001okay welcome everyone good evening and Welcome to our August regular Board of Education meeting we are glad you are here and we are very aware of the weather outside as well as the warnings for our area we will continue to monitor the the weather during the meeting and if it necessitates we'll make changes to be sure to keep everyone safe please also remember to keep the aisles clear during our meeting to allow members of the school system and Sheriff's Department to move around also except for when honoring our flag our opening prayer and when participating in the call of the audience remain seated during our meeting we hope to have a productive and efficient meeting and your help is greatly appreciated at this time I would ask Miss buoy to call the role please good
002evening Pete wildor present Melissa Mason here jayie barnhard here Pat Bradford I am here Stephanie crel here H mcmanis pres and Stephanie Walker here well welcome board board members I'm glad you're all here thank you for being here this evening in this rainy nasty weather um we next will uh have the approval of the agenda is there such a motion Mr chair uh Miss Bradford I would move that we add to the agenda the memorandum of understanding for disaster relief that the County Commission approved yesterday to help us in the event of a disaster okay we have a motion is there a second second we have a second first and second any discussion I I was under the impression that we weren't talking about this because it wasn't ready to go I had asked Acting
003Superintendent Barnes about this Dr Barnes he put me off well Acting Superintendent Barnes um handed it out this week okay um and we elected uh board chair asked me today if we can move it along a little quicker because we have sort of a pening disaster right now that's what I yeah I thought okay I'm good anyway okay um so we have a motion and second is there any discussion thank you sir where do you want to put it uh okay well we got to vote on it first all in favor please signify by saying I I all opposed carries 70 I would say we put that under new business Mr chair I have an amend also I'd like to for us to consider yes ma'am the um Can we is there a way that
004we can combine the two consensus items one is um it's section 17 and one is section section 12 is where all Theus and things are and then it looks like we put the Personnel down at the bottom because we weren't certain we were going to have it so I would just make a but we have something in close sessions that's why we have it there so we have to go to close session to discuss that and then come out all right so then and the next thing I had I had in my notes when I was taking them from the agenda review that we were going to add something um after we were going to add an number 18 an item 18 um after the consensus report and I was thinking and I went back
005to listen but I couldn't I couldn't find it and my guess it was something that we were going to talk about in close session that we had to come out and um does anybody remember that like we were going to have to talk about the do you okay we added Mr thank you Mr chair um I have written down that we were going to discuss the athletic director stien and the paid versus separate versus coed discussion and some of that was um in regards to what was Miss Walker brought up about the pay stiens which I believe we said we were going to discuss in close session that's what I have to CL down related to women's wrestling I think it relating to women's wrestling right no we we said we put that under new
006business last week under new business yeah we did I wrote it in right there okay so I think we all wrote different things um about that because I thought I remembered and maybe Miss barnham can help us out that we were and maybe this will be discussed in close session that we were waiting to get a new athletic director before we talked about wrestling or or it was something that we were waiting until some till we had a little more information from other counties about do we even have enough people to play and all that kind of stuff so that was the time that Dr Barnes was talking about um information that John Henry was um pulling together regarding other districts yeah yeah Dr Barnes at the board's pleasure we can discuss it tonight we
007can put it off till next week what I would recommend next month excuse me um what I would recommend is doing some sort of polling with the other schools to see if there is interest in a woman's wrestling team we know that there is enough at one of our Traditional High Schools the other schools we may be curious whether there's enough interest to Warrant a whole team in each location okay so then I'm going to the not make a motion to add something there since we can't even come to an agreement on what we thought we were going to add okay and um yeah and I'm I'm fine with waiting till next month to get some more details on Mr M Walker so I um I think that is one of the questions if Dr
008Barnes doesn't mind looking into um whether it is officially its own Sport and I know there's um well I've been told there's a school that actually is kind of operating that way and um I'm not going to say it's a title n you know kind of area there but if there is desire to do it what that entails and there has been a mix of co-ed versus separate teams all across the state John was looking into and contacting the High School Athletic Association to see how much of each there is and it sort of breaks in a lot of different ways unfortunately right it can be but I don't think it's mandated that it is it really depends on the propensity of the student okay well I guess maybe let uh students know what they
009need to do to advocate for themselves on this portion of it because there might like they saying might be a desire for that but we don't know and if we did have a team there may be more people who would try out for a team if they knew it was available yeah okay okay so we have a motion and a second uh to uh We've added this so we have a motion a second to approve the amended agenda Is there further discussion do we do that or not maybe we didn't do that okay we just amended it I'll make a I'll make a motion to approve the amended agenda okay is there a second okay any other discussion jumping ahead look at that all right all in favor please signify by saying I I all
010opposed carries 70 uh I'm going to run through all these we have uh real quickly we have the Reverend Arman from St Luke's will be uh giving us invocation remotely our national anthem very excited about that we have I hope I got everybody's name right Patty knoff from Noble yeah one for one Robert Parker from Ashley and Miss fa our supervisor great thank you oh great great well thank you all for being here that's going to be they're going to be handling our national anthem and I'm very excited to see uh and hear that that's going to be wonderful and then miss Bradford will be leading our Pledge of Allegiance so um we'll start with our invocation my name is j L armor and I am the pastor of the St Luke church here in
011the great city of wilington let us pray heavenly father in some circles you are known as teacher so we ask that you would bless every teacher in our school system and every employee in every school Christ came to us not as an adult but as a child so Lord bless every child enrolled in our school system and those who will soon be school AED children and Lord bless our school board members with wisdom insight and love as they lead us in the development of our most precious gifts our children this we ask in the Name of Christ amen amen pledge allegiance to the flag of United States of America and to the repic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all and now our national anthem [Music] oh
012all [Music] oh [Music] thank you very much oh really nice nice uh next we'll have the approval of the minutes is there such a motion um soov we have a motion and first and second any discussion hearing none all uh please signify all all who approve please signify by saying I I all against car 70 we are going to skip over recognitions is that correct correct so we will not be having recognition this this week or this month so we go on to our superintendent report sir sort of a different view from up here isn't it um obviously weather is on everyone's Minds tonight with the outer bands of hurricane well tropical storm Debbie dropping so much rain on the region we did make the call Monday to cancel school for tomorrow and allow our
013staff to work remotely our essential Personnel will report to buildings on Wednesday and Thursday to assess damage the safety of our staff and our students is always our primary concern and we're closely monitoring conditions to make a determination about Thursday our goal is here is to try to give parents teachers and staff as much notice as possible when calling a weather event however that means we may have to inform folks in stages depending on how the weather weather patterns develop setting the weather aside our schools are reopening students and families and staff are being welcomed back and everyone is excited to reconnect and are feeling energized for the promise of a new year kington and Eden Elementary open last month Snipes and Freeman opened last week and our specialty high schools were of course supposed
014to open their doors tomorrow and our traditional schools will start on August 27th prek for restart prek will start on August 12th and traditional prek will start on September 6th we want to thank our teachers our Tas our school leaders our custodians Child Nutrition staff School nurses bus drivers and everyone who's working as a team to get a help get the school year off to a great start the state budget has passed and we are able to move forward with raises and changes in benefits the average raise for public school salaries was 3% and will be paid retroactively back to July 1st we are aware that this has been a difficult summer for all members of our community and we are moving forward with the plan to maximize all funding possible for schools and student
015facing positions we do want to celebrate our schools that are 100% fully staffed going into the school year we have nearly 20 schools who have already hit that Mark and we're getting more and more added every day next week the board will host its town hall for New New Hanover County staff this is an opportunity for staff in every role in The District to share thoughts and ideas about culture and climate in new Hanner County Schools student Behavior and the qualities they'd like to see in their next superintendent invitations are being sent out and this is a great chance for you as an employee to share your thoughts on these critical issues with the board Communications Department is partnering with the New Hanover County to share the bus safety Billboards around town reminding drivers to
016be aware of school bus traffic and the laws that schools come back in session we also want to remind all the parents and families that traffic can be an issue at the start of every school year and please show patience and caution as you're driving in school zones our summer graduation was scheduled for tomorrow and as well and will be rescheduled for Wednesday August 14th at 6 PM the Snipes Auditorium we hope that you can join us and lastly be holding another coffee curriculum and conversation event for parents to drop in and talk about academics ask questions about curriculum Child Nutrition Transportation special education CTE and technology and this will take place on September 16th from 8 to 1 and from 4 to 6 here at the Board of Education Mr chairman that concludes my
017comments thank you thank you sir and I pretty much can say ditto but I'm I got a couple things to say that was that was that was really good that was very uh very very full I appreciate that uh my comments will be short uh we W welcome Snipes Academy and Freeman Elementary backing session I was able to stop by both schools today and understand that my fellow board members as well as senior staff and Dr Barnes were all open all there last week to open the schools the schools as well as our yearound schools have opened very successfully last month we were invited to our school systems Leadership Retreat it was a wonderful chance to to hear and from and to discuss with our school level leaders as well as our Central uh office
018level leaders ERS uh on a variety of topics so it was a very very great session I really did appreciate that and the invitation we also had multiple discussions and meetings concerning new Handover High School Mrs Mason Dr Barnes and I met with Mr rivenbark and Mr crude to make plans uh it was very good discussion and planning session uh more to come on that topic we have been working hard as a team to prepare for the interviews for the interim superintendent finally we are anticipating a great Town Hall following up from the recent climate survey we'll be hearing directly from our Educators about important topics such as discipline and the use of cell phones the current state of morale and climate in our schools and ways to improve it as well as our Educators
019thoughts and wishes for Su uh future superintendent that ends my much shorter um comments and at this point we will turn it over to miss Mason and we will have our call to audience so we welcome those Mr chair aren't we going to do um recognitions and no um those move those next month next month the thank you all for being here tonight um hopefully we can get through all this and get everybody home safe but let's get started uh Natasha too good evening um welcome Dr Barnes um and our new attorney it's nice to see everyone here um I just want to get started as of August 1 the new han County schools and other school districts and universities across North Carolina have had to make um have had to decide which side of
