001did you I didn't say yeah I'm going to be calling the agenda meeting uh the May me April 30th um agenda meeting to order before we start I would like to respectfully ask you to join me in a moment of silence for the four law enforcement officers who lost their lives yesterday in Charlotte and for their families as well as the other four officers who were shot and their families and for those uh officers throughout our country who have been shot lately if you would please thank you at this time M boy would you please call oh perfect timing there she is Miss Walker you uh would you please call the role good afternoon Pete wildor presid Melissa Mason here jie Barnhart here Pat Bradford I am here Stephanie krael here Hugh mcmanis present and
002Stephanie Walker here thank you uh at this point we'll have our invitation hello my name is Sam Nolan and I am on staff at Port City Community church and I'm going to be leading us in a beginning prayer for today so bow your heads with me Lord we just thank you for today Father we thank you for a chance to be in this space Lord for this meeting today and for these people that are in attendance father God we thank you for an opportunity to just serve students and families in new han County God we give this meeting to you we just pray for just wisdom to discern which choices need to be made Lord and which things to go after for the health of our schools and the health of our teachers father God
003we just thank you that we get to do this every day Lord we get to serve families in our city Lord God and we just thank you for this meeting and we pray this in Jesus name amen and I was unable to ask Miss Walker if she lead the pledge but she's here so Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you our next item of business is the approval of the agenda do I hear a motion there's motions or second second second I notic that um it's on there yeah it's on there yeah it's on there see commit do reports you're welcome is there any other discussion yes M the I don't
004know if this is the right place to add it but I didn't know where else to do it um can we add well when we get down to three proposed agenda items when we're going through each one M um can we add at this time um a presentation about um generative AI the we're going to be discussing it my understanding at the next policy committee meeting and um I think that the whole board should know more about what our AI program and plan is before the policy committee gets it so that if anybody has things that they want to add so is it po so where would I bring that up it's not on this agenda because we don't have it under information so you're saying basically when we get into the the the next
005week's agenda you would like to add that yes but I didn't know if I needed to sort of heads it up here you know um I think it be good when we when we're going through it you can make there as soon as we start they that that section okay and then another question to you have a week to prepars you no I wasn't expecting it like right this minute the group there's a group that working together to create our plan for our district it's not ready yet okay so I don't think I'd have I want I want that to be completed before I actually share it okay so I'm not ready to do a presentation on it right now on our plan yeah probably next month do you think he would be by next
006week or do we need to put it closer to the policy committee meeting no she said it's not going to be ready next yeah the group that's working on the plan I actually gave them because of the time of the year it was actually into the summer in order to finish it because it's a it's a group of people and all different departments and schools and stuff so I gave them additional time okay so then we can talk about it later because I I think it's premature to have it on the policy committee if they're not even ready to talk to us about okay and then the other thing I wanted to ask is it possible that we move the metag contract up into the information um today instead of having it as a standalone
007by itself on May 7th Med is item 16 on the the policy I mean on the committee I mean on the agenda for the regular meeting and it looks to me like it's just a contract so it probably could easily be in information so that we can vote on it as a consensus item is there a reason why we have that separate it's under consensus it's K it's okay just changed it okay it's the it has changed since when I looked at it this morning so all right any other discussion for the for the general well for this for today's for today but today no I got things for the other meeting okay yeah all right so we have first and second all in favor please signify by saying I I I All oppos Passes
00870 carrying on we will start on that list I'm going to get my pen out here all right call to order are you wanting me to keep time or you oh yes please I'm sorry yes I I had that in my mind to say that and forgot to bring that up please Mr kble if you time uh call to order roll call approval the agenda 5 minutes uh invocation presentation of again please stop me if you need to presentation of colors national anthem who would like to do the pledge next week I'll do it all right M Bradford PB Pledge of Allegiance all right then we have the approval of the uh minutes Mr chairman yes um I would like to add a five minute question and answer time for the School Safety Committee for
009you to tell us how we're where we're moving forward on on that okay what can I do that under my um yes my Bo I'll make sure I have safety yes committee that'll be under board Chairman's report I'll put that in there and one more um can we have two minutes for the climate survey where we're where we are with that and Walker and I were supposed to talk and we never connected so yes we can talk before then go but if you wouldn't mind for next week would you do that yeah yeah that' be great where we going to put let's put that under new on under old business you cor old business and this to be clear this is the climate survey that we are in we are putting out there not the
010teacher working condition survey correct and Mr chairman let's let's go ahead and just give us the the time on that let's let's say 10 minutes well she said two but let ever you need five Miss Walker do you need five minutes I would say 10 yeah can we go to 10 let's go to 10 let's go to 10 let's go to 10 I'd rather be go to 10 and say look we're at 10 minutes early the other way around Mr chair just for clarity is it we're voting on the climate survey next meeting or we're just discussing it further yeah because I just want I just want to make sure I can see all the questions prior to us voting on it so if we're just having okay thank you but do you have the
011list of questions today you can share with us okay okay okay so we'll get an update because we we'll get an update next week yeah Point okay and that'll be under old business and we'll get we'll allow 10 minutes and if if it's more so okay back up to the top we are at the recognitions yes ma'am regarding the climate survey a couple of months ago I had asked for the unredacted version of the other climate survey and I'm not aware that we ever got it could have been hidden in the board memo and I missed it there's a lot in those things but did we get it could we get it you mean the one that we did um two years ago in December I have a copy of the redacted version and it
012asked in in a meeting and we all said yes I think it was Clos session and I'd like to see the unredacted version of that especially before we do this before we dig into this one you much okay you send it to all of us please thank you okay because four of us have that already I just for I never got the unredacted I I mean I got it on paper but I can't there's no way in the world I can find it two years ago recognitions 10 minutes Dr Barnes is that going to be good okay thank you student voice 10 minutes teacher voice also 10 minutes Dr F uh super report 5 minutes uh I'll do mine in 5 minutes and add the Safety Committee discussion in there uh call the audience to
01360 Minutes uh consensus items and again if you have a question about anyone please stop stop us when we go from there yeah I had a a question the these are all the same things we had last time too I thought we voted on most of these last time we voted on all but one that Miss Bron hadn't but right that's what I thought so I went back to look and it looks like we approved all of these um except for I thought it was the VM Fusion Pro Software maybe no it was the number B the domain yeah it was one of yours it was yeah so we voted on the rest of them already whatever was on last month yes um I've got it we have that we voted on professional development Network
014Solutions hogard high bid New Hanover bid Surplus property there was a budget amendment I don't know if it's the same one as this one um the Innovative Wilmington Early College um are different these are different yeah these are different this is different okay so I have no questions I I didn't read them because I thought that they were all last time so I may have a question but okay probably not BM Fusion Pro Software question the Dominion or domain excuse me uh name contract uhou with Western Governor's mou with the YMCA southeast yeah South Eastern uh North Carolina after school uh mou with YMCA YWCA for the swim safety pilot question okay uhe is the the swim safety pilot that's increase that's something that we've done that we're just increasing more campuses is that is
015that a correct understanding I'm trying to pull it up right now sorry or is that something different um that's just to um have it ready for next school year okay wonderful thank you okay umou with uh University of North Carolina Chapel Hill for physical therapy intern uh contracts purchase report budget amendments Capital outlay fund project transfer cap uh software contracts sending into fisical year 2025 and meta geek contract okay now are we going to talk about Med today or next week if you have a question I'd like to time a little more Miss geek one give me one second please so that's the software program that our um Network staff team use to monitor the wireless network so when there's an issue at a school with our wireless network they go in with that tool
