So that was the recommendation of the curriculum committee. Mr. Wilmore. Sorry. Um, I wrote down a couple things here as we decided we're going to discuss this today. As I remember the change request, the charge request directive from the board of education to the system was to bring the board uh a book that balanced the book in question. It seems that somehow that directive was lost. The curriculum committee was uh I was told came up with

199three options. Again, you just listed us. I won't regret, you know, regurgitate those again. But I don't think we've had, you know, we were supposed to get an a balancing book. I didn't hear that in in Miss Mason's discussion here. I do also want to mention that um as I shared with the superintendent today that a vote was taken which would did not follow a policy nor president. In my opinion, Miss Bradford was allowed to vote during her time on the curriculum committee for the last two years. That was the precedent that was not followed. According to policy 2230 subsection 4, the committee is made up of teachers, principles, district leadership, and one board of education member, but no one on the board of education was given a vote yesterday. I think that it violates

200our policy. Um, I was on the education uh educator of the year um sub sub u right below the curriculum committee and both Miss Bradford and I did get a vote on that. I was also on the turnaround task force where I also got a vote. So I do I don't believe that all our policies were followed yesterday. I think there was a violation and as the superintendent I shared there may be some gray area in that but u precedent was set for the last two years or before and I wish Miss justice was here we get asked if she had a vote before that but I don't think that you know a 72 vote and so one vote wouldn't have made a whole bunch of difference but I think we have a policy and

201we need to follow it and once again we haven't done that. So uh I am concerned about that. Um we just so that we're aware there are about five more minutes left in this discussion and we do still have the NCDPI testing technical issues. Miss Bradford um couple points of order on that. Um this board voted you know as a majority to add three board members to that committee some time back in the last couple of months. So as it was presented there was only one person here and they didn't have a vote when actually there were three board members that that should have had a vote. Number two, um, and and I don't mean to inflame, but all of the survey and all of the conversation, even the agenda talked about banning. We never

202banned anything. This school board has never banned anything. So, that that to me was a problem. Um, federal dollars for CRT and books that go on and on about racism and um, you know, anti-white, anti- capitalism, and so on. We risk those federal dollars. So with that said, I move to not reinstate stamped into the district core content but leave it in the high school libraries. Is there a second to that? Okay, discussion. We have um Dr. Bareric and again four we have four minutes. So Dr. Merrick and Mr. Perry, we could argue about the definition of banning, but when a teacher is not allowed to use a book, that's a ban. Um, even if and we're supposed to have one and I I I remember uh I might be wrong but I remember that

203we're going to put one other person on there. We'd have two and so somehow we had three board members up there. I know that when I'm on the uh ACES committee I do not vote. Advisory council uh I understood it that the advisory councils the board member is there but they do not vote even if all three which I think we're only supposed to have two. Even if all three board members had voted in the negative, it would not have offset the number of experts, educators who understand the law, who understand what our children need, and they told us in no uncertain terms, let teachers teach. So I think it is a ban. I think it's impro inappropriate when we talk about decorum when we treat our teachers and our public this way. To me,

204that's a breach of decorum. So, I will not be supporting this board to continue with any book banning and overriding the schools committee, the district's committee, and now to overrule our curriculum committee. I think it's a darn shame and I think you all ought to be looking at yourself and saying, "Do we know more than our educators? Do we know more than our public? What are we trying to do?" Mr. Perry, we have two minutes. I think I agree with Mr. I thought the whole purpose of sending it to the to the curriculum committee was for us to get a balanced approach and we and that seemed to have got lost somewhere in the translation here. We didn't get that. You know, I I I hear this about I don't even know why this is

205this is part of a language rhetoric thing for AP. I see no value in it. I see no value in using a very uh divisive ideology and using it to teach rhetoric. If I could see us talking about the ideas and concepts that are in the stamp book in a balanced way, perhaps in an AP history or part of a AP social studies things where we're talking about diverse ideologies and current events, but this is not this and and this is not what this just seems like a kind of veiled attempt to kind of do end around and just show one side of the picture to our students. So, I'm going to be for uh this for now. If especially for this school year, if somebody wants to come back next year, we can talk