020History they're going to belong on and if they will Implement Biden's updated version of Title 9 I want to reiterate you are not obligated to adopt these especially right now when we have 13 out of 45 schools that are Exempted from this policy currently 26 out of 50 state attorney generals and organizations have successfully fought against these changes and Exempted their states unfortunately North Carolina is not one of them however there are currently eight school buildings within new han County School District that are Exempted and we have secured five more this past week which brings our total number of new H County school buildings Exempted from the title 9 revisions to 13 out of 45 and we will diligently work to get all 45 moms for Liberty has W an injunction against the Department of
021Education preventing it from enforcing title n in any school building attended by the children of its members this injunction applies specifically to the school building and not to the school district to exempt your child's School building you must be a member of moms for Liberty and you can join the fight at momser liberty.org however just want to let everyone know that only three pieces of information will be shared with it it's your estate your school district and your school building do not feel like your name is going to be put out there and these things are updated bi-weekly and our school board is notified this prevents the Department of Education from enforcing the new title 9 in your school's building which allows males into the female bathrooms locker rooms on their sports teams and if
022there's an overnight stay they're allowed to stay in the same room and if a female complains about it then she may be uh the one up in trouble we have 13 Going on 45 schools if you're interested to know which schools are there please get with me thank you so much Leslie posie good evening did you know that flags are designed to be representative but some people think that because a country or group's flag has a specific symbol on it it can't mean anything else the Mexican flag shows an eagle sitting on a cactus eating a snake that's from an important myth in Mexico's history the bisan flag shows two men shaking hands representing the positive relationship between the coastal and Mountain peoples England's flag is two crosses those of St Andrew and St James
023they represent important elements in British history but I guess now Eagles handshakes or crosses can't be used in any other way the US flag Stars and Stripes also represent history the 13 colonies and 50 50 States but I guess we're not allowed to use stars or stripes in any other way either so where am I going with this obviously the objection by some people to rainbows because the lgbtq community's flag is a rainbow the rainbow has been a symbol of love and peace for a long time remember Genesis I put my bow in the clouds to symbolize no more flooding Isaac Newton figured out 200 years ago that the rainbow is light split into its basic components we all oo and awe when we see a full rainbow in the sky kindergarten teachers use rainbows
024to teach skills like colors and how to use glue and scissors because kids know what a rainbow is none of these things are related to the pride flag displaying rainbows isn't trying to change kids if I put a basian flag in my classroom does that mean I'm trying to make my kids bisan or use a British flag to create Englishmen putting rainbows on the walls of the CL classrooms has absolutely nothing to do with the gay community so it is time for this board and many in our community to ditch your homophobic ideas and do your job creating schools that are the very best for educating our kids period thank you Miss posie Linda Higgins good evening I listened with interest to the idea that while we're short on money you're looking at buying cases
025for phones now this is the same school district that does almost all of its work on oh computers I ask you what do you think the kids can do on this that they can't do on this my kids can even make phone calls on their computers so like think about it unless you're planning on teaching technology finally and teaching them how to use technology appropriately you're just changing the tool for them to not pay attention we can't afford to spend a million dollars to change tools Christopher Morgan hello that was a great introduction I feel like we're all on the podium wearing gold after that um I uh I'm currently a parent of a student um I moved here in 2015 uh retired from the new Handover school system and this is my first school
026board meeting I've ever attended and uh the reason why is because recently there are a lot of concerns that I have and and for the sake of time I'm going to read uh a script as a parent of an Ashley High School senior and a former educator with Vance wake and new Handover counties I become concerned with the educational processes of our young people today at all levels elementary middle and high school what concerns me are all the external factors affecting the internal minds and behaviors of our stud students these concerns you can see on TV read in the news or turn on your phone and search and scroll these concerns are often voiced to you when your child arrives home sometimes you hear it from your child's teacher administrator school counselor or nurse at
027times it is brought to your attention by a neighbor a close friend or family member you see it in your child's eyes on their faces and in their behaviors as a parent you feel it intuitively and it's not always easy to deal with on your own our country our world is at a place and time and history that is becoming increasingly alarmingly increasingly alarming and unpredictable no parent wants their child to become a criminal serve time face hardship ship pain no parent wants their child to steal cheat or kill lie to classmates lie to parents no parents wants their child to be a recipient of those negative acts either no parent wants their child to be inundated and fixated with social media sites become victims of false realities and TV Idols that harm their already
028fragile mental state and deter from the social and emotional growth I'm not a preacher I'm certainly not a saint but with that being said in the recently Governor Jeff Landry of the state of Louisiana m the display of the Ten Commandments in all public schools by January 25 I propose to the parents teers and school members that we display the Commandments in all schools and Implement them in the Bible and instruction thank you Jerry windset Jerry wiset good evening at the agenda review meeting last week Dr mcmanis asked the essential question that love our children has been advocating for 17 months referring to the practice of principles calling parents before a suspension determination is made he asked Dr Barnes so is that in writing and Dr Barnes replied I will check but that is our
029expect expectation love our children believes that expectation should be written into short-term suspension policy 4351 the sentence could be simple such as principles will call parents before a suspension determination is made now the policy committee has revised other policies to meet their expectations for principles including policy 32000 that states princip princial and teachers shall limit displays in the classroom school buildings ball fields school grounds and buses such as signs and flags to materials that represent the United States the state of North Carolina new Handover County the school name and mascot postsecondary institution School sponsored events scholarships military Flags Family Photos Student Art and or the approved curriculum that's a lot we're just advocating for one simple short short sentence to revise short-term suspension policy 431 to include the sentence principles will call parents before a
030suspension determination is made and then please put it on the August 20 20 policy committee meeting thank you so much for listening to me and we'll be watching Christina Mercier last month you all were presented with mostly critical survey results I noticed that some of you recognized and acknowledged your shortcomings and vowed to do more and I've seen you doing more like being at schools on the first day however there were others who heard the criticism and proceeded to deflect blame onto anyone but themselves insinuating that the teachers were out of touch and ignorant about what goes on with the board one board member even accused meeting attendees of pushing their political agenda is on the board yet that same board member is lotted all over social media by copit for aggressively pushing a specific
031political agenda as I was looking through the survey comments one about the board stood out to me there are board members who do not look at the educational system as a whole but push their personal beliefs on the schools without asking questions seeking truths please listen to what teachers are telling you no matter your original reason for running for school board what you are doing is hurting teachers and students it's a shame that politics are involved at all in public education but it's despicable when people use their position to actively hurt those they were elected to protect I know you've already heard tonight about the horrible consequences of the title 9 updates which of course were supposed to be focused on um expanding protections to students who may be the target of discrimination well think
032about it this way if the survey made you feel picked on or the comments hit a nerve maybe you should think about all those students who are targeted because of their gender race religion handicap or anything that makes them the object of ridicule if you don't like the feeling I'm thinking they don't either so they need the title n protection and in closing I'd like to introduce synonyms to you instead of insisting you don't ban books he similar words discourage block suppress crack down on exclude bar disallow hinder halt rule out reject squelch veto block remove and get rid of so maybe it's time to look Inward and ask yourself what you can do to improve the education for teachers and student and quit asking what your fans would like you thank you Barbara G
033good evening thank you for taking the time to listen to us I was really surprised to find that only 14% of the people and teachers that took part in the staff climate survey felt supported by the school district with student discipline just 14% here's some of the comments they made there are no consequences when you write a student up and students know that they're not going to get in trouble so Behavior keeps escalating far too much inappropriate behavior has been allowed to continue without any real consequences student behaviors are becoming worse and there are no consequences for their actions discipline is is a choke there are zero consequences for student behaviors it appears not everyone in the district is on the same page with student discipline discipline is not happening the administration is not doing
034anything at all there were over 120 individual comments about the lack of consequences that I suggest you read those comments so how is this school year going to be different love our children hopes that you do more than have a town hall we want you to listen to the teachers and do a deep dive into the data we want our children to stay in school where they can be safe and learn and Thrive thank you Loretta stous good evening tonight miss Farnum will present a prelim preliminary update on discipline data here's some of the comments on that topic from the staff climate survey there's a climate in our district of covering up inappropriate behavior principles are being asked to cover up the ISS numbers because the county wants to look good I've heard from the
035administration that we're not allowed to suspend anyone unless it's for fighting or drugs I'm not sure if this is true or not I teach upper classmen do not punish schools that need to suspend students that have multiple Behavior referrals and are a constant disruption to the learning environment let's be concerned with holding students accountable rather than trying to look as though we don't have discipline problems some teachers do not use Educators handbook and have their own methods of discipline the problem is it never gets recaptured there are of course more comments like these please read all of them so how is this school year going to be different love our children want safe schools for all students and all staff you can't make good policy decisions unless you have all of the data let's keep
036that in mind during Miss baram's presentation thank you thank you Alicia oand Deli Alicia oand Deli she here Jan Landis thanks for the opportunity to chat and represent our kids I'd like to share a comment from the staff climate survey one teacher wrote and I quote there's a lot of discussion about discipline data but I have seen very little investigation into the impact of reducing suspensions without any other supports in place for discipline I am not opposed to reducing suspensions but we cannot do that without putting some sort of intervention in place for students when they are not following school rules two years ago 38 staff members receive training from lives in the balance in their collaborative and proactive Solutions model or CPS for acquiring a more accurate compassionate understanding of a child's concerning Behavior
037this group of Administrators and Educators represented seven elementary schools and Lake Forest Academy love our children supports C the CPS model as a positive alternative to punitive and exclusionary discipline and for the F past two months we've been asking you to invite miss vnum here to answer these three questions how was the CPS model implemented this past school year did any of the schools see Improvement in student behavior and number three did they have fewer out of school and in school suspensions it would also be great to hear from some of the teachers who actually used that program so how is this school year you're going to be different if the CPS model shows promise it should be implemented in a few more schools thanks thank you Veronica mclen Brown I don't see her Peter
