001all filter in and Dr Barnes had a conflict he's going to be here about 15 minutes late so um welcome everyone here comes Mr Sutton um so yeah we're we definitely have a quorum so we will move forward um Jenny Ren will you call the rooll please Pat Bradford here Josie barnhard here Pete werber [Music] pres uh Kim Clark here Jana lenen Hannah Moon here Philip Sutton here Charlene Thompson here Jared Worthington here Stephanie Walker Ron zapple Rob zappel sorry uh Eric cradle Amanda kuzak Lisa wartz Boer Natalie English John hennet here Christopher Riley and Eric's here we're gonna we're going to move through the next few minutes slowly and let folks come in so we have um Miss barnhard for the Pledge of Allegiance and John hennet for the invocation let's start with the
002invocation follow I give thanks for the opportuni my experience as parent and uh my business my vocation for the U extension of my community service improving our schools I ask for blessings of discernment and encouragement over this crew as they Endeavor on a most difficult most encouraging project must to improve our schools for our community we ask that you bless this meeting and bless those who participate in your holy name we pray amen amen pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the for it stands one nation God indivisible libery and justice for all thank you Josie and John um let's approve the agenda and the minutes next has everybody had a chance to see the agenda and see the minutes and I would need a motion for both second
003okay do we want to do both together or do we want to take them separate let's start with the with the minutes now excuse me the agenda let's start with the agenda so we have a first and a second all in favor say I I all oppos say no it passes not sure how many of us are here right now it's a running total okay for the minutes do I have a motion to accept the minutes Mr wildor motion that we ac minut and a second okay so we have a motion in a second to accept the minutes all in favor say I I all opposed say no okay the minutes are approved now this committee is about to it has morphed while we slept our committee has morphed the you'll see two new faces
004at the table um because we are no longer the finance committee advisory we are Finance capital and bond and the chair placed Mr wildbore and Miss barnhard on the committee representing capital and representing Bond so we're going to continue on in that mode with a slight change change and our next up is the presentation on EC and this is Julie vnum is present with us today and she is our assistant superintendent of student support and with her is Jun Souza who is also our EC director and they're going to do this part okay so what you have in your um handouts and it's also on the screen you have an overview of some of the information that we compiled for um the legislative committee or discussion with um general assembly and lawmakers around our funding
005formulas and the funding needs and what Joanna and I thought was really important to capture was the significant number of students with exceptional needs so we um we talk about EC students we talk about special education those are one in the same so our exceptional children require special education services so when we talk about special ed when we talk about EC all the same um this we have significant number of students that require a much higher level of service than the broader population and those students that require those more intensive and sustained Services have much higher cost C Services associated with them and so um Joanna can jump in at any point I'm just going to give a bit of an overview of this information and then we we can answer any questions or carry
006out any further discussion that would be helpful so overall we have 108 maximum service classrooms so that means that these are students that require special education services more in a self-contained approach they are not just just Resource Services or related Services they are primarily educated by a special education teacher the absolute majority of the day and in those classrooms we have a smaller staff to student ratio um again these are students that are not coming in for services meaning um pulled out of their General classroom and coming in generally they are mainly educated in those classrooms the majority of the day so in these classrooms many of these students also require additional Services um such as adaptive equipment um assistive technology devices those could be for communication those could be for um all kinds of
007of different needs that they may have and then um most often students in these classrooms we require um one or more related services so it's not just the cost of a student in a smaller classroom with a special ed teacher and one to two to 3 T teacher assistant it's also the sheer number of students that also require Physical Therapy occupational therapy speech language therapy um visual support you name it we've got um multiples Audiology hearing impairment yes orientation and Mobility so um you have a a high concentration of very specialized instruction and services that that go into that so um just to give a snapshot of really high cost services for individual students um wanted to give a bit of a range of what some of our um more intensive services are costing so
008um this school year we have 15 students across the district that require one-on-one nursing services this is not the um service of the school nurse this is a registered nurse that is assigned only to one child and that that nurse cannot serve another another student they can only serve one to one and it's because of the nature of the medical fragility of that particular child so again this year we have 15 of those so in addition to our school nurses in our buildings we have 15 RNs that serve 15 children and again um that cost ranges depending upon the number of hours the student is in school um the vast majority of our students are in school full days 5 days a week um that we do have a few students that have modified days
009so they they are um not able to be with us um the majority of the school days so they're there for partial days so our price range is different um but $660,000 to $80,000 per student and again right off the bat just one toone nursing is $900,000 a year and the prices of the contracts range too within $10 and we are careful to contract these services and not hire for these Services because we are not trained or skilled in supervising registered nurses we need to make sure that we're utilizing an agency that has that medical training that can provide that um those required um license or support supervision and that can read the medical order um we do utilize our um County Health and Human Services um school nurse supervisors to help us determine the