016and it allows them to kind of see the the signal that's going out and do some testing and stuff to kind of identify the problem that is is that the same program that identifies by words maybe a sequence of words or sentence I'm sorry say that again is that monitored just by visual because one time we talked about a program where keyw you said gun or pistol or herd yeah no this is this program is for um it's basically it's the Network signal so signal yeah I so I I thought I read in there when I was reading through the contract that um all phone calls are recorded that anyone any call that we make that anybody makes within the school system they're recorded how that one okay well I'll I'll find in here because
017I that's what my jumped out at that and like recorded and monitored so that's why I was just wondering okay all right I'll look for that says this website it does and um on the sixth page sorry s chair on the sixth page of that contract is what she's referring to miss Brinson okay monitoring and telephone calls it says telephone calls using the telephone number provided on this website and email correspondence with vek C the email address accessible through or discernible from this website may be recorded or monitored yes that's when people are calling metag geek for tech support or service those are the phone calls that could be monitored and recorded okay so calling them for support correct just like they they always tell you that when you call customer service correct we may
018do that to make our program better correct yes the qual yeah quality assurance purposes okay okay any other questions for any of the uh that 14 all right on to 15 policy consensus am um not we're going to need like one say five Max um they they're just um policy changes from the um ncsba spring updates and one of the policies um removed a section um and so because it removed a section there's a policy that we need to take out because it doesn't apply anymore so I'd say bye you guys are setting me up aren't five minutes and okay minutes we move it to five okay it's not gonna be it's not going to be more than five Bradford skiing all the way back um I don't know if anybody read the minutes but
019half of them would open and the other half wouldn't the 326 and 312s wouldn't open again there yeah they're still swirling okay thank you um Carry On so 5 minutes for policy uh old business we now have a climate survey which will have 10 minutes uh new business legal services I would say probably at least let's go 15 be safe uhz we be voting at that basically we'll be voting at that point we discussion and V so can we leave 20 I think it's going to be a little more than that or maybe let's just leave it at 15 and we'll see because it should it should be okay I think 20 we we just sa five on the last one yeah lay that down there close session um I have kind of warned everybody
020but in case you don't know our close session today is going to be lengthy so uh we may have to use that one if we carry some stuff over till this week instead of having quite a lot uh on our close session for today uh correspondents 10 minutes announcements 5 minutes and then adjournment so any questions any concerns on anything at this point one's going T it's going three times sold all right so that's 180 minutes with no break so like maybe 1885 minutes okay like don't you usually give a five minute break between right after call the audience okay very good thank you all right all right we'll carry on with today's agenda got it uh close session okay here we go we already there they already there all right yep all right um
021I call for motion go into close session pursuing to General statute 143 31811 C for the following purpose prevent disclosure of information as privilege or confidential pursuant to General statute 115 C 402 and not considered a public record within the meaning of chapter 132 of the general statutes to consult with the attorney in order to preserve the attorney client privilege between the attorney and the board including with respect John do 15 through 17 versus uh new han County Board of Education and to consider qualifications confidence performance character Fitness conditions of appoint of appointment or conditions of initial appointment of an individual employed or considered for employment with the school system or to hear or investigate a complaint charge or grievance by or against any individual employee we hear such a motion so MO is there
022a second second okay any discussion can I ask I I should have asked this back at the approval of the agenda um because I wasn't remembering that you said this was going to be long um is there any way that anybody would consider um moving closed session to the end so that we can in the in the spirit of folks who are listening and the other folks that are here um because we're going to have to break in the middle of that right for the for the presentations huh it's already planned okay I think the problem being is I know that that's why but we're going to have to break when it's time yeah so we planed it for an hour stop yeah and I think that they're not to be here for a while
023so okay 40 minutes all right be here uh all in favor of going to close session please signify saying I I all opposed we are in Clos session St e e e delay uh we will continue on with uh our uh Personnel report I would entertain a motion to accept the Personnel report so mov second second first and second oh nobody can hear me my goodness uh we have a first and second any discussion about the Personnel report if hear none all in favor please signify by saying I I all opposed passes 70 moving on to information we have uh financial literacy I would like to um introduce at this time Mrs Sarah Stone and she will introduce her team but Mrs Stone and excite credit Union have will be providing our students at Freeman
024with the opportunity to do some seed money and start learning about financial literacy and banking so miss stone is here and she will tell you about this program it will be the first one in the state of North Carolina excite Credit Union does it in California but we will be the first ones in North Carolina well thank you so much for the introduction um I hope the clicker works um so my name is Sarah Stone I'm the vice president of retail experience attic site Credit Union um I have a couple of my colleagues here behind me um just in case there's some questions about the stepup savings account um but I I know I have limited time so I'm going to go ahead and Dive Right In so what we're offering to the Freeman students
025is what we call our stepup savings program can you hold the microphone just sorry is that better sorry about that okay all right it says it's on [Music] okay sorry about this well I can just um let whoever is doing the PowerPoint know to advance the slide oh there we go okay all right so um a little bit about what it is so this is a unique children's savings account that we created um to help accelerate savings um and thereby encourage uh more children to attend college and and so how we uh or why we created this account is based on some research that shows that children who have have um just $500 in savings are three times more likely to attend college and once in college four times more likely to graduate from college
026so uh so this was um uh our tool to help encourage that okay so how does it work so how do we accelerate savings um so uh we make the initial $50 deposit we do not require the family um or the student to make any initial deposit of course if they want to make a deposit they're more than welcome to um but it is not required so that removes one of the barriers to starting a savings um every year we will match up to $25 uh in deposits so until the child turns 18 uh we also do additional Milestone deposits of $25 that are not based on matching these are just deposits that we make to the account uh at the 5ifth 10th 15th and 18th birthday and it does earn a higher interest rate
027so a higher return on the account at 5% um this of course could change but so interest rates of course can change but this has been the same for quite some time and we always intend for this account to have a higher earning interest rate because of what it's designed to do and I know it's a little bit small on the screen but uh this chart is really just to demonstrate um what uh the earning potential of this account could be there's some assumptions baked in here so this assumes that uh the family does make the $25 deposit every year and gets the match every year um but you can see um you know if the if the account is started in the first grade uh it only requires an investment of $300 over the
028years of that account so $25 each year uh and that ends end up being a little over $1,000 uh for the child um of course if more funds are put in the account if they make additional deposits at 5% interest that could grow uh much more um this is an exclusive account so we do not offer it broadly we really want this account the way it's designed to be available to people it benefits the most uh we currently do offer it to some Select Community Partners so uh Wilmington Housing Authority the resid their families uh Coastal Horizons uh their clients the families um of the clients uh and now we will be offering it to Freeman Elementary and all of the students at Freeman Elementary other benefits so uh financial literacy was mentioned um one
029thing that we do have at excite which is um beneficial for this is we can offer on-site account opening uh and we can take in deposits so removing another barrier in transportation to get to to uh a ATM or a branch to make a deposit we can actually come to the school on dates that work um best um we also offer Financial education um to students we can do that in a classroom setting but we also can offer that to parents and we can do that in a group setting as well or we can do that on a one-on-one coaching basis so uh some of the example topics those are topics that are geared more towards children but of course we have a a larger array of topics if um we also sending that to
030parents um and so last slide uh this is a mockup of a flyer it's not quite complete but um just to demonstrate the kind of communications that we can uh coordinate on so uh we will work with the school to have any communication to help uh promote this account so that people can take advantage of it uh we can do that through email flyer mailer whatever works best um and we will work with the school to schedule the on-site dates um for account opening and deposits and that is all I had in my presentation so I'm happy to answer any questions um members any questions just great um yeah this is awesome you know so um thank you for bringing this to us um I remember when my kids were in elementary school we just