038rowt only 6% of the respondents to the staff CL CL at survey feel supported by you the Board of Education concerning School discipline only 6% in the comment section it appears that two people had similar concerns one person said please stop caving into the love our children group every time they come up with a new Hooper challenge for you to jump through the other said we have to stop caving to the love our children group well there are certain members of the school board and the policy committee who have ignored us or disagreed with us but I can't think of a single time where you have caved into US is that a fair assessment as a matter of fact for the past 17 months we've been asking you and the policy committee to revise short-term
039suspension policy 4351 and you haven't budged not one bit so how is this school year going to be different well you could revise short-term suspension policy 4351 and include the sentence principls will call parents before a suspension determination is made remember principles are already making these calls we're simply asking you to put those 10 words into the policy where it belongs thank you thank you Judy [Applause] Justice good afternoon again seems like it's a monthly thing but it is so glad to see yall all right I hope that all of you agree that our students deserve a quality public education so that they can grow up to be productive and happy citizens unfortunately in North Carolina our public schools have been under attack by a political party since that party took control of the state
040legislature in 2012 as you know they control almost two-thirds of our Public Schools funding in uh 2023 we had fallen to 49th in the nation that political party the same party represented by the current majority on the school board has for the last 12 years intentionally undermined our public schools by denying them needed resources to succeed with the goal of having the public believe our schools are failing here the fact is that our County Commissioners also controlled by the same party refuses to fund our schools properly to make up for the state's deficit even though we are the eighth richest District in the state and we have $1.5 billion dollar from the hospital sale that was promised to us from Novant there is an obvious pattern here which even our staff pointed out in the
041recent climate survey when 80% of the respondents said that you the school board do not understand the realities and challenges that public schools face many even said that you are too busy carrying out your political agenda to address the real needs of our schools so this is what I a parent a grandparent educator and a former School Board member has to say to you again stop focusing on politics start supporting our public schools by working with the county now to make sure that we get the money promised to us from the hospital sale to provide the needed resources for our schools so our students can succeed please do the job you elected to please thank you Miss Justice Karen Clark the seven of you have the power the authority to propel to actualize a new
042season of righteousness and justice for the children of new Handover County Schools as you begin the process of selecting the next superintendent America's Foundation is a Biblical worldview I pray you stand on the word of God no matter matter what God's will for our children is to be under righteous Educators and taught truth second Timothy warns the time is coming when people no longer listen and respond to truth seeking Leaders with soothing words that line up with their desires they will close their ears to truth I pray that the father of Glory the god of our Lord Jesus Christ would impart to you the riches of the Spirit of wisdom and the spirit of Revelation that you have discernment to fully understand God's will you will not be easily shaken by trouble or LED astray
043by novel teachings or false doctrines but instead you will remain strong and always sincere in love as you express Truth for each of you is formed in His image and every member has been given divine gifts to contribute to the growth of all so wake up you living gateways and rejoice for such a time as this lift up your heads you ageless doors of Destiny welcome the king of glory for he is about to come through you I am the way and the truth and the life Your Kingdom Come King Jesus your will be done New Hanover County schools are schools of light on a hill that cannot be hidden in jesus' name amen thank you Miss Clark Sonia beniton Patrick good evening on July 3rd 2024 the Republican Party released a letter expressing their
044excitement for the firing of Dr Charles fa the former superintendent of New Hanover County Schools the incitement comes from the Republican Party classified as a moment where the reversal of cultural change has occurred because their children were being educated about race and it has and what has played its part in history Republicans want to F their systematic practices on society and their oppressive strong stronghold on education a republican superintendent replacement will push the Republican agenda on all children and parents since superintendent F was deemed to be a democratic superintendent we didn't know that superintendant were partisan positions we must inform you that we see what's taking place and we will not remain dormant with you jeopardizing our civil liberties schools in our communities are failing the de efforts are being cancelled and women rights are
045being repealed we anticipate you deflating what's being said here as confrontational or even racist but is the only approach to you to your stance on what is happening in our community and yes New Hanover County is our community too black and brown people are taxpayers we help build this country locally nationally as well as the state of North Carolina and we will no longer tolerate your blatant racist disrespect towards us and our children we will no longer tolerate the downplay of our mental capacity as it relates to leadership and productivity in this community as a whole we demand that the next superintendent represents all children and not just a political agenda and we will fight for our children by any means that time is up time is up Jan Boswell good evening board it's nice
046to see all of you tonight um I'm Jan Boswell with moms for Liberty and as you know Constitution day is September the 17th so children across the United States will be celebrating that as for our schools so this year just like last year we're going to provide pocket constitutions for all the 8th grade students we are partnering partnering with 9917 society and moms for Liberty our goal is to provide constitutional education on the guarantees of freedom and liberty that our constitution provides 9917 society and moms for Liberty voluntarily do this because we love our country and we have a desire to educate our youth to be proud citizens on another note moms for Liberty we always um give out an award is called the joyful Warrior award sometimes we give it to members we do
047this month but this month we wanted to give it to one of our school board members so I would like to present this joyful Warrior award to Pat Bradford and she can pick this up I'll leave it over there thank you congratulations Veronica mclen brown two years ago short-term suspension policy 4351 was revised to say no student under age 8 or under grade three will be suspended out of school except in response to incidents involving violations of policy 4225 drugs and alcohol policy 4331 assaults and threats and policy 430 4333 weapons bomb threats terrorist threats and clear threats to safety apparently not everyone got the memo because here some comments from the staff climate survey the board created a policy that states students cannot be suspended we do not have a lot of recourse in
048being unable to suspend K2 students does not solve problems taking away the ability to suspend young students was a terrible move they can't be sus be suspended because they're under seven those statements are AB absolutely false how is it possible that a policy adopted 2 years ago that takes 18 seconds to read and impacts thousands of our youngest Learners and parents is so completely misunderstood so will the school board central office and school administrators accurately communicate policy revisions and new policies to the staff and parents next year parents can only advocate for their children's rights if they know what they are Educators can only Implement a policy effectively if they know that it exists and understand it how is it possible that a policy adopted two years ago takes 18 seconds to read is so
049completely misunderstood thank you Miss McLaren Brown I don't see Miss Ogen Deli she all right with that uh call audiences finished we do want to thank everyone board members do we need to take a break or can we go on through all right let's carry on through everybody good you good all right all right we'll carry on next with our um information first is cell phone bags M Bradford we have you highlighted for this and have the presentation by the cellone company I believe yes I'm looking over there and I'm seeing it we could make a motion to move it down in the agenda but it would take a super majority well if he's not online yet I make a motion to move the cell phone bag discussion to be on the town hall so
050change it from a to c okay is there a second second okay again this will take a super majority um all in favor please signify again this is just move it down two places all in favor please signify by saying I I all opposed okay carries 70 that is a super majority we'll go on to miss farum with the uh nhcs discipline data update Miss farum okay uh I don't know if the attachments will be pulled up so I'm going to go ahead and talk through the attachments um and we'll see if if they come up so the um first of the two attachments um is titled student behavior and discipline and this is really just a brief overview of the roles of policy in creating a safe environment for student learning and that would
051be for the learning of the student with challenging behaviors and for the learning of all perfect thank you so of course we know that our goal is to help students behave successfully and that's for each learner and all Learners so the reason for managing student Behavior are to create an orderly environment of course to teach expected standards of behavior help students learn to apply and accept consequences of their behavior and and also supporting our students in developing self-control so it's very important to understand the place in policy as we look at how that's carried out by staff so policy 4302 School plan for the management of student Behavior Uh this plan we've talked about for a couple of years now and we'll be moving into the third iteration of these plans by each of our
052schools this is how the particular School engages in the process in addressing student Behavior this is where our teachers and staff have voice in the process for their school and where parent participation is absolutely key the next is important to understand our instructional framework the academic and behavioral instructional framework has to be proactive and preventative knowing that it's instructional we're teaching Behavior expectations teaching consequences and the acceptance of them teaching self-control then the next step is carrying out the disciplinary steps the graduated response system one piece of that graduated response is of course that parent participation that parent communication and contact prior to moving to the next levels which includes the exclusionary practices exclusion from the classroom might be ISS might be um being placed in another um instructional support in the school but another
053exclusion can be out of school suspension but that parent communication exists prior on that graduated response also it's important to note that the non-negotiables are the threats the weapons the injury and a pattern a pattern refusal to be redirected because that does create an unsafe situation and as the board has seen these plans each school's plan for the management of student Behavior you can see that it's a team approach that does involve the staff and the teachers and the administrators and the parents in that particular school on developing and then evaluating their school plan this is a continuous Improvement cycle and we will see those plans re-evaluated again at the beginning of this school year so next I want to move into the particular discipline data that I can share these are draft numbers these
054are not verified which is why I can't tease them out into a more disag ated format because these numbers still need to be verified by DPI and then we have to go through a series of data checks and I've even got an update for you because I've done another data check um since submitting this one and I have an update so keeping in mind this is unverified data um I cannot go deeper because that information would still be um held for verification I do want to uh mention the incidents entered into Power School in the the 2324 school year is 2000 I mean sorry 24,29 and that is an increase in the number of incidents entered I will tell you that our process for entering discipline data the standard operating procedure that process for our
055schools is to enter every incident that needs to then be tracked and monitored so we are suggesting that you enter in your um parent conferences that you enter in parent calls or an intervention as a disciplinary measure that way you can track that you've done that and you can follow your graduated response so I'm not surprised to see that number of incidents the next our in school suspension assignments is 4,719 even though this is not verified data just making a comparison that's down by 158 from last school year so that's 158 lists in school suspension assignments I also want to clarify there's no directive um provided by the district um to not engage in consequences for students so I I I do want to say that um every ISS is coded um as directed the