206about it then. But for now, I'm done with it. So, all right. Um, we have one minute and I'm going to utilize that minute for us to vote on the motion that was put forward and that was to not reinstate stamp in district course content. Leave it in the high school libraries. Okay. Uh, sure. Sorry. You're fine. Uh, it's my fault about the the voting thing. I think what I'd like to do is work with you in policy to make sure we def defin definitively delineate this. It was written in the agenda that the purpose had been used from years and years past. However, that that is my fault that the voting member the voting issue didn't happen the way it was. I think we also want to clear up in the curriculum committee in

207the policy that it says one board member. We want to change that to be the accurate number as well. So that was my bad. I apologize. You're fine. Miss Booy, will you call the role? There was a motion to again Miss Bradford, can you state it? Sorry. Um not reinstate stamped into district course content but leave it in the high school libraries. Okay. Miss the role. Miss Mason, yes. Miss Barnhard, yes. Miss Bradford, yes. Mr. Bore, yes. Dr. Merrick, no. And Mr. Perry, yes. All right, that passes 5 to one. Um, very briefly, I'm going to make a motion that we Well, Mr. Perry, super fast. You put the testing technical issues on here. Did you want to make a motion about the letter that Dr. Oh, yes. I I I I had an opportunity

208to read the letter. I think we should endorse the letter. So, we need make a motion to endorse. I'd like to make a motion for us to endorse the letter. Second. All right. No discussion. Um, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? That passes. Six to zero. You're up. You have 14 minutes. Well, you're going to have to go through a little bit of exposition. So, I'm sorry to bring you guys backwards to go forwards, but this is too critical to not make sure I explain it soup to nuts all the way through. Okay. Two uh two weeks ago, this past this coming Thursday, uh the county commissioners did put forth a budget that had significant changes for the school system per se. So, I wanted to make sure I've addressed

209a couple of those and how I'm my recommendation for moving forward. The two biggest there were sort of three hits. The one was uh six pre-K classrooms which equates to 12 teachers 108 kids. They wanted to they shifted back to their precoid number of prek classrooms that they were supporting from the county commissioners. Now it's very complex. We get money from the state. We get money from the endowment. We get money from the local government to fund preschool. Preschool is not a state requirement. However, we see the value in prek. The other thing that they have addressed is a school nurse funding formula. Now, the complexity with that is our school nurses come through a cooperative agreement with the health department. So, we're still looking for a little more guidance on that per se. The

210third thing is they had talked about a pilot for a cooperative agreement with the department of social services to address chronic absenteeism. That uh pilot program is been put off as well. So I don't have the information about the nursing part yet. I want to just underline how critical our school nurses are in the hundreds of our students that have health plans that enable them to come to school full-time because we have a nurse on site. However, the focus of this conversation is really going to be about prek. So, we got the news on Thursday. On Monday morning, I sat down with uh a collaborative team with all the three pre preK directors, Shannon Smiles, and members of the senior staff, and we focused our conversation on, okay, what do we do now? I asked

211them to start with establishing what our non-negotiable requirements are, and these are in descending order of importance. The first thing first is we have committed to 540 families starting in April that they had a pre-K spot. those families make decisions, they they cancel child care. We have to make sure we're honoring those 540 slots that we've already promised to families. Now, that may not be 540 come August. Parents drift, they leave a little bit, maybe 510, 520, but we have to make sure those slots that we've already promised are open and available to families. The second and descending order is to try to minimize disruption to staff and families. This district cut over 300 staff members a year ago. That impacts our culture that impacts on who we are and minimizing disruptions is part of

212of building culture in a school system. So that's number two. Number three is we have to make decisions that are financially sustainable and are also soluble in the long term. We have to be making long range good financial decisions. And the fourth thing is I don't want to invalidate relationships with the county commissioners, with the endowment, with the community. We have to maintain good relationships with everybody. Okay? So those are our four non-negotiables. Now, we talked about a lot of different solutions. I'm going to give you several of them, but at the end of that, I am going to give you a couple of recommendations. I'm also going to ask you guys not to make a decision about this today. I want to have make sure there's time for our public to be involved in

213the decision-making process. I want to make sure we're communicating transparently. So, I would ask that you take this information in today and then we do a vote on it in July. All right, everybody ready? Okay. So, there's about seven seven solutions that we've come up with. Solution number one is stop prek transportation and shift that money towards refilling classroom slots. Option two, return to the county commissioners and say we can't do it. We need those slots back. It's just too much to do all at once. Number three, we can turn toward the endowment to ask them to make up the deficit in our funding. Number four, we could further deplete our fund balance by carrying those positions another year using our fund balance money. Five, we can begin to try to offer paid slots to