031opened up savings accounts you know with our with Mama's money so this is very nice to have the community supporting but a question I had um since um Freeman is going to be one of our you know Community Based schools um Can the siblings of Freeman students like you you mentioned you know from birth um we don't have any you know at Birth you know kids you know in our school but would their um younger siblings be eligible for this program as well as long as their older sibling remains a student there so we we can offer it to the family as well yes so great miss pornhard well Sarah it's so great to see you again um like months ago we sat down and had this conversation and to dream about how you guys
032can help support our students and we had talked about just kindergarten so for you guys to come today and for to say every single student at Freeman is going to get this account this opportunity this is gamechanging I know one of the things that we had talked about is how can we continue to sustain this is the intent with the foundation through exite to um start with all of our students at Freeman and then next the year after the kindergarteners coming up we'll also have that opportunity as well well um so right now we're doing a pilot with Freeman uh and kind of assessing um how that goes and then uh hopefully we'd love to see it open up to uh more schools in the the school system as well so we'd love that opportunity
033thank you guys for being here today thank you and you're doing this currently through um I think you said Wilmington housing we do currently offer this yes so we we have um so this account uh was designed uh as stated to benefit uh children who uh could benefit most from an account like this um so we offer it to select Community Partners where it makes sense so the families at the Wilmington Housing Authority um Coastal Horizons there's a number of others that uh we have uh Partnerships with that we offer I'm curious how do you how do you deal with the skepticism that it's free and I say that from a platform is I did a webinar last night it was free and there was a free at the end of it but at the
034end of it there was a catch you had to make this donation in order to get into the free so you're dealing with a with with people who were you know maybe not as financially Savvy as some of the other school children how do you get over that hurdle to the skepticism of the Free Part yeah and that is something that um you know there's inherent mistrust uh with financial institutions Banks um just because of you know uh the history um you know so that is something that we have had to overcome um to make it clear I think what we found is really being consistent uh being available showing um really what our intentions are there is no catch there is no uh got them now let's get them alone or something like that
035um we really um you we as a credit union we've emphasized uh doing good in our community we've uh become cdfi certified so community development financial institution we are a low-income designated Credit Union um this is something that we believe very strongly in and so uh we we do encounter that but um consistency showing up communicating one-on-one conversations often um yeah I don't know if there's a silver bullet for that um I see it says deposit only is this similar to like a CD and if parents or family members try and take money out is is there a penalty or like how does that work so it is a deposit only account so it differs from a CD in that um typically when a CD is opened it's one lump sum that's put in for
036a period of time um we discourage withdrawals there is a penalty uh for closing the account or withdrawing but it is not that they lose any of their money they just would lose the matches um and Milestone deposits if they did close it early fa and so if a student leaves Freeman um how do they keep the same they can keep the account yes and then use it however they want to use it at that point um but they still can't withdraw from it so uh there are no withdrawals until 18 at the time they turn 18 it converts to a regular account and then they can use the funds however they want but if they were to leave Freeman Elementary the account is still their account um they still get all of the benefits
037of the Step Up savings account awesome thank you question and gentlemen thank you very much for the presentation and thank you for thank you very much all right carrying on uh we are going to be moving into our uh legal service presentations first up is find that Mr Vore would you just please clarify um the process that we're going to be using timelines and such so that everybody's clear absolutely we'll do that our first uh presenters will be Crosley MacIntosh and colier um we will be hearing presentations today asking questions today uh we will then be voting on this next week um and just again I sent this out to everybody but in case you didn't get a chance to look at it we'll be going into uh this in an order uh every member
038will have an opportunity to ask uh a question with a followup at that time uh the orders will Miss Barnhart Miss Walker Miss Mason Mr mcmanis myself M crille Miss Bradford uh then we if we have time we will continue to ask uh additional questions uh but after that we'll not have follow-up questions you'll have basically two opportunities the first go around and then after that one uh after that so um gentlemen if you would like to come forward please welcome thank you for being here today thank you very much um ladies and gentlemen of the board I am attorney Brian kromy um it's my pleasure to be here and to speak to the board today and make my proposal for Legal Services um want to start by saying I know some of you personally
039uh Miss Mason is a neighbor of mine lives in in Pine Valley with me Miss kill I play hockey with your husband Walt on occasion up at the rink and uh Mr mcmanis we met uh when I was in early in my early 30s at a duckboat ramp in off Highway 210 Shaw highway I ended up going to lunch or or maybe a brunch with you and your uh two buddies and we talked dogs and Ducks I was swimming my chesp Bay Retriever after an unsuccessful morning I think at the time you were the principal of topsale or Hamstead topsale it's good to see you again sir have you killed a turkey this year that's the important question I have not my son killed three and uh I call for him we've had a good
040year we go to Georgia every year and he's tagged out here I've I've I've been fruitless myself it's good to be here everyone um I I thought long and hard what am I going to present here uh I'm assuming everyone has a copy of of my proposal I have copies if if someone doesn't um who are we Crossley MacIntosh and CER has been a law firm here in Wilmington for over 70 years uh we're headed by our our our I don't want to call them our managing partner because I don't think we have anyone in charge over there I say that in just um Mr CER is our senior uh attorney been here 70 years we handle all kinds of civil work um our firm does a ton of governmental board advice norward Blanchard is
041an attorney behind me I want to introduce him today he may answer questions uh if needed um we represent a number of local municipalities uh with respect to their boards with respect to the work that arises in in the course of being the government the government of rville beach Le in Oak Island Nevada ASA uh to name a few uh all of us in our firm have practiced law for a number of years none of us are our green attorneys um why do we fit as the board uh candid candidate to be the the the the general councel for the board I think between the five of us we cover all bases all five of us are good communicators um I think the most important factor I'd like the board to take away from my
042presentation is that we are part of this community in Wilmington all of us are fathers um I have four children two are mine two are my girlfriends and three of them are new Hover County School students I have a senior at hogard um a Winter Park Elementary fourth grader and a Roland Grace eighth grader living with me Norwood behind me has a a daughter at Holly Tree Elementary in kindergarden he has two sons one from a uh his his own marriage and then a a new wife so he has two sons that are seniors at hogard both of us have have gr have daughters that graduated from hogard uh Andrew Hanley had four children that all went through New Hanover County Public Schools Klay Coler had three children who went through New Hanover County Schools
043Brian eids who I would say is our uh Guru in governmental law has a daughter at Ashley okay we are part of the community and I think that makes makes it different than some who might be coming from out of town uh to work here as a job here I I live and breathe the schools at this point of My Life um my son is a like I said a senior he's going to go to college and play soccer at Methodist I attend everything he has been part of in his soccer since he was at Roland Grace and and now he's a senior my daughter uh was in the band I'm familiar with our our how we instruct our kids from sixth grade on and teach them to be musicians been to all all kinds
044of band uh uh shows I'd like to uh say that I'm probably the only applicant who was at the elementary school Science Olympiad recently um with our fourth grader so I I live and breed the schools most of the attorneys here in our firm are still doing that they still are parents of of kids who go to school here and I think that sets us apart um I think what sets our firm part is that we're a small firm we're not a big bureaucracy Norwood and I both worked at cranfill suer a large top 10 firm for many years where we're experienced with a big entity um and and to that extent I want to talk about my experience um as an educator when I first moved to North Carolina and got out of the
045Army Reserves I became a school teacher at in Durham I always wanted to be a school teacher I always felt that was my calling I was good with kids I love kids L everything about school I really did I was my class president I was captain of the bunch of the Bunches of teams um and and when I went to undergrad at Geno State and Upstate New York I knew what I wanted to be and that was a school teacher I taught for two years in Durham I taught science at a school where all the lower education kids were sent so these these were sixth graders who they weren't 11 they were 13 to 15 they had reading in math levels on first and second grade levels and it was a very chaotic year because