056next um short-term suspension assignments um I want to clarify the term assignments this is not the number of students who have received a suspension that would be a duplicated count of of students this is the number of times an out of school suspension was assigned for an incident so this is not going to be 3,116 students suspended that's a less number of students because some students have had multiple suspensions okay the next the reportable offenses I want to explain what reportable offenses are um There are 16 um that Accord ording to General statute require procedures for reporting from school administration and if necessary to law enforcement authorities so of the 16 nine of these are considered to be dangerous and the others are considered to be um reportable because of their impact potentially for um
057criminal investigation so we have in the reportables we have 162 inci again until this is further verified this is our draft number that we have submitted that is down 14 from last year moving on to disciplinary reassignments to JC row this would be our alternatives to Long long-term suspension so for students who have engaged in persistently problematic Behavior but not necessarily uh dangerous Behavior so that being 113 that is down six from the last school year and then moving over to long-term suspensions those are for situations for um students that need to be suspended for the remainder of the school year due to the dangerous dangerousness of um the challenging behavior that was exhibited and this is an example of data verification the number of long-term suspensions for this past school year is really four
058but that number duplicated in the submission which which is a part of the data verification process but I did catch that one cuz I know that one I I haven't engaged in eight um and that is up two from last year because in the prior school year it was two this year it is four it is not eight um again I do want to caution um using this information as published it is not ready for publish it can be shared in this um aggregated format but I cannot disaggregate it further simply because the data will be adjusted when they're SS I do want to um offer one last um comment um new han County Schools is no longer sanctioned for disproportionate out of school suspensions for students with disabilities I had a question um and
059I'll open up to any other questions well you mentioned short-term suspension assignments if a child has suspended for 10 days is that 10 of those 3,116 or is it one that's a great question it is one because is the number of times an assignment for out of school suspension is made thank you it is not the number of students or the number of days other question from the board Bradford um first just a comment incidents entered into power school 24293 that's almost one per student just a comment an observation and those to clarify those might be interventions that are listed in power school for recording so um they are not all um incidents for suspension as you can see the difference would be 3,116 for suspension yes so here's my question how is it that
060teachers are getting hit bitten and having things thrown at them um and worse inside our schools how is it that's happening and what is the result of it what is the consequence for it right so that's going to vary by developmental age by culpability what are the other um the other situations or contexts around that behavior so number one that is that is never something that we want to say well that just happens right and in in my experience as a special education teacher for students with behavior disorders I completely understand this um in a typical classroom if you have a scenario where a student feels that that is an appropriate thing to do that requires a very significant level of intervention that would involve Administration no matter what if we're talking about a student
061with a very specific disability that involves having an individualized education program with support staff around them to support what might be happening around that behavior what are those triggers what are the antecedants have we worked to prevent those so overall it is not an expectation that that our staff accept um physical treatment in the classroom from their students or for anybody so it it really depends and I wouldn't be able to say there is a blanket answer um aside from students with disabilities the again the non the non-negotiables that are in the school plans are threats weapons injury and refusal to be redirected so on a for a typically developing student that is something that Administration is going to immediately pull out and resolve I don't know an administrator who says my teachers are getting
062hit and there's nothing I'm going to do about it m Bart thank you Mr barnham um I want to just highlight one of the things you said you said the number of times not the number of students and so when you look at the S short-term suspensions this is the total number of times but not the number of students now you said you were going to give us a higher view do you have um how many individual students have been short-term suspended and we can see that comparison so again in the data cleaning process I have a slightly different number from a different report which is what you have to do in the data verification pulling reports from multiple places and allowing the state system to comeb through the various sales that in that are
063included in this type of massive data project um I see in a different report um a slightly different number of short-term suspension assignments but not terribly different 3,147 so that would be 31 different um that might be duplicates but overall in that number I see that um about 1,600 of those are unique students meaning that less than half of those are repeat um students in that calculation thank you and again this does not show the interventions that have happened with our students prior to the result of a suspension I know um the board a few months ago had changed the expectation to have consistent expectation and discipline because we want to support our staff and understand that there should be interventions happening and being adjusted um and I'm going to speak to we were invited
064to a principal's meeting a few months back and myself and Miss Mason Miss Bradford were able to attend and specifically in regards um to the changes that love our children had asked about having a phone call prior to an investigation happening our principal said please do not do that and I want to tell everybody why the reason being if I'm just going to use my colleague here as an example if we were in an altercation and I decided to punch my colleague in the face and she was crying in the corner by by by tying the hands and saying you have to make that phone call prior to the investigation the administrators would no longer be able to comfort that child as well as talk and um dissect and go into questioning where the students
065I'm I'm I'm sharing with you what they shared with us so that you guys understand where is coming from so to understand that an investigation is questioning a child of whatever happens um so this is something that we need to understand we want to support our staff and our administrators and understand that they are working diligently to intervene prior to this result because we do not want to see students suspended but it is it is an option that we sometimes have to utilize in order to keep our schools safe Miss Mason you've mentioned a few times that this is not finalized data do we know how I know this is a state level type thing do we have like an estimate as far as of when we think it might be finalized so we normally
066engage in the data verification process through August and September so I would say definitely midall um seems right but again it's it's out of my hands it's with data verification at DPI but we're still doing the data verification process with them any other questions well not not so much a question but um I know we're going to address some of this at our town hall coming up um the behavior in schools and I think that will be give us an opportunity to really listen and hopefully come up with some solutions that will be helpful to staff cuz I mean I read the I read the climate survey too I mean nobody wants students suspended I mean in an Ideal World we would fund our schools 100% And we would have more more positions to help
067um but we do need a strategy I guess to figure out how we help both students and staff so I just wanted to point that out we are going to talk about that any other questions yes sir I just want to cycle back to Julie something you said in the beginning that dis discipline serves two purposes it's ensure the safety of the school building and also help a child learn new and better behaviors so we asked about how can we support our teachers better the more we can support them also by helping them learn skills and deescalation and how to deal with crisis management and things of that nature will help our teachers work with children more effectively as well it's a lot of um you know there's a lot that teachers have to do
068every day and discipline is only a part of the work that they do every okay but I think I want to Circle back to your first statement what it's for thank you thank you thank you thank you m Mor appreciate it thank you so much going on to our town hall we mentioned that several times I think uh all the board members have a sheet in front of you that kind of outline some things as I mentioned before we are very uh excited and looking forward to a great Town Hall next week um you know and the three areas as I mentioned before behavior in school including cell phones uh we'll have some board members uh that'll be leading that discussion uh and there'll be two rounds two go two uh full um go rounds
069uh 45 minutes each time uh the second will be climate in schools and again um I always ask when I was a principal you know bring bring your concerns but also bring uh you know Solutions so hopefully we have some great discussions there about how we can improve the climate and the morale of our teachers teacher assistants bus drivers uh cafeteria workers custodians everyone uh Administration um and then the third uh rotation will be qualities that we would like to see or they would like to see in the new next superintendent the board has discussed that we have some ideas but again we definitely want to hear from our Educators on uh what they would like to see so that we can uh work together to get an you know exceptional person in that role
070so uh Dr Barnes will be uh kind of doing a little memc stuff at the beginning in the end uh but we're very excited about that and U we'll have a quick turnaround especially for that last group uh the qualities for the superintendent because uh we will'll be interviewing uh in the near future uh on that so any questions on that Miss crille um yes the um couple things the on on the notes that we have cell phones aren't mentioned um so I just wanted to make sure that we were on the same page for rotation number one um talking about managing student beh Behavior it doesn't mention cell phones there so I just want to know if we're going to be talking about I'm I'm not opposed to it but if this is our
071instructions then I think we should all be clear yeah I think we just need to add cell phones in there if that would be okay yeah just to to do that that'd be great thank you sort of widening the funnel but I can thank you for pointing it out M graille and then another one um I really would like for us to consider in the the third category um where it says qualities desired for a new superintendent um what is before for us right now is the interim superintendent and um one of the things we had talked about was we wanted to hear from our um staff about the interim before we started interviews so I want us to um con consider adding in interim there because qualities that we might be looking and focus
072areas and philosophies and skill sets that we might be looking for in an interim um could possibly and probably are different than what we might want to have in a permanent superintendent so I would like to um interject that in there too if that is okay with the rest of the board does anybody have objection to that no I think that's a great idea both of them well both but right but we have plenty of time to talk about the superintendent we don't really have plenty of time to talk about the interim you know we need to kind of get going on that um if somebody wants to throw one in I think our Focus really should be the interim because that's what we're embarking on in the next couple weeks and I and I
073think and I'm just going to say this out loud I think that you know we also before we get to the permanent superintendent I think we need to you know get our our um all our stakeholders our parents our grandparents uh community members and all that kind of stuff and can hear from them also in addition to our Educators but I think maybe listen to both so this will be a great opportunity to hear about um you know the inter room and the maybe the full-time ones I think we'll have enough time to do that so great so um can I ask another question so the um is this going to be live streamed um because you can't really hear um when we have our town halls they only they can only set up at
074one table so um and I'm just thinking a teacher may not want to be live streamed you know to talk I mean they're not going to say anything different maybe but maybe they won't say anything at all you know if they're have a a camera in their face or microphone in their face speak to that we have decided not to live stream that meeting specifically okay we will have a sort of a of a of a spectator row there in the back but we do want to schedule there will be more times to discuss about the superintendent with the rest of the community as well this one is isolated for staff specifically thank you I just want to make sure that folks felt comfortable as comfortable as they can feel yeah thank you thank you