010need for an RN for a student um but they do that as a um a support to us from an administrative perspective to make sure that we are not just providing an RN for every student that the parent says needs an RN we make sure that we have a medical review of that and we use our health and Human Services partners for that medical review um and so the contracts we have different contracts based on the different um services that students may have already had before they come to us because if you have a student that has around the-clock Nursing Care in their home we need to be consistent with that particular agency that already supports them um CNAs so um nursing assistance we have four students that require those um and that means that
011they have some type of medical need that is not to the degree of requiring a registered nurse but still needs someone with some level of Medical Training to be able to provide for their personal care um that cost for um those per student uh 37,000 and a total of close to 150,000 and again this changes year to year um I will say that the number of students requiring um any level of nursing Services has increased year over year I can recall when I was the special ed director let's see I'm going to go six or seven years ago um and Kim you may even remember some of these numbers I think we were looking at maybe eight or nine students so we've we've close to doubled inside of probably six years okay um and jump
012in at any point um language facilitators um so I'm going to add these in kind of together language facilitators educational interpreters um some of those are for employees some are for contract and then queued speech transliterator all of these um for are for students with some level of hearing impairment or hearing loss and students that have a level of hearing loss or hearing impairment require significant additional services in order to access their educational environment and so this is kind of the Continuum of needs cued speech um educational interpreter contract educational interpreters and language facilitators all support um on the different levels of hearing loss and need um and again those costs are listed there you can see um pretty significant and as you may understand what's different about um an educational interpreter or a language
013facilitator they're really only able to serve one child at a time because they need to make sure that they are providing that language interpretation to that child and that child is receiving it but they are having to interpret and provide the ears and the sound for that child for everything that's happening in that space so you don't have groups of children with one interpreter they are onetoone service um Behavior technicians um would this be for is that where you had the LPI in there yeah this was kind of captured you know several weeks ago if we were having behavior technicians through the duration of the year um the cost is much higher this was just kind of until from now until the end of the school year yeah so um we do use a contract
014Service uh learning perspectives and that that service is allowing us to in the moment provide an additional person in the classroom when there is a significant need around um a student's particular behavior and generally those are going to be more um on the aggressive behavior side so that we can have one person in there that can really support and and maintain that that regulation and that emotional and behavioral regulation in the classroom for that student to still participate with other peers um most often we use our teacher assistance as this level of support but sometimes we have to provide um additional person in the classrooms and having a contracted person allows us to also have some flexibility and split time if we have their serving students for parts of the school day um M chair
015I ask a question yes um for clarity with the LPI that they're districtwide so it goes wherever the highest need is so they're not at a specific location whenever we contract with them it's wherever if Miss Clark is seeing a higher need at her school then she'll receive it for whatever amount of time is needed to help with that okay and then at what point I thought I remember do they do trainings for our staff to potentially get or was that something we were exploring and didn't yeah LPI wouldn't be doing that um we have used other entities in the past where whether it be a board certified behavior analyst and and we would do additional training but we don't use LPI for training okay so to you get it right LPI is the name
016of a contract vendor that we use when needed okay for Behavior technicians only and just for fun explain what a behavior technician does you sort of did but you haven't yes so um a behavior technician would be an additional person that supports in a classroom that most often works with one child so if for example we have a student who um who can experiences challenging behaviors that may escalate very quickly this is an additional person to help um provide additional structure and supervision for that child so that they're not in a group necessarily with maybe eight students and one teacher and one or two teacher assistants you have one more person that can be maintaining that 100% supervision of that one child maintaining close proximity to them and then if they're um identifying maybe a
017heightened level of anxiety or heightened level of behavior challenging Behavior they can provide immediate support and not have to try to carry out instruction that they were already planning um if we have a student that may be more prone to running running out of a classroom um then you have an additional person that can at least maintain that proximity and have their soulle focus be on helping deescalate a situation with a particular child wow thank you would you guys add anything else and I'm and I'm including Kim in this so Kim Clark I I know she's an amazing Middle School principal but prior to that she was in the special ed program with us and working at the district level supporting as aais on too so she's seen it all Behavior yeah all of it
018anything I would just say that they they very much are a support to the to the teacher and the child to maintain the behavior intervention plans to maintain all the accommodations that are required um they are a GameChanger when it comes to that level of intense need and often because and it maintains the safety of not only that child but the other children too so it's and often they're able to model some of that instruction you know with the behavior and Adventure plans the intervention itself to the other pairs in the class uh teacher assistant in the classroom and the goal is to always try to help that child learn the appropriate replacement Behavior so that they they don't require this level of support anymore so there's always this goal of trying to work this