214families who don't qualify for prek and try to use that money to offset the loss of classroom slots. Number six, and this is going to be a little complex as well. Every year we have title one money which comes from the federal government. We estimate how much money we're going to use in a year and at the end of the year we always have a little bit of money left over and call carryover money. It didn't spend as much as you thought. That person quit in March and they didn't get rehired until the end of the year. So there's money savings there. There's always a little bit of money in what's called carryover. And he used that money to help start off the next year. In addition, we have seen an increase in our Title

215One funding for next year from the federal government. We have already allotted about 530,000 of that money, not given to schools yet, but told the schools that money is coming. I can pull that money back and refund the deficit in our preK classrooms. How much is it? About 530,000. that combined with some carryover money would cover the distance in the money that that we lost. And then number seven is there is enough space at Johnson that you can literally just pick up how and logistically it's a nightmare. But what you could do is pick up how and relocate it to Johnson. Now that would mean that those kids would get transported to Johnson instead of how but we've come up with a way for those to be two separate prek centers living in the same

216space together. Okay. You would then think about the option of selling that land and selling that building using that money. And I would recommend that you split it in a couple of ways. one, you put money back into your fund balance so that we don't have to do this kind of thing again. And then you spend part of that money to begin retrofitting other elementary schools to be prek compatible. Now, let me go back through those and tell you my concerns with each one of those before I tell you my recommendations. Everybody up to speed so far? Yes. May you need a break? You good? All right. Can I pause here real quick? How long do you need? I can be down to five minutes. Okay. Okay, I'm not I'll just be quick. I'm not

217stopping pre-K transportation. Those are our neediest children. And as inconvenient and in cost ofly as it is, I don't think that's fair to children. That's one. Two, I'm reluctant to look two and three. I'm reluctant to look at external solution to an internal problem. The Head Start grant was a significant loss in our county of $5 million a year. Correct. about 5 million a year. That's something that as a district we have to own. I don't think we would see this level of of just concern if we still had that money coming in. Yeah. I'm reluctant either to go to the endowment or to the commissioners to ask them to solve a problem that we have the potential to solve internally on our own. So that takes care of two and three. I would not

218recommend that it's a fiscally responsible solution to use your fund balance to offset this prek solution because it doesn't solve the problem. It just kicks the problem down a year. The paid slots to family, I like it, but I'm going to tell you it's going to take a year for us to get that up and running. My recommendation would be to do that next year and further start solving the problem. Now, I will tell you primarily parents want their prek students to go to school where their elementary school students go. By and large, parents first request to be embedded inside their elementary school. The way the prek system is set up, it is set up expecting you to have your preks underneath the umbrella of your elementary schools. So you have a couple of solutions.

219Six and seven are left. One is using title one funding to cover the gap knowing that we will be back here a year from now having the same conversation again. The seventh is to look at consolidating how. Now the question of how is part of that. Okay? There's a lot of conversation logistically that would need to happen to make that choice happen. However, I will tell you that if you want me to increase prek slots in the next five years, the best and most financially responsible way to do it is to embed them inside of our elementary schools. Now, five years from now, we're going to try four years from now, we're going to get that Head Start grant back. Okay? And we may never close all of our prek centers because the idea is

220to increase, right? However, at this point in time, the amount of overhead, and I asked Ashley to run this number, if we do close, how what amount of money does that save the district including utilities and some positions that we would be able through attrition to let go? It's about 255,000. Does that include the the nutrition, school nutrition? It does include nutrition. It does. It does include nutrition. So about 255,000 of that number of that 975 that the county is reducing, we'll start seeing that money coming back every year. However, there are a couple of other variables logistically. I've got the people to make that happen. So I don't think this needs to be a logistical decision. However, it is an emotional decision for people. Closing a place where they live, closing a place where

221they care about kids, that's a big step for you as a board to consider. However, when I think about minimizing the disruption to families and to parents, how and Johnson are about two and a half miles away from each other. This would allow the same people doing the job at how to still do the same job at Johnson. I don't have to change their job title. I don't have to change their salary. I don't have to change that. I just change where they work. However, that's a significant event for everyone, which is why I want you to be thinking about these two options as we go forward. The other variable I want you to consider is that Mary Washington How is a very significant member of our community. She was a civil rights leader. She