075mville I may have missed this at some point um it says school board members are we choosing which group we're in or is that a I'm be Cho that okay we we pulling sticks like they do all right thank you yeah we're rotating right so it doesn't really matter what group the the the board members would be rotating so you'd have your your topic but we'd have yeah you stay with the topic yeah yeah you stay with the topic s right now we there because you especially the the the third one we stay with our topic oh that's Jinx okay I'm Sorry Miss gra no I'm sorry I'm sorry that was that was my inner self Mr chair I brought this up at the um agenda review but I also just want to make sure
076that we have prek representation and our staff as we're going through I don't know how we're choosing our staff to invite um but just make sure that we have a crossboard representation from prek elementary middle and high school as along with the classified staff that you have listed so did you want to go here first did you have your hand up Miss Walker so I um are we gonna have someone at our at our group taking notes oh right on yes absolutely we'll have notes yes Brad so let me understand this one or two board members will have rotation one behavior in schools it'll be two two and three obviously so one group will have climate in the district and the third group will have qualities desired for the next superintendent that is correct so
077we are going to find out what happened at the other tables house he has no takers we have no takers we're also obviously that the um not obviously don't mean to say that in a negative way but uh the third group we're going to turn around very quickly and get that word out to everybody because we you know we'll be interviewing the short term uh afterwards so obviously we want to get that information to the entire board shortly thereafter can we Define this shortly thereafter because I thought we were kind of hoping that Tuesday we get it um give the folks a chance to process it not they don't have to go home Tuesday night you know and do this homework that they have Wednesday to do it and then we get it out to
078us by Thursday the um may I request that we switch groups for the second time so that we can at least get chance to hear comments on from on two different questions you got it more more to share with each other 100% you got it and of course that's at the board's discretion the reason we set it up this way is because we know that our staff may have a vested interest in more than one topic and so really it was like who do we get to make sure we hear all from and it was better to have the staff have more opportunity to speak than have to go over the same ground with different board so did that just change we now have two slots well you'll have two you there's there's two full
079rotations so one rotation say for instance you are taking a shot in the dark you're on discipline in the first rotation then the second rotation you may be on uh qualities for the new superintendent okay so you'll have your team will stay the same but you may be uh you you will be at two different tops your teammate will be the same your teammates okay so Mr chair one more one more question for clarification just um I think we are well I don't know if we are all together on this or not but um we can draw this is a listening from my understanding from our discussions this is a listening session so we people will be kind of like talking at us but we're not going to be like answering questions like they say
080why don't you do this you know we're not going to say oh that's we'll say oh that's a great idea thank you we write it down but we're not really engaging back and forth in Dialogue on this right because it's more or less so we can get more people to give us stuff than us trying to interject our feelings and thoughts and right and I think that's why what I said before was was crucial is that not only come in you know I'm I'm use the climate one not only come in and say well the climate of my school isn't great okay well how can we as a board help to improve that how can how can central office help to improve that so you know so we may facilitate it but we're not going
081to no yes okay I guess we we looks good yeah good thank you anything else board members are we do we have them we do have the cell phone folks on so let's go back to um a which is cell phone bags Miss Bradford okay um we have been talking about discipline and team two on the Safety Committee and we thought that since Brunswick is doing a pilot we' get this guy to tell us about the phone bags and see if it's something we want wanted to do we found out from the assistant district attorney um actually I think I found out from some of the media that they're using them in the Wilson Center now when you go in you put your phone in the bag um so it's it's obviously succeeding so we're
082going to hear what this guy has to say and his name to tell us about the phone bag district attorney that they're using them in the now when you go in [Music] I think we did there he is good afternoon can everyone hear me right now yes sir yes thumbs up fantastic so I had to switch there I think you're currently muted on your side so I was watching the YouTube broadcast just to understand when I am presenting um I sent in a presentation to accompany me and I'm wondering if that's available or if I'm able to share that on my end although I can't hear from your end we have it up he can't hear us how we G ask but he can see our thumbs up there we are thumbs up now and
083now I can hear you oh you can hear us now too there we go perfect let me see if I presentation able to be shared at the same time or should I find that on all right there we okay perfect I will start at the beginning so ructions first and foremost thank you so much for taking the time to allow me to present sh information about Yonder we are seeing a significant amount of interest in districts near you in states around you I've been listening to a few board cly cell phones and culture are significant issue so I think this is a very appropriate time to present so Yonder starting from the beginning we minimize distraction the time maximize Lear that's slide right there um and we can skip through it um start at the
084beginning um in this presentation I'm going to cover what the Yonder program is where we've developed from um highlight some aspects of our program um allow a video to play that will kind of clarify what the day today looks like um I'll go over some statistics on the benefits schools and districts have seen while partnering with us any of time permits try to do my best to allow for some questions and answers because rarely do I present to a board and there are no questions at the end so happy to jump to the next screen if to start from the beginning Yonder we've been working with schools the last 10 years we actually started working with schools on the west coast um outside Silicon Valley where individual making cell phones and social media also recognize
085the need to create phone free spes in schools and in the last 10 years our presence has grown significantly as you can see in the screen we work with a little over a million students daily um in in about 24 different countries so we started in the west coast but we saw significant growth when other countries started creating legislation to uh regulate bones in schools primarily in Australia New Zealand and the UK the government said no phones in school but did not create any sort of mechanism to make that effective Yonder was in to support the schools both with the tools we offer and with the expertise of the last few years of roll program um as you can see we are now spread out significantly across the us next slide if possible just that
086one I can jump right into it so yeah minimize distractions maximize learning there's also quite a few other benefits but we always want to highlight what Yonder is is way but instead providing for both students teachers and school leaders the best possible um culture and situation to create most can jump to the next slide if possible perfect and so like I said I've been listening in to your districts board meetings reading the news news and I I'm certain that you've been doing simp things to other areas across the country and the news is very consistently packed with articles both highlighting the issues surrounding cell phones and other District's attempts or successes in dealing with them um the last board meeting about a week ago we were scheduled to speak timing was off it would have
087been a very appropriate time following um the DA's presentation on cell phones being used very negatively in that Fourth Article is something we're seeing very consistently happen with that noted Spike of in the last few months significantly more students violating cell phone policies almost unconsciously as they've built habits around cell phones that make them very difficult to deal with the cell phone policies presented to them usually requiring student will um willpower to keep their phones off in a way uh the next slide is going to highlight one of the more important people when it comes to speaking about student search in general um he stated twice both um through his platform in the US government and recently in a article in the New York Times highlighting the possible damaging effects that social media has on
088the development of Youth and what he posted or he wrote about in The New York Times was arguing the to create warning labels on social people experts have recognized and are continuing to recognize that social media's grasp on students and their development is beyond normal ideas of of what students are dealing with and students themselves maybe don't have the ability to put their phones down themselves and so we and school leaders are looking to another step in creating sustainable effective cell phone policies and so that's a big part that yonder comes in um I think when we think of cell phone policies there's a lot of other opportunities or possibilities that school distri districts consider um looking at this new mod Jonathan height one of the foremost leaders of the regulating cell phones movement wrote
089in a book The anxious generation that while there other methods exist they are not as effective um simply Banning phones or collection methods don't necessarily work variety of reasons and we can look at the next slide just to kind of see where other districts stand on this issue and I think that last sentence really what other districts are currently seeing a lot of have a cell phone policy but it's very hard to regulate and when the emphasis is put on the student to be the one responsible for keeping that cell phone away it sounds great in practice it's incredibly difficult and sometimes unfair to ask the most dedicated student to keep those notifications their pocket or ignore their parents when they're texting them or ignore their friends when they ask let me see your phone
090really quickly so there's all these certain situational things that come out if not necessarily daily but hourly that students have to be responsible and that's really where the Yonder program steps in so we can look the next slide and I can talk of exactly what Yonder is how we support districts and students and a little more about our program so if you looked into Yonder at this point or heard about us from neighboring districts like Brunswick County I think the first thing you're going to think about are these great nepr pouches and now this is a locking pouch that individuals can keep on them but it's locked so they can't quite access it this helps schools add a layer to a cell phone policy that says phones need to be off from Bell to Bell
091or arrival to dismissal on the next slide go into a little more depth about what the Y program includes I think a lot of people or a lot of districts want the pouches and say we can figure it out from there but we've come to realize that in the last 10 years we have the base Andes and the expertise to support districts in this rollout plan so the first step about couches and all the equipment we offer we really want to start in that second tier that training and support working with District to provide the parent letters the student policy procedures template giving those staff presentations working with build about day-to-day Logistics implementation plan um working with that on-site implementation before schools and districts start using these lockable pouchs um we also want to make
092sure that students are as engaged and possible and so we're rolling out resources that districts can provide from uh lit modules to presentations to resources for parents and students when they're considering why is a district looking at a policy like this what has influenced them or what is the research saying when it comes to cell phones and positive or negative effects um they're having on students in school the next slide should be a video and we'll see if it can play this is just going to give an even more in depth on exactly how the Yonder program works on the day today if there's no sound that's okay I can easily go over it as well no sound there's no sound sir perfect so I'll just talk about kind of what Yonder looks like in
093action um over the last 10 years we've come to realize the most effective way to roll out our program is through a tier one intervention approach and that means working with District to provide one of these pouches to every single student um we recommend districts assign the pouches at a one to one um in two methods the first way is by writing a number in Sharpie for a permanent yet reusable solution to identify a pouch to a student and the second way is through a wallet sleeve the pouches putting a name part in that wallet sop so that creates high level of accountability and allows districts to quickly identify which pouch belong to which students we've come to realize that onetoone assignment and That higher level of accountability is necessary in ensuring the pouches last