019Behavior technician out so it's really a true team approach when the behavior technicians are in the classrooms thank you Kim U Mr I was just wondering U the old terminology and maybe the terminology changed with bcba is that still in there anywhere where where that fit in that whole piece so that's going to actually be in the next one okay I'm ahead and hold on Julie let me just make a public service announcement I had been asked to remind you that green on the microphone means you're talking red means they can't hear you on the live stream so just a reminder when you speak that you do need to speak into the microphone and be it on green thank you and this one's green I hope they can hear it's green yeah yeah we're green
020I hope they can hear we'll move it closer so um to answer um and and by the way we love acronyms and we don't realize we use them so if if an acronym has been utilized and I haven't translated it make sure you ask about that members of the committee have supplied us with an acronym list that's I know it's amazing and we have to continue to add to it I'm sure um so out of District placements such as the Center for Pediatric Behavior Health this is where um bcba board certified Behavior analysts um provide us a level of of support now we we do use a contracted um board certified behavior analyst to come in sometimes to observe to give some counsel and some guidance on a behavior intervention plan or give us some
021indications of an appropriate placement or to kind of test our theories on an appropriate placement for a student um or to provide professional development but this one is the more concentrated um the center for a pediatric Behavior Health um we have a contract with them for serving three to four students um at a time throughout a school year that cost is very significant because it is at a clinic site here in town and they are able to provide their again their bcba board certified behavior analyst and then um they have registered Behavior technicians and of course we call those rbts um um so they have their team of bcbas and rbts that are really uh conducting a very in-depth functional Behavior assessment while they're providing a service an educational service and a clinical service for
022students who are exhibiting the most um challenging behaviors most often of an aggressive nature but sometimes it might be Complicated by some medical sensory communication needs so um that contract can cost us in an an an annual budget $250 to $300,000 a year and again you can see that when we talk about serving 3,500 children with IEPs or that have special education services when we talk about these costs these dollars come right off the top and then we have to figure out how to spread the rest of the dollars across the the vast majority of our students with special needs because the vast majority of our students with special needs are served inside general education classrooms with pullout Services by resource teachers or other special ed teachers and then related services like speech um so
023that kind of goes through the majority of the high cost piece do you want me to um do a quick little discussion on how Federal doar are allocated federal or local and state well I was just going to mention so the local and state is what I've provided on the maintenance of effort to give an idea of that um the federal dollars so all of our services are governed under federal law Ida individuals with disabilities Education Act and when Congress enacted Ida Congress determined that 40% of the fund funds that it that are required to serve students under Ida will be provided by the federal government the federal government has consistently provided around 15% of the funds required not 40 however the requirements under Ida have never relaxed so it's never been fully funded but
024the requirements have always been fully intact and these services are the most litigated services in any school district so um extremely important not only to provide the services that a child requires to access their education it's also really important to meet the letter of the law whether it's funded by the same law that requires it or not okay I don't know what else you might want shared or if you have any questions so I just wanted second Pages gives you the numbers and I kind of did this for Mr for commissioner zapple to to see the local funds there um the local funds per student and how it's progressed over the years um and Julie gave me this in a in a chart and sometimes I can't do charts and tables so I condensed it
025down but this is her information but I just put it in a form that I can easily read it um and I just wanted you to know when we ask for local dollars it's because of what Julie just shared the federal government mandates you know that we have the services but they only pay for 15% of it so it's got to come from somewhere and you're the only person left standing When the Music Stops and that I we know that happens a lot but we just want to explain to you why it's happening and where the dollars are happening just for your for for all all of you all of the county people to understand it's not that we're being greedy we have to serve every child that shows up at the door regardless of
026dis abilities yes Miss barard and thank you Miss Bradford and I I just want to add too the board adopted a resolution of support to increase the Ida funding to that 40% so we're in support of that there's also been a pilot on the state talking about EC funding formula model it's another advocacy piece that we're actively seeking to um secure more funding from different areas so I know you're the last man standing but please know there are different resources and avenues that we are exploring continuing to advocate for because we understand this is a complex situation and ultimately we want the best for our students yes Amanda um I have a question about the local funds total when we fund on an ADM rate how can it be lower than what we're actually funding
027per child get that so in 2021 local funding total and the local funds per student m mhm we funded EC children at $18 is what this is saying that's on top of so the important thing to remember when we talk about EC is EC kids get the same um per people as all the other kids Y and then they get an addition to so this would be in addition to the per people all the other kids get then I think that really needs to be made clear here cuz it looks like we're saying locally we only funded $1,000 per EC child when we fund at a much higher rate by the ADM I will addend that note this so the the calculation comes from um the maintenance of effort report that we have to submit