046that year 96 97 Durham County had combined the district with Durham public uh Durham Durham city and it was very chaotic we had two principles of this school that that year communities and schools Academy at Holton Middle School was the name of the uh the building and uh they didn't know what to do with a lot of these veteran teachers and uh Administration so that year we had two principles I I lasted two years in that school I wasn't happy as a young teacher um I didn't feel I had the resources to to to make a go at it and I drove by NC Central every day so I ended up going to law school and I've been a lawyer ever since I got my uh passed the bar in 2001 um Central was a
047trip for me I loved uh law school I it was it was it was a change I was the minority there Central's a historically black college and being a minority for the first time in my life was rewarding it it puts you in a different set of shoes I think that's something that I can say makes me fit to to to be the school uh general counsel um I think my experience as a teacher provides Realms of uh experience that you don't get unless you're a school teacher um my first cousin here is a Murray Middle School teacher he he coaches the girls soccer team he's coached the boys soccer team I have another first cousin that is a uh Jim teacher at Roger Bacon Elementary in Brunswick County so like I said I'm I'm
048still living and breathing education through my kids my family members and and for those reasons I think I'm I'm I fit for this school now what what I don't have what I wish we had as a firm I wish we had a female partner a partner of minority um you know in in our employee but we're small we're growing and it's something we recognize as our weakness and something we'd like to change over time um you know sitting here waiting for yall to get done with your meeting I read through the Strategic plan and I got to put on my glasses to read that I'm getting too old um and I and for what I can say about all these academic performance student safety and wellness supportive environment for teachers and staff Equity diversity and
049inclusion family engagement and Community Partnerships I lived and breath that for two years in Durham and what I saw you know what we see in the news about education these days are the books that should or should not be be be pushed to our kids but what I saw was a a school district during public schools that we were feeding poor kids we put clothes on them we made sure they had a shower in the morning we gave them Counseling in health care because they weren't getting it at home so what I want to emphasize is is my own little vision about what a school school district should be and that's not just teaching ABCs it's it's it's serving in the as as as family we we we feed those kids clothe those kids educate
050those kids teach them how to be citizens um you know and and and I don't think you get that experience unless you're a school teacher unless you have kids in the district um you know at one point I was going to read all the schools I've been to here but I mean that doesn't make sense I've been to most all of them in the course of all these uh years with sports and with my own kids going my kids went to codington and then Cape cfci they went to Myrtle Grove middle one went to to Roland gon then we went to hoger um you know Norwood's children have been all over all of our kids have been all over and I think that puts us in a position to serve the board best we're part
051of this community part of the family that I feel the the school board the school is and and uh you know with respect to the to to the to the lawyering I feel fully confident I can handle anything that comes down the pipe um there's five of us at our firm we've seen most every case civil case that could come down down I recently argued a case before The Supreme Court we won for a local restaurant owner the harp down here the Irish bar by Greenfield Lake and had his case at the Supreme Court um we may not be the biggest firm in town but I feel we are the most experienced and I think I'm well suited to handle this work um I wish I had more experience sitting in board meetings but Norwood
052and Brian Eid sit in approximately 10 board meeting meetings a month through their work as Government board attorneys I I don't I don't see any challenge with it meaning I feel we can learn how to do it I might have to hold someone's hand for a few meetings but I feel 100% comfortable getting up there at the board meetings with you all and dealing with the public I thought it was very interesting I got a few calls after we made this proposal getting calls from citizens asking me all kinds of stuff it was weird but it Norwood said this is what you're getting into and I said that's fine that's fine I can deal with with it um you know uh and and to that extent uh I feel we are capable to handle the
053school's work my my position statement or my my proposal outlines you know our fees are negotiable it's just like every client we negotiate our fees and and find a fit that works for both the client and our firm um I'm happy to answer questions I would say at the outset if if I don't know any any particular answer to a question i' defer to Norwood and if not I defer to the the books that I will go read and brush up on it before I I make a position statement but it's my pleasure to be here I wish I had more time with all of you individually to answer questions um but I'll answer as many as I possibly can while I'm up here we'll show with Miss barnhard thank you Mr chairman um you
054mentioned all the different areas of aspects how School operates and I can appreciate that being a former educator myself um tell me that how that translates to education law in different areas I mean after serving on the board for just over a year now seeing HR we have um Insurance matters in specific regards to policy um that was one of the things that I would love to hear some a little a little bit of elaboration about education law and the event that um you might need some more resources what does that look like for your firm and how I'll use my children as an example my daughter was was uh was uh Ag and my son had an IEP he had dyslexia and dis graphia I understand the process of what a parent needs to
055do to ensure their child gets that IEP there that they're that that that they're needed okay um it was a give and take process at all of our schools sometimes I thought we felt resistance from the school district in dealing with with our children's IEPs but I think to answer your question ma'am um I would look at everything on a case-by casee basis I look at every child on a case- by casee basis just like my two children are different I'm sure every kid that goes through our our our our school district is different and you got to you got to look at each one of them differently I hope that answers your question okay thank you Mr Walker come up Norwood Norwood is here to answer question this is Norwood blaner you had mentioned
056something prior to U we used to work together as I mentioned at at cranfill cranfill firm about 100 attorne I spent my first 12 years there you know when I got um got out of law school at Duke and clerked with cranfill and started in their Raley office but my first job um with them out of school was doing education and I wouldn't say education employment and civil rights work now that seems like a strange U mix but our biggest clients were the housing authorities RIS poool Inc har school board's Trust um we also did the league of municipalities work so for the board work and as Brian mentioned Brian eids and I do board work for a significant part of our monthly work I'd say 2third now close to it of my work is
057public sector um none of it is for the state it's all at the local government level anything from I'm I'm rep representing kind of indirectly one school board now Pender County um actually Brandon uh who's coming up to speak to you next and I are c-ending a lawsuit uh where a uh a teacher was injured at work so my experience with the education side of this I'll admit comes from the litigation work um and that's actually how I got involved in doing board work I had a a town of mine call um two or three times because their board attorney had had retired and they needed a replacement for it so um it's grown to the point now where I'm still primarily a litigation attorney but I do board work for Two Towns I'm the
058regular town I was was three I gave up Southport a year or so ago because I was too much work and I was driving you know an hour each way but um Brian eids on the other hand took the reverse route from me and was doing all litigation work and now his has shifted into where he's doing all board work and and no litigation work um but his job is phasing out a little bit with Leland they've hired an in-house attorney um for him to train over the last couple of years and that creates a little bit of extra space for for them to take on a little bit more work but those specific things I heard you ask about insurance you know coverage to are things that come up all the time in litigation
059um I've done coverage work in the past I got to tell you I hate doing it because it's unbelievably dry um but I am familiar with that contract work the the board work that you see you know purchasing for example um how how do you are are you allowed to dispose of property you know what we see in chapter 160a for towns or in chapter 53a for counties is not different in any significant respect for school boards now there's some differences that come in in litigation uh and and construction of schools those large scale projects like that but I know that my experience in dealing with those again has been through the litigation side catching it on the back end you learn about it that way but the the mechanics of working at a board
060meeting and I I warned him about this you know you come you guys see it um people come up here not because they're happy most of the time they come to scream at you um rightly or wrongly you know I don't I don't know how people can be wrong all the time but apparently uh you understand that as board members that's what you get you're wrong all the time according to the people out in the audience anyway so you know a lot of your job as a board attorney is is dealing with how do you maintain the Quorum and meetings um the uh public records requests things like that we deal with those every day um I got off the phone an hour ago with an attorney out of Charlotte who filed a public records