094um not just for one year but for multiple years making our program as sustainable as possible I'll quickly go over the day today starts with students having their pouch and as they enter the building they take their phone Slide the phone in pouch and they can lock it quickly just by pushing this little button in now pouch is locked or closed students can then maintain possession of their phone but they can't access it and that is the number one benefit of our program over other alternative um we see a lot of school districts have policies in place that are very teacher driven so when a student walks into the classroom it's up to the teacher to create that bone-free sometimes they have tools either wall hangers or boxes they ask every single student to put
095their phone into now we hear that works originally however over the course of a school year it's very difficult to be that force or have that power struggle against a student when it comes to using their cell phone and not all teachers are able to maintain the same level classroom management and if one teacher has a policy or no policy in their classroom it's very tough for that teacher next door to also maintain a strict no cell phone policy Yonder does its best to remove expectations from the teacher of being the cell phone police and condenses them to one point the beginning of the day when all students their phones in the pouch additionally it takes a significant amount of pressure off a school or if they have a total collection all students their phones
096in at the beginning of the day once again that puts a lot of weight on the school to be responsible for every single cell phone um which is a bit of a liability issue at the end of the day when it's time to return cell phones back to students D provides these mountable unlocking stations so this is a wooden mounting plate that can be attached to walls taes with a metal magnet screwed into the top now we recommend about one of these for every 100 students walking out of a door to maintain and function is very simple once again the main benefit students have their pouch they walk by they if it doesn't open on contact they push the button but many students will quickly quickly learn that they can just tap their pouch on
097this and it'll pop open they take their pouch with them take the phone out and the process repeats again um other things the Yonder program provides are these handheld unlocking bases now these are going to be great for School admin to have um maybe nurses if there's an officer on site for a field trips or if a teacher writes um the use of a cell phone or cell phones into a lesson plant so basically a flexible solution the last kind of exterior element I'll add is there are students who have a medical need to access their phone um we provide medical pouches so this is a pouch want to a locking pouch however instead of a locking top it has a velcro top and so students with the doctor note if they need to check
098their blood sugar or have some sort of other issue that mandates assistant phone use this maintains that element of tier one not having them stand out for for having some sort of specific need um happy to jump to the next slide perfect so a lot of districts have their own specific why about why they choose Yonder and choose a more robust sustainable cell phone policy however our partners see benefits in kind of all aspects and I'm sure you can agree that cell phones play a pretty big role in a lot of school culture so our partners certainly recognize student Behavior increasing things like more engagement eye contact one interesting side effect we've seen is that Lum has become much much louder students start eating more historically there's been a fear or recently there's been a
099fear of filming while eating and then having that information posted on some sort of secondary site academic behavior um achievement gaps decrease and the last one is another interesting part I think a lot of districts consider their eldest students to be the most responsible and thus the most uh capable of putting their phones down however in a white page that we were able to produce we saw the highest growth in test scores actually come from the 11th and 12th graders meaning those students eldest in a school saw the most benefit when it to closing that achievement Gap that middle part there mental health is very significant we've had school Partners report that when tested students were receiving upwards of 60 notifications in a single class period now these students don't know what those notifications are
100they just know they're coming and they could be a variety of different things and it's a bit overwhelming to process or consider that amount of information while now trying to be present in a classroom or with theirs and so when we're able to change the habit of feeling like you need to be on your phone at all times schools have reported massive cultural differences as you're kind of seeing in these um testimonials we can jump down to the next the student success rate and this is just going to kind of reiterate but show you the numbers of the the white paper we were able to um in the next slide so this is is just showing students achievement differences while getting that C+ or higher um over a single year uh obviously students in all
101grades are seeing a pretty positive growth but the students in their last two years of high school tell them as a percentage um we can also look at the next page see the impact on student behavior and now these ones are even more drastic it feels like cell phone issues can be easily diminished or it's not a big deal but when students are no longer responsible for having to keep their cell phones away they understand expectations and also other stakeholders understand expectations we see massive changes in student Behavior over the course of a year now some schools report spes in the first few days with any new policy we see that be consistent but then an overall massive change in the positive direction kind of acoss all um all one that's not mentioned on here
102that we found very interesting is an increase in attendance that schools are seeing when they partner with Yonder the interesting reason being is before using Yonder students could skip school contact their friends because their friends had access to their phone in a school building once that school started using Yonder those who skipped school could no longer talk with their friends through their cell phone so they had to attend if they wanted to ever see their friends or communicate with their friends throughout the day we're seeing a lot of interesting side effects like that when it comes to student Behavior change the culture surrounding cell phones the next slide is just going to kind of go over some more educational testimonials talking about the reasons that individuals decided to choose Yonder and the benefits they saw
103one that I don't know is quite mentioned here but I believe it's mentioned a bit later is the impact that teachers saw when it came to regaining classroom time um after using one example I'll give is after we partnered with acran public schools which is just south of Cleveland Ohio um the district actually had to rewrite certain curriculums because of how much time teachers got back in the classroom up until that point they'd had to fight a cell phone battle as class started and then given up to cell phones in the last 15 minutes once those two times were given back to teachers they recognized they' gained so much time back they could cover so much more ground they had to add and slightly rewrite um what the teaching lesson plans looked like um the
104next slide is kind of just highlighting the different articles that have covered Yonder to this point um probably one of the more the strongly worded ones was a Washington Post article that just covered the experiences that two schools in Connecticut and Massachusetts saw um we can jump down to the next slide this is kind of more the nuts and bolts of our program so what we include student pouches medical pouches training support and then curriculum resources things I've I've covered already um we're coming to the end of the presentation and so happy to open up the floor and if there are questions or you'd like more clarity about a certain topic that I spoke of happy to see if I can fill in any gaps in what Yonder is how we support schools what our
105programming and the school Partners have seen all right board members you have any questions M crille um yes sir I understand from um um my colleagues in Brunswick County that during their presentation they got to handle and look at one of these things so I was wondering you know if you have one that you can share with us so we can look at it while we're evaluating and also um was told that they had a sample you gave them a sample template on the policy that you suggested that they use and so I asked to see that and they said that you had that so how can we get um so that we can you know adequately evaluate your product how can we um how can we get those two items yeah so the first
106one that sample I'm happy to send I'm happy to get that over to you in hopefully about a week or whatever standard shipping is coming from New Jersey the second side of it is we do try to hold our our knowledge um kind of we value it fairly highly so we usually share that with Partners we're in current contract with what I can share is the policies that other districts have shared publicly and they've all utilized Yonder expertise knowledge and resources to create those policies but the specific resources we really prefer to share with Partners we've vented into contract with creating more value for those partners Dr I I've got two children one of them is very responsible the other one can't find their shoes from dayto day when you say that there are $30
107per student is that cover one pouch per applicable student or do you how much do you find that you have to do over for the ones that get lost stolen broken yeah so that that cost is kind of our initial cost pricing discounts happen with volume of course so we don't have to keep that as a a hard and fast number um so and yes to to back up students if things are lost we recommend districts create some sort of fee behind behind kind of replacing that lost item but the last thing is when it comes to losing something and and I I want to hear your opinion here does that student who loses everything did did did they lose their cell phone that often maybe some do yeah maybe mine has do but I
108I see your point but um I was more concerned about the um maybe willful losing of said pouch as well yes yes so that is the second side of it so we first identify that true forgetfulness happens all the time but probably the rarest thing it happens with with modern teenagers are their cell phone and so we see a very interesting thing happen once the cell phone's in the pouch longer than 30 or 40 minutes students developing a very strong psychological connection between pouch and phone and any time they pick their phone up to go to school they also will think of the pouch they have to put it in and so this does come back to a policy consideration we find a a highly effective um policy that is well messaged that says to
109students you value holding on to your phone the possession of your phone is very important to you and we want you to maintain that privilege now the only way to maintain that privilege is by coming to school with your pouch every single day if you come to school with the pouch or you willfully lose the pouch and we see the phone that is the one time when we will confiscate the phone and hold it in the office until either a parent or Guardian comes and gets it or until the end of the day and now um protection is worth a lot more than which is why I go back to that messaging side of it once students are very aware of what their expectations are and how they get to keep their phone on them
110consistently a very high compliance rate with that policy or all of the districts that you've utilized this in were they already utilizing one toone devices or word um currently yes okay um but but not not historically no M Bradford I'm GNA piggyback on that we we had some comments earlier in our call to audience about students who have their onetoone device which we do in in the in the schools um and that that students can make phone calls on those devices the same as on a on a telephone and so I guess I'd ask Miss Brinson in our school district can students make phone calls on the school issued laptop and are are students allowed to use their own laptop in the school or iPad or whatever so at the middle schools and high schools
111where we have issued um onetoone devices we actually have turned off the the bring your own device Network so those students cannot connect a personal device to our Network however if they have a cell phone they're using the cell phone carrier they're not using our Network anyway to middle and high now as far as making phone calls from the laptop there's probably a lot of applications that we'd have to look and see I I wouldn't feel comfortable saying an answer either way I'd say we could look into it m Walker I just had a question because um I was looking at the um the white paper um it looks at two studies one in Spain one in the UK and it really just addresses an actual ban of cell phones not necessarily putting it in
112a bag um I guess they're kind of similar but um some of the things that they address in one of the studies was it's a modest size sample I mean I imagine if any student is not on their cell phone it's going to be not a distraction and I just wonder if there are other ways to do that um besides purchasing bags and I don't know I mean if if this if the white papers are talking about just a band you know that's what they're looking at I don't think they were looking at have putting it in a bag I don't know I I don't know I think we should discuss other methods yeah um you know I mean I'm open to handl it looking at it or whatever but I mean it's an expense