222was the first female principal at Willist Primary School. and I would encourage you to think about renaming a current building with her name because I do not want to lose the the legacy of the work that she's done. So, there's a lot for you to think about. I wanted you and I've already shared this message with my princ with our principles. I've shared it with the prek staff as well. We've met twice with our prek directors to talk about the potentiality of this. So, for you guys, you guys really do have seven choices that you can pick from. My recommendation for you is to either look at six or seven of the numbers that I told you. And I think that knowing that I'm trying to make decisions that fit all four of those variables,

223which are maintaining relationships, fiscally responsible thinking, and minimize obstructions. That's what I've got. We have one minute question. So I I'm going to make a motion to extend for two minutes. Five minutes. Yes. 5 minutes. Second. Okay. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? Passes. Miss. Bradford. And then Dr. Um, seven's lovely. Can we not do five, six, and seven in some sort of combination? Closing a bill. Closing a building halfway doesn't really Oh, no, no, no, no. I meant do seven, do six, and do five. Okay. Because you said offer paid slots. So, we could do that. take the title N money, title one money and um do the carryover and add that to the money that would from from consolidating how. So solution seven solution seven of closing how

224takes the money that we save from the overhead combines it with our title one carryover from this year. Okay, but doesn't impact the money that we have already kind of earmarked to go to other title one schools for next year. Okay, Ashley, did I say that correctly? That is correct. And I do have a revised um title one carryover number. And with that revised carryover from title one plus the 255,000 that we talked about with the closing of how we're going to be to the good the estimates about $4,600. So we slid that right about $4,600 to the good by doing those two things. Awesome. It also hopefully allows us to maintain 540 slots, which means if some kids don't show up, we can still work on that waiting list as well. Dr. Merrick, the

225question I have around number six, uh, taking title one money and putting it over here, what title one expenditures would we then be losing if we reattributed it? Right. So we do an initial allocation for all the schools with what we expect their title one money to be for the upcoming year because they need to plan, they need to staff their schools, they need to do all this stuff. The number that we de designated them is usually 15% less than they have the year before because we always want to build in a little bit of fudge. The preliminary numbers we got were higher than we expected by about a million dollars. So that you have to set aside money for different things based on the federal law, but that was going to push about $530,000

226extra dollars to be allocated across our 21 title one schools. Now that money is is earmarked, but not given. The principles know that it might be coming, but I haven't given them a check yet, right? So it would impact on the amount of money that those title one schools would expect, but by the by by and large they're already getting equal to what they have this year. Um Miss Barnhart and then Mr. Perry, we have three minutes. Find out what the capacity and space so if we were to pick up and relocate to be at Johnson, how many rooms would still be accessible? I.e. how much more could we grow their pre-day program there? Or would we be at capacity for that? You would you would pretty much fill up Johnson. Okay. But it's my

227understanding. So it would be the directors would keep their positions. So you're not merging. Uh Okay. Right. Right. At least at this point in time because honestly if you merged them, you would need to also pay for an assistant principal because their numbers would be high enough that you would require. So this would allow us to operate both within. What you still have is room at Freeman. the the the elementary schools that we currently have that are prek, but we moved them out of Freeman to correct but there are rooms at Freeman. Okay. Freeman, Britsboro, Murrayville, Castle Hane, Carolina Beach. I don't know. I don't think so. Those are the ones that I think was the ones. What did I forget? Eat Blair. Thank you, Blair. No, no. I mean, there's room there. Um, Mr.

228Okay. Uh, I just want to commend you for this idea and I think it's a good long-term idea from what what I've been hearing is that our parents actually want their pre prek kids going to the to the same place as their as their elementary kids. So hopefully you'll be able to not just fix it for this year this coming school year, but you it'll be part of an overall bigger plan to start moving all of our prek into elementary. So I commend you for it. It's a difficult decision for the board to make. I just want to make sure I'm giving you the best guidance that I can. Mr. Wilhort, close us out, sir. And two two real quick points. One, because when I was at North Osel, we actually had uh three uh

229preK classrooms. So, it was a great model, worked well. Everybody, it was a lot of great interaction and support for the prek program. So, I thought that's excellent. And secondly, um I I think your idea of keeping the Hound name alive and out there is really really important. So I appreciate you looking into that that aspect of it too. Thank you, sir. Any idea what the land might might value would be that we could put into fund allowance in the other option that you said the the current tax value of of that school is 3.5 million. That doesn't mean that's what it would sell for. That's just a tax. Motion we second. All right. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Any opposed?