061request against one of my Sheriff's departments so it's not something that's that um unusual it's not specific to school boards it's public sector work that you see everywhere else and the employment related work I understand you know where end up going through the oah here for a lot of it but I've done work there so is Brian eids um as well on those types of things so there's a lot of carryover and I'm sorry I'm going over on time here but there's a lot of carryover between the different types of public sector work that you do you know North Carolina's got the same Constitution that applies to the school system as it does the town boards Mr Walker Mr wildor point of order um we have one minute left to go and most of us
062haven't asked a question so I respectfully ask that we allow at least everyone to get through with one question that's my plan thank you thank you m walkerk um hello I have my question actually is um I said we have learned from experience on this board how absolutely critical is that our Legal Services have experience in special education law and I did not see any of that in your proposal can you address that or do you feel sure sure like I said um I I taught special education law in the late 90s at this school um at that point in time I would say categorically North Carolina was not taking care of its specialized students like it should at that point in time during Public School sent everybody to the same school and uh like
063I said both of my children had IEPs and needed that I understand the process I'm um a friend of mine is Millie LA and I understand what she does for a living on behalf of the school system um again it goes back to a case-by casee basis and you know that same case Mr mcferson and Mr Blanchard are involved and I'm representing the parent was actually sued by a teacher in Pender County because she advocated for her her uh her special ed student a 14-year-old Middle School student so I have firsthand with that in litigation um I have not not sat in the side of the board and Millie LA's side but as a parent I've gone through it so to that extent I hope it it answers your question ma'am thank you uh after
064Mr Walker Miss Mason uh my question is actually in reference to Title 9 we know that um there's new um regulations related to that um what is your experience in the arena of Title 9 most of my um experience in dealing with federal anti-discrimination law is is not in the title n it's title 7even um you know but equal protection is equal protect and 1983 actions that deal with um equal protection one of the things and and I apologize about this I Brian had mentioned earlier that you know we had a we're open to discussing alternative p pment Arrangements one of the other things about it though is that I thought you may be interested in a proposal to um handle different aspects of this work with a different firm one of the things I
065think about board attorney work there are a lot larger universe of board attorneys attorneys around here locally that are competent and capable and cost effective for doing board attorney work as opposed to the specialized and I remember just a moment ago um you had asked about about the the work for IEPs and that type of education work you may come out better and and get the best of both worlds and save money by splitting those two things up the the the special specialized education work and the board work um so and I'm sorry I'm I'm going away from the question you asked right there I haven't had a a title 9 lawsuit yet thank god um but you know am very familiar with with General employment discrimination not that type but again equal protection is
066equal protection you know it's the the cases on that are the principles are the same let's put it that way Mr mcis a question would be for everybody so question um do you feel comfortable when you are representing a board the hours you're going to spend and the familiarity which happens with board members that you can go against board members which you think is in the best interest of the school system versus we being an influence on you you for what you decide to do that's a regular part of being a board attorney I've been a board attorney and and I you know I'm I I I'll tell you I'm probably the least political um board attorney you'll find but one of my towns I've done n vas's work for 17 years now 18 years
067and I can promise you that uh there has not been a time when any of my board members over there have voted for the same person for president that I did um and we frequently knock have knocked heads in the past but your obligation is to the organization not individual board members um and one of the things that you find in this I I find myself always telling board members I can't keep secrets now if you want to come and tell me so and so is a jerk I'll keep a secret on that you know that you feel that way about it I'm not going to repeat that but if it's something that deals with board business wrong guy to go to to keep secrets and and you know when you're talking about that about
068things that people disagree on what the connotation there is that board members have conflicting opinions on and sometimes you know all the board members opinion is different from the board attorneys you know if you can't if you can't handle that if you don't like doing that wrong line of work um and it's not pleasant don't get me wrong you know you never want to tell people I hate telling people what they don't want to hear um but that's part of the job now um for for a board like this I'll tell you Mr eids is a whole lot more um has a whole lot more experience in dealing with board he goes to seven or eight board meetings a month where I go to two to three um so I expect that he would probably
069end up in this situation doing a lot more you board work than I am the reason I'm here today instead of him is because he had two other had a board of adjustment meeting and a town board meeting that he was stuck in today um but if you know what regular schedules are for things you can move stuff in advance I'm sorry I hope that was some answer to your question but thank you sir uh I'll be next um and youve answered a lot of my questions I a whole list of questions you've as answered a lot of them already but one that you haven't answered that I'm going to ask everybody can you estimate the approximate travel cost for a member of your firm to be present at all of our board meetings committee
070meetings findes and forfeiture hearings I know those are all things that people need to if it all possible be present versus Zoom my understanding your question to be is will we be billing you to get to these meetings right none I mean we live here okay so our I I I I said to Norwood I'm 12 minutes away from this building it would be nice to work here and that was me driving in and I got to tell you Mr weld Bo that to me is part of the reason why you should consider the idea of of using separate board counsel from specialized counsel um the truth of the matter is you if you want a firm and I you know we're paid to be honest with with our clients or potential clients if you
071want a firm that specializes in handling education work like that you're not going to find one of those in Wilmington but if you do if you're open to the idea of minimizing or or saving some money and let's face it you know the fiscal side of things is always important you can find local board attorneys us for example um that save a tremendous amount of money and are more responsive you know there's a value to being able to see somebody in a half hour as opposed to being being able to talk to them on the phone and them comeing next week when you have a sensitive matter that you need dealt with immediately so you know I I think it's something that that um if you're asking us you know about the other types of
072work I'll you know I'll be frank with you there are better firms for doing Special Ed work I am not um competent on that stuff you know I'm I'm a quick learner but on board work that's a different different story entirely you know dealing with the routine day-to-day matters that a a board attorney handles and even going into your um employment related matters look title 7's the same for you and the Ada FMLA issues same issues I get from my towns counties Sheriff's departments public records requests kind of the same situation you know the same set of laws applies to you that applies to the other municipalities so you know that ought to be an important consideration or at least I you know I I think that's one um selling point that we have is
073that you know you won't spend half of your time paying for travel time that's not particularly productive in fact it's a complete waste of time almost in in many instances thank you sir M graville um thank you um the thank you for coming you know and sticking your necks out um in this arduous task of representing a board of education um in reading your proposal and um listening to you speak just now I don't really think that you've met many of the characteristics that we need um and it um specifically you know at least two years of experience in education law and um special education law and we didn't really mention who's going to be the qual qualified backup person you we never heard who is going to be our attending attorney um with that
074that wasn't stated you know anywhere and I'm also just concerned about um this was in the past you knew um a number of years ago and I'm hoping this doesn't still apply to your attorneys but two of your attorneys were um convicted of tax evasion and um had jail sentences that were suspended and civil fine so I am concerned that that could easily or maybe not easily might happen again so if you could address some of those issues where you fall short of our basic expectations I would appreciate that um I would say that is with respect to the the the charges that were brought against Andrew Hanley and Cay CER they dealt with that and um you know within the under the criminal justice system you know at the time I I I think