113I'm not sure all parents would be too happy with it either that's what be like need to get feedback I just think our next safety meeting we we talk about that thank you m Walker Mr MC Manis um I think we're meeting with the with the principles here not too far from tonight and I think it's important that we get the input from the administrators for those of you who've never been a high school principal particularly with 2,000 plus students you need to understand that the most difficult thing to do is to enforce any policy because teachers are thrown in the mix of I'm going to be the bad guy or the good guy so miss Bradford takes their phones I don't or I don't as often miss Bradford it's like a tardy policy 3
114seconds late bam I'm going to write you up for tardy I mean you've got to be reasonable it falls on the principal then it falls on the superintendent acting or not so so if you're going to have and and I support it right now this discussion because I truly believe it disrupts the school I go in the schools a lot and I made a living in the schools and I can tell you that students will live just park across the street and watch the kids when they change classes they're they're on their phone they're in the classes it's almost impossible for a teacher to teach and maintain some type of academic decorum and then try to find cell phones they got them between their legs they got them under their arms they drop them they
115pass them around it's one of the worst social issues I've ever seen uh then we found out about of course the the the SE texting Etc but if we're going to do it we've got to make sure we discuss it and it is enforced because you can't have one principal in one school absolutely making the teachers and everyone enforce it and then you got a principal another school that's not doing it that will not work and so the cost of the expense if we go into this if you ban them you can ban them I know parents get upset but we've got buttons in the rooms and kids don't need I heard a parent say bless our heart if we got a shutdown you practice shutdown I want to know well they don't need to
116know a practice shut down to be on the news in two seconds plus there's no one in danger um just you're going to have to make it very serious if you going going to do and I'd like to have the principal's input about what they think about it as well I have one more question for you um you know we we're talking about cell phones obviously you know on the hip or whatever else but you know in today's world there's Apple watches you know my children talk all the time Apple watches so what what does your company do about those is there you just put those in the bag too or that's our that's our rough solution yeah so here's a quick demo I don't have a watch on me unfortunately but as far as
117the size of the bag goes here's here's one phone that's my demo phone and then here's a second phone that can go in the bag and then here is a a case that I can add as well just for you know personal devices so that's an airpod case that goes in and so this is this is the profile of the bag with those three items in there we see most schools and districts kind of create a personal device policy where all those things are expected to go in the bag okay any other questions board members for them for him yeah want go twice we do thank you so much for your time today thank you thank you for the chance to speak and I'll get that sample sent over shortly thank you very much okay
118good board members we want to continue the conversation at this time about cell phones miss m Miss Mason I do recall um I know Miss Walker brought up are there other options I do recall that we do have a student who developed a program um one of our student voice students developed a program that was more of an incentive program for kids to put their phones down um and so I I would love to hear from him as well he it's been a minute since we've seen him but um and I can't recall the name of the program but what was it it was like um turn it off Sam um yeah did it but it was a great program that he was showing me but it would be great for us to see that
119as well as as another possible option yeah it's always good to have a positive spin to it you yes I would love to explore options especially ones that don't necessarily cost us you know money because I know we're very tight on money in our budget um but I would love to talk about I mean get input as Mr Mana said and really think about this hard I mean I think it's it's a benefit for for the distraction not to be there I think I I think parents would be probably worry a little bit if they were actually removed completely and put in a bag and put away um you know if we all went back to flip Foams I guess that would be a good Solution that's not gonna happen um but no I would
120really this is a very robust discussion we should definitely be having and how how we just stop the distraction you know more than anything because I think that would help kids focus and I know I'm a different generation but we didn't have to worry about that it's a new it's a new thing it's a Well new AG thing for students to have to deal with I mean I don't blame them like you know you're constantly like getting buzzed or called you're going to be wanting to pay attention to that and it becomes kind of an addictive thing you know well I think you know it is very important to you know next week to to hear from our town hall folks because I think that'll be a real important topic M Bradford it'd be nice
121to hear from a school that's actually doing it um the stats that they gave impact on Behavior was upwards of 40% that's a that was that was a surprise that was that was pretty impressive um I I would like to hear from as many options as we can possibly um pull together here so that we we make the right decision um and don't you know like I have a false start kind of deal that would that would be bad one of the things that I did as we were investigating as a committee was I looked at alternative funding sour sources the typical ones obviously is we can ask the endowment we can ask the county we can go after Lottery funds we can ask the general assembly but the one I came to um sort
122of land on is DPI has the center for safer schools grant program and that cycle has not yet opened or it just opened and I don't know what we've we currently applying for under that cycle but um it's $35 million in school safety Grants awarded to 230 schools K through2 schools last year in charter school so that would be the first place I'd say let's ask them and if we have an Ask let's just add this to the ask I'm not saying bump whatever we're currently asking for but just add it to um and I did did this estimate on the number that he had given us which was 2550 per bag but he did say it was negotiable the other thing that was really fascinating to me was um you know I had said
123here and what we discussed is I don't know if we want to start with the middle or the high schools but the stats on the Improvement in the high school were staggering um in the 10th grade up 4.42% the 11th grade up 6.25% 12th grade 4.7 7 eight so now I kind of have a feeling that that's where I would be interested in starting is in the high school the tral high schools and I broke this down by that um so I'm intrigued um and if they're using it at the Wilson Center I'd like to ask whoever at the Wilson Center why'd you pick these how's it going and so on yeah so um couple things um I did run the numbers really quick and if we're talking about the whole school system that's $765,000
124which we don't have um if we're talking about just middle schools it's 171,000 which we don't have um high schools it would be 234,00 which we don't have so I just wanted to show you another option that I brought from home that I know many of us probably have these that these are less than $25 and we'll take a whole class and this is something that Mr hos at hogard um tried to use um at hogard when he was there and um it sort of work worked but he said that enforcement was like horrendous so um and to miss Bradford's question the um the middle schools all the middle schools are using something um and I have several copies of the ones that they have in play um if you would like for me to
125email those over to you you or we can ask those questions um at the principal meeting but oftentimes it's not just the principal who's handling the issues it's the assistant principal so you know we might not we might want to hear from them as well um the other thing too that um I had just for the I was looking at other alternatives for funding and the safer schools Grant is not an option because it's really only for SRO and safety equipment like AI phones and at the conference that I was just that I was just at um The Rise conference you know from safer schools center from DPI said that that would definitely be so far down the list we would never get it you know because there are so many schools that need other
126safety equipment there and the SRO Grant is coming out you know and um Mr Silverstein can talk to us about that but that's coming out you know but it's only for SRO we we are not eligible this go round for the safety equipment so it wouldn't be appable here and it's um landfall their Capital grants are for major equipment this is not considered major equipment I touch base with the the people over there and um Lottery funds are really only for school construction and um correct me if I'm wrong you Mr Anderson but it was like for school instruction um based on financial need we apply for that all the time but we're we're too rich you know to get those so some of but it's it's for Capital Improvements right it's not for things
127like this so you're correct Lottery funds are for Capital Construction yeah not for cell phone pouches so yeah and I'm I'm just kind of bummed that they didn't that they weren't here till even let us see the p because the Brunswick County folks you know they they played with them a little bit while they were there and they're only doing two schools and the coast they it's interesting because the coast is in their pilot but they were using that like as a discipline punitive thing for the coast students um they they've been doing cell phone you restrictions for a couple years now but um yes so I'm anxious to hear um what the what the um the principles have to say given especially given the ones that have tried it and and I just wanted
128to let you know too that um representative John torbit from Gaston County spoke at the um rise conference this past week and I asked specifically about um where's the general assembly in lawmaking on cell phones and he said well the jury is out on that that they they they can't come to any agreement and they are not interested in right now in doing any legislative until school systems have had a chance to local districts have had a chance because the majority of the folks there he said really felt that you know School level decisions should be made at the school level and not in the general assembly so um yeah so those are some of the kind of I know Miss Bradford had given us a sample policy too I think from her egmms I
129tried to look that up but I didn't know what school district that was from okay well someone gave it to us but the other thing that really stands out the most to me is that um one of the first things that our acting superintendent did was actually weigh in on something um that when he had read and he he sent us all you know an email about um let's pump the brakes let's look more specifically so you know we we elected you know to put him there and so I think his his opinion is um just as valuable um and apparently there's a draft document out there somewhere that maybe we all should take a look at before we start you know rolling out maybe we share that with the principles I've not seen that
130the draft document but it says there's a cell phone draft document um out there and I think that's what Mr um or Dr Barnes was responding to miss barard thank you m graille thank you Mr roris my understanding this this is under information so we're not voting on this right now it was just an idea presentation to have the conversation to support um our administrators with discipline and in regards to cell phone use and I know one of the things prior to the implementation of one toone devices cell cell phones were utilized for academic purposes um and that was an option that teachers could use to enhance their lessons now that no longer being the case we as a board can re-evaluate with the input from our staff um how we can best move forward
131with this and so I think right now we do not have a cell phone policy in place as a district expectation I would personally like to see a tiered policy given feedback from our administrators at our prek in elementary level middle school and School level and expectation given their feedback I spoke with Miss Clark at large when I was um the policy chairwoman about the cell phone policy and she gave me a copy of all the Middle School Pol they they mimic a lot of things but feedback from other schools that are not in the in the Middle School unit said it would be a good idea to have a consistent District expectation so if we come together to present that uniform front I think that could help support our staff and I don't believe
132that the first step would be to purchase these right now that's something we could reevaluate at a later time I believe the first step would be to implement a districtwide policy with a tiered system in place of cell phone expectation har Mason and to kind of piggy back off of that um I had the opportunity to meet with Miss Brinson last week to discuss some of the technology policies and hopefully those will be sorry to put you on the spot hopefully those will be discussed at the next uh policy committee meeting ex very very good all right well we'll close that conversation thank you board members for that very robust conversation uh and again we will be talking more about that at the Town Hall next week uh our next item of business is consensus