028to the state that's asking about the on top of funding so the translation I think is an important note I also want to um Circle back real quick to um add in addition to the intensive and costly Services we we also see a declining applicant pool specifically around special education these are hardto fill um certified areas and whenever we cannot find um the number of applicants we need we have to contract for those Services Contract Services are significantly more expensive and we don't have an opportunity to say well we'll just we will put a sub in the classroom we can't necessarily do that with some of these other areas there is no substitute for Physical Therapy Services um and also physical therapists require um any pH new physical therapist that we hire requires a doctorate
029so we we have staff that are medically trained and educationally trained that have to have multiple licenses to be able to provide the services um the other Contract Services you want mention any others um we the Speech Pathology is obviously an area that we're having to um find and fill with Contract Services and we're seeing um I've got a rate of $85 an hour you know down to 65 I mean it really ranges there and we're starting to see those contracts really increase um over the last couple of years um the uh teachers that visually impaired were not able to find um those teachers too so we're having to contract out so again you know as J said it's just kind kind of um making us have to contract out for these positions as needed
030Mr Quick things uh just want to know I think we just mentioned we get approximately 15% on an average right now we're 1 right now we are getting 13 so it's been an average of 15 it has at at at its best been about 18% and I think that might have been about six years ago or maybe 2018 um currently we're about 133% and the other point is farm and I are aware of the situation in this County but of of a a person that required over $100,000 just for that one person so you know some you know like I say these These are you know significant but there actually are some even more significant yeah so you know can't say well can afford it you know the money has to come from somewhere we
031we have a um quite a few students that cost us more than $100,000 there you go thank you because it fits right here um we didn't plan this to be this way but two of our committee members that English who is not present because she hasn't supp me and Mr Hen had proposed and we are underway planning what I'm calling a junket because that fits my middle image of what we're going to do we're going to R and some of these things is what we're going to talk about but we titled it modernize the funding formula and it's a long LIF it's not going to not we're not going to walk in and say here we are we brought some students we've brought um Kim we' brought Hannah we brought Jared we brought cheerleaders we
032brought a quartet to play on the grass between building yeah get out yeah trying to influence them but this is all leading up to that we are actively trying to get more money out of the state and the federal government we really are um we won't even know that that's planned for the 8th the idea was we'd be at lunchtime with our signage um lunch and concert courtesy of new han County modernize the funding formula modern the modern theim has a passionate story about assistant principles and through the safety and Hannah's got a good story about coming out of pocket for your ction expenses and I think I think we could personalize it but not ask for a specific dollar amount but say we we can give you examples of how the current allotment funding
033is not not work working for us and and if you could pilot our County or or fix one in this bium and a cre it corrected in the future by any and I think it it's more of a soft ask and I know we've got some proposals up there now kicking around I know that the allotment is being uh looked at uh uh to I think they're moving away from the one siize fitall model is the way I understand the studies going on now and so I'm working with somebody up there who's going to help us get in front of all the advisers to Senator B speaker Hall and make sure that we get to the people do an education policy for our legislative leaders and so and we'll meet with our delegation as well
034so you're all welcome to come depending on yeah I'd love spend the timing with that yeah so now with that Amanda you're going to lead us in um an interactive budget simulation we only have a handful of people all right thank you Julie thank you John so I'm actually going to start on this page it's this is something we are calling taxpayer receipt what this technology does is it takes our current adopted property tax rate so that is the cents and this is also based off of the adopted budget so the 2425 adopted budget but what this technology does is it asks um a resident are you a homeowner the resident uh or the individual on the software will say yes if you do not know your property value we do have links that lead
035um to the property assessment search so that you can look up your property value it will be a little different our property um assessment search is now showing the 2025 meaning our new reow properties um but and this will be updated as we get closer to a recommended and adopted budget this will get updated again but this was a very soft launch when we first launched this um to just see what's adopted now and what people are paying currently so you would type in your property value for this we're just going to say uh assess value of 300,000 and you hit view your tax receipt this spits out what I like to call a CVS style receipt of everything um your tax bill goes to that the county um funds so we have it broken
036up by sort of our functions and then the Departments that fall under those functions so for someone that has an assessed value of $300,000 at the 2024 assessment with the 2024 budget it is going or the 20242 budget um about $51 is going to culture and recreation and how it breaks apart through these departments about 172 to debt Services economic 344 goes to education General government our next big um two are going to be human services and Public Safety uh take a majority of the taxes based off of how they're budgeted and so someone with an assessment of 300,000 in this current year is paying $1,350 and this is how it splits out um I wanted to show you this one first because we have this link down here at the bottom is if a
037resident feels that maybe Services should be shifted priorities should be shifted this is where we've brought in The Balancing Act uh software so what what this does I'm going to do the guides that we can walk through how it works is it tells you you can reshift the priorities of a balanced budget there are two ways of doing that changing what we spend the money on and changing what we bring in next and it gives you a little breakdown this is obviously not ours this is a sample that the software comes with but it should shows you that there are categories and subcategories so make sure you click them and check we are allowed to ask questions we don't have any questions posed in our simulation right now but we can pose questions about increasing