075they would look back at at at the Personnel they had in charge of the books and and re-evaluate some of the decisions they made but what I want to emphasize is they they dealt with the judicial system they dealt with the NC uh bar and they're in good standing now um so I I'm not sure what else that was that pre prior to my coming on board um I would just add to that neither of us have ever had any problems with bar or Mr AIDS or had any tax you know I've never had a late notice that I can recall from the IRS on anything and I think their issues the taxes the issues at least arose before I either of us joined up with them 10 years ago um now they got in
076trouble afterwards but it was for stuff that had happened before but that's you know we're not responsible for our everybody else's tax returns in my office but okay with I am it's certainly embarrassing to may as well yeah it's not not something we're proud of or having to answer uh today um with respect to who's going to be our Point person the tip of the spear for the board I I we talked about this Norwood is busy Brian needs is busy it would be me initially with a lot of handholding from from both of them with respect to actually sitting in on these board meetings because like I said I've never sat in as a board attorney um been part of the process but never been that person so at least initially I would say
077Brian eids needs to be here with me but I feel comfortable in that I'm a quick learner I feel comfortable in my ability to speak in front of a crowd in front of uh whoever it may be and uh I feel between the three of us that we will cover all needs of the board in in any capacity um briy specifically made that comment uh right now he's he has some stuff to do and he can't get out of it and he wish he was here but he wants to emphasize that that he would be here if we are selective we're fortunate enough I don't think there's any reservation on the three of us between the three of us we will serve the needs of the board effectively I hope that answers your question now
078yeah thank you okay um you turn yourself on I'm on she's she's on I'm on um thank you I appreciate your F familiarity with our school it's my pleasure to be here thank you I appreciate that you're local thank you I love the non- billing for Drive Time um you may have noticed in the media we have a little bit of a dollar and cents crunch around here so that's important to me you'd said in your presentation that you were negotiable for a fit in terms of rates um you know your hourly rate um no attorney ever submits anything exactly like the other in terms of some people build for admin and Etc by the hour um an add-on um some people take phone calls intense um and you're kind of like right in there
079on in the middle on some of it a little bit high on some so um if we were to go forward you know how committed you are to that negotiable part would be one of my big interests and my second thing would be the board attorney works for the board you service and help the central office but you work for us and that line blurring um is a concern to me um and and you know I don't know how it is with I've never wondered how it was with ritel Beach's board or NASA's board or city of Wilmington's boards I never worried about where the line blurred but can you address that for a minute um I think I want to First address if it's all right I'd like to address that your comments or
080questions about billing okay when I was at Cranfield Sumer um our big insurance companies would come to us every year and we would re-evaluate rates and part of that process was looking at the volume of work they gave us and the rate they gave us and so that's something we would have to do with this board is look at EV evaluate the volume of work and and and and and what we're being asked to do on each particular subject I do know that I we would need to hire an associate or multiple Associates or multiple other attorneys to help us um service this client if we became attorneys and I'm not that's that's just part of the process um but as far as as of course we would be negotiable just like we were when
081Liberty Mutual I remember coming to cranfill and we had a a good an hourly Arrangement and they said well we're sending you thousands of cases every year we want them at a flat fee and at first we didn't understand that but we obliged because it was such a large part of our work and it's a give and take process it's a learning process as you go through the year I hope that answers your questions M BR wanted to in response to your question about the relationship between boards Administration and Bo tomies um and I this is a terrible analogy because it people say ouch when they hear it but administrators for cities and towns for example counties and school boards are and board attorneys are kind of like college football coaches you need to rent
082rather than Buy in the sense that you know when the board changes the board's pleasure changes as well so I think you know I know myself and Mr eids from doing that kind of work are keenly aware of who the client is in situations like that um you know one of the things about it the elected folks or the elected folks they're your board they're who you answer to and typically the other the career people in up often times moving from different jobs and you know you always try to keep a good relationship with them because that's who you answer the phone from all day and that's who you're talking to and you have to have a good relationship but you know you can't get too attached um to other folks like that who are
083the career staff people because they change they take different jobs um sometimes they lose their job just like you will because the board changes and they frequently do that so uh you know that that's not a foreign concept to anybody who does board work thank you and I think we're out of time but we want to thank you both for coming thank you very much and like voting on this next week thank you so much our next uh legal service presentation will be by poter spr the representative would come forward please welcome thank you all for being here today I've met several of you before Oh microphone yes sir sorry this work better yeah thank you thank you uh my name is Brandon MC person I'm a partner with poter spr uh we are happy
084to be uh before you today presenting our uh potential uh opportunity to represent this community and this board I'll let my colleague I'm Rachel hitch I'm also a partner at poter spr and again thank you for the opportunity to come talk to you all today and Brandon's going to start us off and I'll pick up and then we'll answer all your questions thank you very much uh so pointer p is a law firm that is a North Carolina law firm has been around since 1883 um it is a wellestablished firm firm that has an excellent reputation uh we have four officers um the education Law Group is mainly based out of the Raleigh office but we have offices in uh Rocky Mount Southern Pines and Charlotte um we as a we are a full service
085Law Firm which means we have uh every practice area that you would need uh not just education law but we have that too but we have real estate Financial Services construction intellectual property um employment and a very very uh experienced litigation practice um you know we have been doing uh our education group has an extraordinary amount of experience um Rachel's going to hit on that in a second but the one thing I want to point out as a threshold is we are an education Law Firm we have the experience in the expertise we represent several boards in state of North Carolina as you can see from our list um we represent several of your neighbors um and one thing I always like to say is um don't take my word for it when we talk
086about how well we're doing call our clients and they'll tell you sir a couple things I want to talk about was a great presentation by the gentleman before us and I can certainly appreciate the attractiveness of having someone local work on things I don't have kids in your school system I do have a place at Carolina Beach which I think we talked about the last time I was before you all so I am in the community a lot this is my second time being here this week um but we don't have we don't we can't offer that we don't have those Community ties necessarily but I do think I want to point out that this is a time when school boards absolutely need Schoolboard expertise and it's easy to think that repes representing any governmental
087board is the same as representing another governmental board but I've actually looked at all of the the platforms on which you each last ran and the one thing that you put as Paramount in your in your campaigning and what this board has repeatedly said as Paramount to them is the one thing that's different about representing any other kind of governmental body and that is the students it is very different to work for a board where your your main the main benefit factor of your policies and your work and your efforts are children it is very different it is very different to work for parents when they're talking when the issue at hand is their child versus a TA property tax issue or something else that other governmental boards may represent so that makes a big
088difference um you asked about some specialty expertise we I practice special education um and H and currently I'm one of the we are one of of the firms that was you all voted on um in March to take on some special ed workor and we are doing some special ed workor for you now and I think if you asked the people that we're working with they would tell you that we are extremely responsive if I get a text message or a phone call I'm immediately responding and that we've been able hopefully to bring a level of expertise to that field that your folks have been needing it is the highest area of litigation for school systems right now is special education that's an expertise you need you guys have hit on them because you already
089know Title 9 we just had new title 9 regulations come down we have folks in our office who are quote unquote trained investigators under the title 9 regulations and consistently do title n good Title 9 investigations and write reports and walk school systems through that and at the same time we're trying to train your people because we want to work ourselves out of a job in that area we want your people to be in a position where they don't need someone to walk them through anymore because someone has trained them well on how to manage those things we have in our education law section at pointer and with folks there that have education law experience we have I think Brandon and I added up well over 200 years of cumulative experience um we have I