133items uh do I hear a motion to accept I make a motion to accept the consensus items as presented excuse me I'll second that any discussion all in favor please signify by saying I I I all opposed pass is 70 don't believe we have anything under old business I think we do have now anou uh under where is my paper right here it is uh under new business that's theou from the County Commissioners um do you want to kind of give an overview of that Barnes or M Bradford Walker and I both Miss Walker observed it um the county has offered us anou for disaster relief um um in the event we have a disaster because we know that our fund balance would not cover a disaster and we're going to need to start spending
134money day one if there were say a catastropic event tonight while we're sleeping um and they've they've uh the county manager and Dr Barnes have finalized it they voted on it yesterday um a unanimous vote and they mentioned a couple times while they were doing it that we want to get this done because we have a storm coming um it's up to I think $10 million um but they said they wouldn't tie our hands at that number because we know how much money we spent you know in the last big event um it's kind of a win-win the thing that that that I asked Dr Barnes how he felt about it and he said he was fine and you can he can speak for himself what would happen is Dr Barnes would not be calling
135contractors or Mr um or Eddie calling contractors but the county would take over that responsibility they would handle everything um including the reimbursements from the insurance agencies and the government and so on so it would it would make it a lot easier for us if we did have and we really don't have any other options so I'm going to move that we accept it is there a second first and second any further discussion yeah we haven't seen it at all oh sorry m i i i was there um listening to that and um I I think the thing that I part of the things I took from that was that we do not have a fund balance which means we do not have an emergency fund which means I know in in 2018 when Florence
136it um we did have to spend out a lot because it takes years to get reimbursement from FEMA Etc and we had a lot of damage I know TR practically was totally redone so I think this is a way for them to just say we have your back financially I mean obviously statutorily they are obligated to take care of our buildings and the fact that we don't have a fund balance which they said a few times we asked them to spend it down and they did and now that we don't have it they want to make sure we're covered and the 10 million was just I think just a way to put a number on it but but but it was reiterated as you as M bord said that um that they wouldn't deny more
137than that they just wanted to just set a number but I I don't I I'm not sure we have to vote on it I guess I mean I'm I'm okay to vote on it if it's you know symbolic but do we have to it's a memor of agreement between our two agencies we would have to as well yeah Mr chair may I make a substitute motion maybe have a 10-minute recess so for the individuals who have not seen the document have time to look it over and then I know it's on there I I seconded it but yeah Mr chair if you have any over here there you is okay voice from the great beyond it was a pretty short memorandum it was it was eight pages and I I took a quick look at
138it if you've got if you want me to tell you what the kind of the big moving parts are real quickly that'd be great Mr chair would it be is it is that digital like is there any way we can get it on the screen or no or share it with other folks I got it by email I don't know how substitute motion to move move this vote to the second consensus item on our agenda so that we it would give time for everybody to see it yeah make I make a substitute motion to postpone this vote to later on in the agenda under consensus item number 17 okay second on that okay the first and second so basically this is just delaying to vote until our second consensus items uh so it' be under
139B uh under Personnel report any discussion of that can we instruct the attorneys how to get it over to them so they can get it on the screen and we can all read it I still I still I think would behoove us to hear from the attorney care of it okay thank you but I still think so at that point we can go ahead and have hear from the attorneys on that if you don't mind okay we have I'm sorry I believe it's very similar to the one I emailed you last Thursday true it is okay so we have a motion and second any discussion on postponing it until Item B under consensus Part B all in favor please signify by saying I I all opposed carries 70 nothing else under new business so we
140are on Legion Stadium report Miss Walker I will do my I I mean I took these notes when I was there and I'll will do my best um so we did we met um the legion Stadium commit committee met on what date was that what we met on um July 25th um at the city the city skyline Center and we talked about um what was on the agenda was the turf update Stadium Synthetic Turf update for for Legion Stadium which um and then also uh we discussed a capital Improvement plan a 5-year Capital Improvement plan that would um Encompass obviously the three organizations which is the schools um the city and the county since we all kind of share you know um space and money and you know repairs so so we met we got
141we we got an update on the turf and I really wish we could if I thought about it I'd have asked for them to put because WECT has done um a little video on it and I think the city of Wilmington did a flyover with a drone it's definitely worth looking at because it's very beautiful um the turf is it it got completed July 9th um my birthday so that was a happy birthday to me um it came in under cost I think the original bid uh they that it was accepted was 690,000 it came to uh 49454 which allows us to and I think we agreed as a committee to use the rest of that money for whatever repairs we could do um which are going to be in the capital Improvement plan that
142we will will come up with probably next meeting um let's see um the the the turf is got a lifespan I believe they said 8 to 10 years um well maybe longer hopefully depending on how how it's used because Hanover is not the only organization that uses it but um the the the turf was sewn in it was not I think painted so it is is beautiful it's got in Hanover logo in the middle and the end zones you know that's all sewn in and it's got lines for if I'm thinking about it right uh lacrosse and I think maybe soccer as well could be soccer football yes of course originally for football but it's got other lines that are drawn you know that are sewn in there for other sports um we are hoping
143that we can get a ribbon cutting for it because I know we got to celebrate the good things andever definitely need some love um and hopefully I think Amy batty at the city was going to look into whether we can all in a football game just come and you know cut a ribbon and just be celebrate something really good for the school and the students in the athletes so um so that that is the update on the turf I definitely recommend anybody out there just Google searching the the stadium and seeing how pretty it is um the second like I said part of our agenda was a recom recommendation for a five-year Capital Improvement plan um when it when it deals with Legion Robert strange and bardy field which are the three fields that we
144share um I don't think I'm leaving out one of the other fields and just if I could uh Robert strange is used by list in for baseball and for uh softball right good thank you yeah I don't I'd wrote that down yeah so we want to come up with some some improvements because there are some you know we did get a presentation which I'm H you know i' be happy to share with anybody that wants to look at it that talks about the Improvement plans um I did take notes in there there are definitely some things that we need to address uh when it comes to the area around Legion including not limited to you know tearing down that fire the big fire brick building I don't know if you've seen that they used to
145use yeah the fire tower you removal um also updating concession uh that's in there modernizing the fixtures and equipment um the parking lot improvements for the uh the complex in near Buck Hardy in the pool in the tennis and the pickle ball um and I think one of the small ones was putting a handrail that missing in the stadium as well Field improvements uh Synthetic Turf for the in field New dugouts and fence relocation for buck Hardy field so there's quite a few there's a lot on here you know I'm happy to share that um if anybody wants to look at it I can forward you the whole presentation and then you can see but next meeting I think that's what we're going to really kind of address a kind of fiveyear plan so there
146any questions let me know any questions board members good job very good job you uh we will carry on next with the um curriculum committee update okay I think Dr Barnes touched on this um but the second annual coffee curriculum and conversation session for our school families will be held on September 16th at the Board of Education building this is the place for parents to come to find out about the curriculum so if you want to know about the curriculum this would be the place to come last year we had over 100 parents do the Popin it's a pop in it doesn't start at this time and end at this time it's to come and you can speak oneon-one with different educ UC ators there will be coffee snacks and conversation and representatives from the
147curriculum team special ed technology CTE Child Nutrition parent and caregivers Academy will be here to discuss curriculum with the parents this is the time to come to see the curriculum um 8:00 a.m. to 1: p.m. and 400 p.m. to 6: p.m. two different times same day um and Spanish translation will be available so there you go everyone come all right thank you at this point we are ready to go into a closed session I would entertain a motion to go to to go to close session pursuant to General statute 14 143 31811 C for the following purposes to consult with the attorney in order to preserve the attorney client privilege between the attorney and the board and to consider the qualifications confidence performance character Fitness conditions of appointment and conditions of an initial appointment of
148an individual employed or considered for employment with the school system and or to hear or investigate a complaint charge or grievance by or against any individual employee is there such a motion so moved there a second second first and second any discussion not all in favor please signify by saying I I I all opposed like sign did I hear one not okay we're going to close session e e e that's four of us okay we're back in Open Session welcome back uh we do have two pieces of uh work to finish um and my computer's not up so I'm looking for the consensus item Personnel report we have a motion to accept the Personnel report moved is there a second I I will second but I want to amend it okay I want to I
149want to accept both the Personnel report and theou with the county because th those are the two consensus items okay okay second yes first and second we've amended uh motion there he is motion there it is okay any discussion on it yeah yes M the I'm in favor of doing it but I am just need to call us back to how many times have we complained that we had to vot on something we didn't see so I read it you know in in the amount of time but I just don't think we need to um do things on the fly like that just point ma' point of order but thank you ma'am I I'm I do agree that it's a lot better when you have it a couple days earli or even just the morning
150of you know to to read it yes ma'am okay so we have a motion to accept both the personel report and theou between us and the county we have a first and a second any other discussion hearing none all in favor please signify by saying I I I all opposed like sign that passes 7 to zero uh next we have corres have to pull this up correspondents do anybody have any correspondence they'd like to share I'll go like three seconds the I just wanted to say that um last week the um DPI the center for safer schools had their annual safety Summit and um I attended did that along with um some folks from our school district the um Chuck Silverstein was there Julie vnum and several of her staff um were there and um
151we got to hear information and I I'll send you the handouts when they become available but talked about things about the safer schools Grant we talked about um the gang and gun safety talked about discipline reports and how we report and we actually got compliments on the way we report you know because it they're because because we're Julie is so thorough but I just wanted to um and and there were all of the people that attended from new H County Schools you know with me um would make excellent subject matter experts for our subcommittees because of all they they the topics lined up perfectly with some of the things we were hearing so I just wanted to throw that back out and and encourage us all since we are a a board a whole board
152committee that we really need to attend um more PD kind of stuff on the work that we're trying to write policies on so I just wanted to throw that out thank you m cral anyone else have any I make a motion to recess until no we got I got announcements first all right so quick announcements policy committee will be holding a policy committee meeting meeting on Tuesday August 20th 2024 at 10: a.m. in the Board of Education Center general public has the option to view remotely on NCS tv YouTube the board will hold an agenda meeting on Monday August 26 2024 at 5 p.m. no not 5:00 P p.m. 2: p.m. y I get that there at 2 p.m. at the Board of Education Center the general public will have the option to view remotely
153on new H County Schools YouTube and the August regular board meeting will be held on Tuesday excuse me the September regular board meeting will be held on Tuesday September 3rd 2024 at 5:00 pm in the Board of Education Center general public will have the option to to view remotely on the new H County Schools tv YouTube now I make a motion toess we have a motion to recess is there saying we have first and second any discussion all in favor of recessing at this time please signify by saying I I all opposed we are in recet