038maintaining and decreasing certain services and there's ways for individuals to leave comments and we see those in real time up at the top there's the green bar right now this one on the screen is red because it says you are in a deficit we do not allow submissions of deficit so you have to get back to balanced or Surplus to submit on here um this also just shows that you can have more info in each um individual we have information about the department so what the money is going to and it links to the department website so if you don't really know what maybe Soil and Water does we give you a brief description and then link you to the website so you can go and visit and see all the things that Soil and
039Water is doing and then you submit your budget and we can see on the back end what you have increased what you have decreased any comments you have left and really take note of what that means for the budget and get the resident voiced in as well so this is what it looks like it has revenues over to the left expenditures over to the right um you'll notice some things are locked so Sal tax we do not allow residents to increase our sales tax because that's not something we can just increase it is very much based off of um the economy what we think we're going to get in and very historical and we're in a time where it's not growing much these days we enjoyed a couple years where we were in excess of
040it these days we we're coming in right at or very close to budget these days so you'll see something for sales tax you can absolutely leave a comment um and learn about but it's not something you can increase adval that is our property tax that is what we have the most control over because we can set the rate uh this is again in the 2425 adopted budget rate so one penny equals 5.2 million so you can increase the budget and you'll see you now have a surplus of 5.2 or we can say we want to decrease the rate and you would have a deficit of 5.2 um with our current upcoming budget that we are building a penny is now $8.1 million so every time we want to cut a penny we have to find
041$8.1 million um I'll give us a little Surplus right here we do have other taxes and it breaks out what those other taxes are this should say charges for services it took me until about last week to realize a fat fingered changes for services but this is our charges for services so different fees and things like that um we also do have one set up we have our Revenue stabilization Fund in here we currently are not using any principle that's why it does say zero right here um but it does allow for you to use the revenue stabilization fund but we have it set up on an alert that if you want to use this please note that the revenue stabilization fund takes a super majority so we're going to have to have a full
042at least four votes consensus um to use this fund and it does once you say yep I understand you are allowed to increase it but we do let people know how certain funds are used and what the consequences or what the different actions have to be and same for over here on the spending since I've put us into a surplus we can decide we want to spend additional funds on libraries the rate at which it goes up is set at a 10 % interval so there are some departments where if you really would like to fund them you're going to have to get comfortable clicking and it's going to take a couple of clicks but um we do we are able to see the numbers of clicks um the average number of clicks per grouping
043and so you can see different things again all tells you what it is and leads you to the website for the County Commissioners and the department you have chosen and we also set up a suggestion area to where if you would like to tell us what you would like to see funded or moved or priority shift you can do that and then once you hit submit we usually get this it refreshes the every day there's some days where we will see it in real time but at least every 24 hours we can see when new um comments submissions or anything like that comes in that is pretty pretty much this technology it will get updated again as we get a proposed budget around late April early May we'll update it again so that the proposed
044is in there and we can collect the comment uh we really wanted to launch this first very softly to see if it was something that everyone thought was a great idea if it had any use and um so far the feedback has been very positive uh that it's a great tool but that is the tool thank you I had fun with it um um of course I gave all the money to the school district that it would let me um but I did have fun with it I have a question for the county listening to your meeting the other day um I don't understand you talk about mental health fund and you used it it just it's not the normal mental health fund I can't actually read my writing right now um but it's a
045is there a different fund for mental health yes it's uh $50 million of which now we have a balance of Eric can you help me out or amandam probably 42 by the end of this year yeah we've been using it that does not take a super majority to to tap into so we have used it and when you use the word Corpus means the the principle if it's $50 million that's the Corpus that we're talking about not the interest that's derived off it okay while we're on that there was one comment uh Amanda I wanted to bring in that uh any time we use the revenue stabilization fund or the mental health and behavior health fund that reduces the amount of interest that is derived from that it's very important to note that with every
046budget we take every penny of that interest and have it already allocated to other programs so for instance the revenue stabilization fund which is uh the Corpus was $300 million uh the interest coming off that is already dedicated if we go in with a super majority and say take $20 million of that out it automatically has a ripple effect that will now cause a deficit in those other programs that we've already funded throughout the year just a every action has a opposite reaction so it's a sacred cow I I know in my mind it certainly isn't but you just have to think long and hard uh and it's why it's a super majority that takes it if you want to take from it there should be a really strong priority you are going to have
047an impact on other areas of County funding can we recognize the educational science fact that you just made though it's a beautiful analogy it fits in right here beautiful all because of my public teachers you know public education teachers oh no I think about that every day so and and I'm appreciative it mam chair yes the revenue stabilization fund is also in we get a massive hurricane or some natural disaster we have resources available to deploy so we don't have to wait for FEMA to come in John you're absolutely right and I think that all the Commissioners are you know in lock step with that no I certainly I know one idea that I've floated out there before is to go the step further and take a hundred million of that and put it into