090I'll kind of work down we have Eddie Spees who was in the AG's office he's been an attorney for 50 years and worked on educ ation issues we have Laura Crumpler who was sort of his Protege and I think Laura's probably got almost 40 years of experience as you know working in education law she's represented the State Board of Education on issues um and DPI in litigation Katie Cornetto who for about 15 years was the State Board of Education attorney is one of our partners in our education law section um again you know I I've practiced for 22 years I have triple digits of litigation at the office for administrative hearings on special ed cases um we have we have a very deep bench with an awful lot of experience that schools are finding that
091they need now the the the days of not having that expertise um and you all may have experienced this the days of not having that expertise are long gone I think for school systems it this has just become an area where you need someone who can walk you through these issues who has the experience to do so um we have one of the people that works with me is a PhD level school psychologist um she helps me with special education cases but she's also an attorney um we have at least you know Laura crumer was a teacher before seven seven former teachers on our um 11 person education or lawyer team so we have plenty of people who have seen this from several different perspectives they many of them are parents with kids in public
092schools many of them have been teachers and and they have Decades of experience practicing School law so just wanted you to understand um our position on the depth of the import and the importance of having the expertise that's specific to representing School boards the last thing I want to say before uh we we get into questions is this is our third time putting in for you guys um we want to work for you we're going to keep putting it because we believe in this community we believe in the good things you're doing we want to be a part of that um so um you know we are here for you we are here to be your Advocates and we clearly understand um the relationship between the board and the board attorney is sacred which is
093the reason why we do it for a lot of your colleagues throughout the state and we'd love to do it for you with that being said that's it want to thank you guys uh we'll start with questions with missart thank Mr W listening to your presentation one of the things you touched on was training our people to do could you elaborate on some of that what you would be offering even to us the different trainings for the board and our district um people so that's a great question because that's how you save money to be honest with you is training your people to do it so I I'll start a little bit larger and work down I don't want to take too much time because I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to
094ask their questions we train on the national level so we do presentations on the national level for school attorneys and school administrators we do training on the state level we do presentations for pank we do presentations for the North Carolina Association of school administrators we do presentations for the North Carolina Council on um administrators of special education andc case um we do presentation I mean we do all kinds of presentations we do presentations for the North County Council on school attorneys trying to help School attorneys understand the nuances of some of the things that we do and we funnel all that down to our school levels and we write trainings that are to your needs and if we see a need that we think that maybe someone else may not have recognized systematically so if
095I'm working on special ed issues and I see two three four schools that have a similar issue that I think is a problem then I bring that up doesn't have to be me it's it's my job to tell you I'm seeing this similar issue from place to place and so we do trainings we do professional development all the time it's one of my favorite parts of my job to be honest with you because the way we all see one we have all these teachers so lets him have an opportunity to be a teacher again um but the other piece of it is I always say I'll always go to war and defend you but I would much rather arm you I would much rather you never find yourself in litigation and the best way that
096I know to do that is to train people and so we take every opportunity we take those opportunities in cases but we also have pages of trainings that we have developed on anything you can imagine that schools might need School Finance School construction special education employment law Title 9 and anything you can imagine that schools might need we we have done training on it all right thank you Mr Walker thank you Mr chair um so I I guess we've talked a lot about the travel component of this and I se out of Bry is that correct um yes ma'am would you be the lead sir I I would offer to be the lead but then if the board so chose not to have me they could have anyone else right yeah no no I was
097just cheing um I assum everybody's that how how would you deal that with that part of it it is it is negotiable but I mean we would propose a a $500 travel fee um but we can all that once again that's that's negotiable my question but anyway you're good you're good you're good Mr Use Me Miss Mason sorry actually Miss Walker stole my question so I don't have any all right Mr mcmanis thank you lead here for presenting I'll ask the same question I trying to ask everyone and that is regardless of how I feel or our association or anyone else on the on the dis um you're going to tell us what you think is the very best to resolve our problem at that time so the way we we see our job as
098the board attorney is it you are elected it's your job to make the decisions and to decide the the routes and the policy and how you want this things to go in the school district we were not elected however our what our job is if you ask us us a question it's one our job is to be up to dat on the law to be able to say to you there's a case pending right now in the court of appeals this is what it may look like so we kind of lay that out for you and we give you options we can say what I would say is you know there are two or three ways that I can see you going about this here's way one here's the pros and cons of that here's
099way two here's the pros and cons of that here's way three here are the pros and cons of that here's the strengths and the weaknesses it's for y'all just to decide which risk is tolerable if any to you for your community and your schools we can guide you uh we can guide you and say I recommend this way because I think it mashes what you're trying to do here and what you're trying to do there but at the end of the day our job is to give you the options on how to get where you're going and let you know what are the what are the good pieces of that and what are the pitfalls in in some of these options that are available to you and the thing I'd say to follow that up
100is after you make that decision it's my job job to defend you to the hill that's my job you make decision it's our job as your representatives and your agents and your counselors and lawyers to be your voice well I'm going to just reiterate my my question that I had and then well I'll make it a two-part because I'm allowed to do two parts that's what I said um so basically you said $500 for travel so each time you came to town it would be $500 okay that's I'm sure I heard that I'm sorry I miss I miss that and um can you talk a little bit more about you know your investment in our school system you know um we heard from you know the other um Representatives uh that said you know that
101they're they're part of our community how would you become part of our community besides just join up once a month well I I'll tell you what we would do is we show up for the education foundations for every one of our clients who engages in that conversation we show up um to be a sponsor of whatever events we're asked to be a sponsor of we provide opportunities for students if they want to uh engage in and have an educational experience about what it's life like to be an attorney not just us right not just education lawyers but one of my finance attorneys a real estate attorney engaging in those conversations providing opportunities for your CTE directors uh to meet with our corporate clients that our firm represents for example uh Gregory pool caterpillar is one
102of our you know clients and um having those connections that we're allowed to leverage for the betterment of kids is about what we do like so it's one of the joys of what we do and where we are so thank you very much um M graille um yes so thank you for coming back it's always a pleasure to see you the um the your presentation was very thorough I felt like I was like following along in you know your kindergarten to to now presentation in all of the um presentations that you've made um and specifically you know in some of the areas you you've have First Amendment issues you um discipline policies the saate schools act um the professional training for boards and you know you subscribe to the journal subscriptions that keep you current
103in um what we need to know and the questions that we might ask like you had said anticipating that um so I guess the the only training that you didn't um mention um in your in your packet and just now that is one of the um requirements that we asked for was um Robert's Rules of Order so if you could just elaborate on that that's a big issue with us and we struggle you know we're on that Struggle Bus so if you could talk to us a little bit about that we we are thoroughly trained and Roberts was older I I actually consider Robert schols a fundamental part of boardsmood board member is knowing when it's your time to talk and when it's time for somebody else to talk so an element of that and