048a separate lock box so that that is always there for emergency there's you know that's one person's opinion on that but if there was a natural disaster and say we had to dip into it for 100 million or $150 million just to get the debris off the streets that's what we're talking about in the hopes we will get money back from FEMA or some other source but I quickly add that we are still waiting for our final payments from FEMA from Hurricane Florence but in the event that we do that it will have an immediate impact on the amount of interest that we can get and there will be other programs throughout the county that will suffer you know whenever we use it so so the agreement that we have with you at the county
049theou um if you had to meet our need for an emergency because our fund balance is so low that would come out of Revenue stabilization depends on the amount of the need uh and the urgency of it but uh the short answer is yes we are there we have always been and will M and continue to be and again there is no disagreement among the staff or the Commissioners we are your back up we are your fund balance in the case of an emergency I just never thought where would it come from but that's very helpful to know well that's why we have smart people sitting over here on to my right sorry Eric any other questions count counting the number of times you look over here because it's the same amount of time I
050look over at Ashley and go am I on the B but also with that that $500,000 sort of deductible board emergency we would be hard pressed to find an single event that wasn't a disaster that would reach that amount of money in the first place I agree uh and again I can only say that we stand ready and able and we do have the funds we are not going to let our school system down we simply are not I know there's been some debate back and forth about it and especially with the pressure led by myself uh to spend down year fund balance so that we get the the money that has you know been appropriated to the schools back on the street that has really been it knowing full well that if there is
051an issue we will be there thank you commissioner Z Miss Bard I just want to Echo some truth to that we've seen that we appreciate their relationship specifically at new han High School be able to be responsive to the needs and so I think this openline communication that we're building and we're going to continue to build is able to Showcase where the needs are what we're doing with the money how quickly we're able to get an RFP out to spend it so that we are reinvesting in our schools and our staff so we're seeing that and we appreciate that commissioner thank you Josie any more questions on this before we move on all right take it away Dr BS right and I think the the message being that it's not the school board against the
052Commissioners it's the Commissioners and the school board against the world right most of my examples end up somewhere around the lines of uh something from The Walking Dead so you know and I will say this is my ask of him to explain it because it's new and I'd rather have Dr Barnes explain the Family Support Services pilot um now actually a perfect example of where the county looks for opportunities to lean into the school system I've said several different times and several different places and principles you can nod or shake your head as you when I say this I think you're going to know which way to go um Hannah you as well yeah no read that into what you will I've said numerous times that that our challenges in this District are not academic
053they're behavioral social emotional attendance-based that we have good teachers doing great work we have good principles doing good work and I'm fully confident that if if our chronically absent children were at school 20 days more a month or 20 days more a year excuse me we would see things improve in their academics as well if we were provided more time on task Behavior less disruption in our school system in the classrooms you would see things improve academically as well so that was a comment I had made at one point when I was meeting with Mr cradle and uh Mr uh cudr and a couple of others and kind of had made that statement we were talking about prek I think at the time and I went on my Merry Little way to whatever was happening
054next to me and a couple months later called back and said we'd like to bring you back in and talk about a pilot we were thinking about and so they took just that one statement about what we were talking about to heart and they're wanting to Pilot a Cooperative agreement between us and the Department of Social Services where we have DSS workers who are solely intent on helping with chronic absenteeism in our schools and so what they're proposing is five uh a three-year pilot with five employees that are DSS employees but are built into our school system and designed specifically to support those chronically absent students that we're having trouble turning the corner with um and it's just a great opportunity to do some collaborations we were talking about how you know it's hard because
055we get to a certain place with folks we really try to coordinate with Social Services they have so many things on their plate and so the county responded with an opportunity to say let's see how we can Bridge those gaps and make those tighter together so obviously that's not going to be districtwide five is a pilot and we will pilot it at this point in time I'm looking at three elementary schools a middle and a high different socioeconomic backgrounds different sort of School criteria to make sure we've got a good spread of where do where does the where do we get the biggest bang for our buck so to speak but it's an opportunity for us to really Target some chronic chronic issues that we have with our school system around attendance so I'll take
056any very easy question that has to do with that I have one if it's a three-year pilot will it be the same three elementaries the middle and the high will it stay there that would be my intent simply because and I don't think we said that explicitly but I think it's important to have that sort of longitudinal data as well so we would look at schools that have a specific pressure point in a need because honestly attendance issues are different in elementary school than they are in secondary okay at some point in time it switches over from being maybe a family concern to being a student concern I know that when I was in high school and both my parents went to work there was only one thing keeping me from going to school and
057that was me so it tends to be that different things come up in different times and different reasons and this would help us pinpoint where this gets us the most effect questions just to maybe reemphasize that point um there are differences between secondary and Elementary attendance students with chronic absenteeism in high school are about a 20% chance less likely to graduate on time as their peers the number one predictor for Student Success is going to be third grade reading level but the number two may be number three but one of those in elementary school of predicting Student Success is chronic absenteeism and that's something that we're seeing across the board it doesn't matter if you are a student attending how pre or you're attending Laney High School that is maybe one of the largest hurdles
058we are trying to overcome and the best way you can do that U I'm going to push to Dr Hamilton uh she's talked a lot about this 2x10 which is the opportunity to speak for 2 minutes to make a great uh connection with a student 10 consecutive days and just in that 2x10 model you can change a student's Outlook and outcome but we need them there for 10 days and so we have to work very hard to do that and one of the ways we do it is by having a great volume of staff and a great quality of staff that can support people as we are making sure that they come to school so we can have those great interactions it's kind of that that domino effect that we see that starts out it's
059the reason why Head Start and um prek was such a big important factor for for all of the H count it's also and not to be colloquial but it's sort of the canary in the coal mine right because a chronic absenteeism can be a a harbinger of deeper issues or concerns or problems that we can lean into and help and fix so it's a sorry sir go ahead I was just going to say your my for our former colleague Mr mcmanis was you know this is he's very very passionate about this as being a former principal and I know I you know speaking for myself back in my principal days you know I spent way too many hours at the uh courthouse trying to get a parent because the elementary level trying to get a
060parent to get the child to school every day and you know instead of doing that it' be great if we can you know have these folks you know inous that know the children or working with the children you know I think so I think it's exceptional idea also when we did our budget priority listening sessions this idea of chronic absenteeism keeps bubbling up to the surface and what we kind of agreed to is it's not the problem by itself but it undergirds all of our other challenges that we have and this opportunity is going to be along with schools looking for ways to reward and recognize good attendance as well so you don't just want to take out the behavior you don't want you want to improve replace it with a behavior that you do
061want so helping kids realize the benefit of attendance and also recognizing that good attendance for kids as well it's also the main focus for uh communities and schools next year they're talking about being present why being present matters they had a good see some of our schools highlighting and how they highlight it and we're already actively doing that so it's wonderful but um not to use Mr Apple there's another of Newton's Laws of Motion that say when you have all forces working together on an object you accelerate its movement right so this is a good example of CIS and the county and the school pointing in the same direction it's a second law superintendent Barnes Chris some of the things I've been called today either one it works the uh just make sure I got
062it straight in my head the pilot calls for one element one middle and one high school or is it three Elementary there's five together so I think I would pilot three Elementary a middle and a high I see and the funding for this comes from where through Department of Social Services okay and I'm sure it comes from you at some point jump in yeah so yeah so this was part of your the county staff recommended this at the the last work session and we just really want to show our support for the staff's recommendation so that was um I'm not sure the money side over there I'll have to defer to them to answer that but we definitely support the direction and the recommendation by the staff this is the endowment piece is that right
063no this is um different from the endowment piece so some funding will come from revenues from uh the state DSS and the rest will be from mental health funds yeah good okay thank thank you any any other questions on that I just think it's really exciting and thank you guys for streaming it up and bringing it to us could I uh also ask for uh a little bit fleshing out of the the 2x10 plan I wrote down in my notes what what does that mean yeah yeah so the 2x10 plan is this it's a research based um concept for positive interactions so one of the things we're doing in new hanur county is we're looking at uh safe and civil schools and stoic as a model uh one of the tenants of stoic is the
064I is interacting positively and interacting consistently uh so when you think about interacting consisten consistently we we ask the question what does it look like to have we use this phrase ongoing regard but what that means is a deep respect for someone what does it look like to build change in that person and the idea is that you can build change in a person that you that you want uh by speaking to them positive for 2 minutes a day for 10 consecutive days so if I really wanted um to if my wife really wanted me to do great at laundry she talked to me for 10 consecutive days two positive minutes about how great I am at laundry I'm going to be one of the best folders of fitted sheets you've ever seen in your
065life uh the the idea is that in order to build a really good quality relationship with someone you want to spend at least 2 minutes a day having great positive interaction with them for 10 consecutive days after that you've built a bond with that person so you can be personal you can ask deep questions you can have a connection with them that they're going to want to uh in return be successful so that you can continue those positive interactions uh if we do that with our students we're just connecting kids uh to Great adults and it's going to lead them to great success thank you oh that's that's thank you yeah I I wondered myself that's awesome so if you have somebody in your world in your circle that you really want to change your
066relationship with you have to be the person that has the awkward conversation of positivity 2 minutes a day for 10 consecutive days and if you think about somebody and say man they need to do that you should be doing it to that person does it work Miss Clark and how do you know know that it works because there are students who still come back after you've established that relationship and will tell you things that they would not have told you otherwise it builds a form of trust yeah thanks and I want to zero in on that for a second Kim because that's why our schools are safe that's it it's not because of one initiative or another it's because kids trust the adults in their building and learning does not OCC occur without a a
067formal effect and appropriate relationship between adults and students and adul now Jared Katie did text and said this probably isn't the example you want to use yeah I know I'm regretting everything I said about laundry um but you're so good at it sure I need a lesson on the fitted sheets if you can help me with that well speaking of someone who's found their wife unfolding and refolding her t-shirts yeah um I finally just stopped uh I think Jared you brought up a little bit about stoic and about safe civil schools that is one of the main um budget priorities that is going to the county is this idea that safety is a multi-pronged approach safety is not just metal detectors it's not just security officers it's also helping students learn new behaviors that will
068serve them as they mature and grow up if you go all the way back to when I was in the Wilderness Program 30 years ago they used to say that kids act out when they either run out of or have never learned effective coping mechanisms for what they are experiencing if we can get ahead of that ball that's going to fix the problem permanently and so that safe and civil schools money that we are requesting is to go ahead and embed that in every school rather than just the ones that we have done it with so far we have it in about 11 Jared 10 11 is that pretty close yes 11 and this will get it districtwide and be the main focus for our teachers for professional development next year so they act out
069when they have run out of or never learned or never learned effective coping mechanisms for their behavior and let's be fair it's different being a kid than it was when we were kids it is different the pressures are different the anxiety is different and if we can help our students learn how to regulate themselves without adult interaction and intervention isn't that we want for adults to do I think we all know some adults who struggle with it already who didn't learn it back when they were students but I think part of it is also that but part of it is about helping adults learn how to process things with kids without inadvertently increasing their stress level okay and the best example I can think of is going back everybody in here is seeing um The
070Breakfast Club okay and going back to when Bender and and the AP are having that argument in the library about when he gets racking up the detentions do you guys know what I'm talking about yeah you probably lived that movie didn't you um in that movie what happens is the adult in the situation continues to ress the kid the kid's Behavior continues to decline the adult continues to reinforce that if we can help as adults learn how's the best way to react to things it lowers the thermostat so it's sort of a multi-prong approach and it's also a schoolwide effort to talk about what does this school want to be about what's our identity going to be what's how we treat people going to be about and so it's a widespread area that's going to
071hopefully change the plan is it's going to change the whole thing Chris how do you incorporate the parents is there a Main part of this equation they of course that they are um we're hoping that we're going to be able to Showcase some of these things for everybody as well for families for parents for for the whole nine now what I started to do was talk a lot and it started with parents whose kids go to a school where we have leader and me and we have a couple of different schools and I saw you out of Portage neck last week I was talking to a parent today whose kids go to Holly tree and I said do they really talk about leader me at home is that like a thing and yeah how much
072what we teach them at school bleeds over into other places you know but honestly it we need to support our parents with everything that we can find that's going to help them and if our CH if our students learn how to regulate better that's going to change things in every place where they are okay spring break we are over here discussing the next meeting so we're looking at calendars um school spring break comes soon in the two weeks and two days and we are bringing you a spring surprise gift early we are budget oh yeah yeah that um so how I thought it was food I was so excited no um almost so skipping over the month of April um could we look at May 8th which is a Thursday um and we haven't talked
073lately about the time because I tend to eat lunch after a meeting like this rather than before I'm a late eater um I don't know how we got to 12:30 when we did but it just it just popped up and we seemed to make it work so now's a good time between now and then to talk about are Thursdays good days is a time a good a good time and I know everybody appreciate a month without a meeting so if we we have spring break for the month of April um May May 8th is that at 10 or 11 this time would work would this time would swi this time we sandwich in between those two yall look at it and um will send out the invitation I'll be out the country okay are you
074going somewhere cool it's my ref that qualifies yeah it does I won't be thinking about you no that's well looks like we're going to have a two-minute conversation for the next 10 [Laughter] minutes oh my um so yeah does you know we'll we'll send that and and then if you could look at it earlier than later if we need to tweak it but right now I've got confirmation that Natalie can make that meeting um and that's good since we're skipping but Natalie is on the April ate junk it she's part of the planning for it they're planning it I'm not we're not except for Dr bar doing the school par you're driving a school bus is that right I'm driving a van you don't want me to drive a school bus so and does anybody
075have any other questions on any of this before we adjourn for six weeks I just want to your on May the 8th at 12:30 same time yes ma'am and we can coordinate our stuff okay I think we'll we'll probably be done by 10: I think usually the May meeting is nuts and bolts getting ready for end of year and getting ready for graduation and testing so I would I would ask that we don't go past the beginning of May the end of May m is extremely bus yeah no we know that we need deal with end of school and we we're aware of that anything past spring break you and you you and you have an automatic pass on that the kids are are the primary goal yep yeah yeah and we I don't exactly
076know what we're going to do with that meeting but we have to get past the budget and then group on next steps and how we go forward so um if when there's no other business is all in favor say I I meeting turn yeah yes that is what we're going to talk about