104and M gra you're absolutely right it's not specifically listed but it is a huge part of what each one of us is trained on and what all of us may how to do because we're representing School boards I will tell you that points of order everybody's looking to the lawyer to know what the right call is if the chair has a question or if there's a question by a member about okay is that of order is that not out of order and I think you know part of it is being the parliamentarian and and that is something we're very well trained and very well articulated and honestly one of the best times to do that is during your professional development let's let's have a go at having a PD where we go through some mock
105mistakes because there are plenty of them that are common that people don't think about but it really does help everything run smoother if everybody knows what the rules of the road are thank you and I'm Brandon probably does too but I have right now on my calendar I have Robert tools of order training for different school boards at least one that I can think of in the next couple weeks so we definitely do that training the other thing we try to do is with Concepts like that that are I mean Roberts rules is thick it's a lot to try to digest and so we try to come up with with good visual supports or things like that you know that's the teachers I guess and us again but come up with some kind of useful
106tool to have with you during your board meetings that helps you remember you know this is when I need a majority this is when I need this is when it's the chair's call this is when this is this kind of motion you know um so we also try to come up with support tools that help boards to work their way through that when when they're in the midst of it and they can look at it and say so that they're not they don't have to always call you know if they have a concern or they don't always have to stop we try to give them the tools they need not just the training but then something for them to leave with that's you use ful something utilitarian I finish with Miss Bradford ran you said
107call our clients and I've listened to one board on the coast and they had the superintendent said something to the effect of on the advice of our new attorney firm you know we're going to look at um public comments and tighten it down and I've talked to a board member and they're like freaked completely out about taking away the Public's right to speak at the meetings so can you comment on that um without disclosing client confidences I I know of which you speak um it is it is not that there is going to be an interest in limiting speech it's or or preventing speech it's the concept of there being concerns about um the length of time in which it's taking and those concerns have been shared with board members with the board attorney about
108in a proposal for the board to consider once again that's a public op it's the board's policy however the board wants to go about doing that but my understanding is the attorney was asked to prepare a policy that could help regulate the length of meetings because of the amount of public comment in such a way that it would you know limit you know the length of meetings while also allowing the board uh to hear comments from the public for example having a time limit um because you're allowed to have a time limit on your comments as you guys know you're also allowed to uh if people are speaking on behalf of a group you can have them more time um and you can also after a certain period of time in your meeting you can
109say hey this this 30 minutes uh after that first 30 minutes we will hear everybody else after the rest of our business is done and so those are reasonable regulations that allow the public to understand what the rules of the roads are when they sign up and if they see 200 people's names signed up they understand that okay I may be here until after 8:30 because the rest of the business for the other people who showed up the moms and dads who came to see their kids honored are going to get seen first and so without disclosing client confidences um that's how that's addressed I have no a point of order you said we each would get one and then if if she gets one more then we all get one more I I'll read
110exactly what I said M you are incorrect um we've go this in order members will be limited to one question with one followup at that time this is and I read it exactly like that so okay I apologize I would have asked a followup of our first present well just going to provoke me to ask this question um Roberts Rules of Order um give us your advice as a board regarding any particular board member who might attack or make Illusions to another board member's motives in the middle of the meeting well we it's hard we'd have to be in the meeting to see what was going on because the truth of the matter is what one person perceives as an attack an objective outside or may not right so there are there are parts of
111being an elected official that means sometimes you take your lumps a little bit on on those kinds of things as far as the inter relationship between board members um that's something I think that is really important and to be quite honest with you in my in my practice in the last 10 years I've seen a lot more of that than I had seen in previous years I feel like and I I won't go too far astray but there's divisiveness on boards now that I think is is more pronounced than it might have been some time ago and that might be a reflection of larger things on the whole but anyway if that comes up if there's an issue um then the chair is leading the meeting but if the chair looks to the board attorney
112for counsel or whatever I would suggest a recess and I would need to stop and talk to the chair about what the options are in terms of that that interaction here here's what we can do you can do this you can do this you can do this it just going to depend on the interaction it's in a vacuum it's hard to say is there name calling is there cursing is it is it you know zealous disagreement which zealous disagreement I support to be quite honest with you that's allowed on boards and it's why you have multiple members on a board they can that they can disagree with each other but as far as if it gets into personal attacks is it slanderous is it you know is it um defamatory is it an accusation of
113some kind of criminal act those kinds of things so it's going to depend on what that looks like but generally I feel like it it demeans the Public's trust in a board when board members are not respectful to each other and I definitely we do a lot in our professional development to encourage boards not to do that because I think it reduces the effectiveness of the board I do want to thank you very much for coming in today and uh again we'll be voting on the uh group uh next week so thank you so much thank you for the to see you again thank you board thank you and we will finish up today with uh thanington Smith so if the representatives for Thon Smith would please come forward welcome good afternoon board members uh
114chair wi deboard Vice chair Mason superintendent fa uh my name is Jason Weber um with the LW firm of darington Smith it's good to be back even if just for these 15 minutes um we're really seriously thankful and grateful for the opportunity to be back before you today uh and we certainly hope that after today's presentation you choose for us to return uh as your legal counsel uh to provide for all your legal services needs um as you know thanington Smith we uh provided general counsel services to you for a period from 2020 until 2023 uh prior to that we uh provided assistance on discret matters a lot of special EDS some school construction and litigation uh for years prior to that 3-year period uh during that time we worked hand inand with um a
115lot of your existing staff uh past staff on just an entire range of issues uh litigation Personnel special education School construction student discipline uh constitutional matters just really countless other public school law issues we're not new to you you're not new to us um and we really do welcome this opportunity to be able to return and uh continue working with you um so so while we have a history here uh uh and I forgot to introduce my co-presenter here Steve rosson uh with darington Smith as well um Steve and I we just like to take a few minutes to reintroduce our firm to you talk a little bit about um our history the services that we provide um and also just review what we think are some of the top reasons why we think you
116should hire us back as your general counsel and after that of course we'd be happy to answer questions so for some background on the firm we've been in education law for 41 years uh we have uh 20 attorneys right now 19 but in the fall it'll go back up to 20 again who are dedicated solely to K12 education law that's all the 20 of us do um including three of council we are the largest specialized education law firm in the State uh and we currently serve as general counsel to over 20 Boards of education and we do specialty work for a number of others um our philosophy as a firm is simple you've heard it with pointer Sproul ours is uh somewhat similar where you know we're the lawyers we're not board members we're not
117the elected officials we do what we think is great legal work and uh whatever the Board needs and asks of us um different boards have different goals and priorities and that's not our business as I always tell my board's your job is infinitely harder than mine you know I wrestle with issues I provide guidance I help set the guard rails you know explain the pros and cons of different courses of action but at the end of the day you're the ones who make decisions and that's way harder than anything I do um you're the ones who developed your policies and you're the ones who uh also face the consequences as well uh not just uh you know in terms of what the legal outcome might be but even in your communities so you're invested in
118this and your job is much much harder than ours um we represent a number of boards across the political range uh some want to go one way on an issue some want to want to go another way on an issue we don't tend to get involved in that again our goal is really to uh provide you with good legal advice uh that's unbiased um and then really Empower you with the information that you need to make the decisions that you make so uh why should you hire us back well um first of all you won't find any firm in North Carolina with more experience and expertise in this uh area school law it's a really broad practice but it's also highly specialized so while we do touch on a number of different areas uh as
119you heard pointer spru say there's really nothing like an education law lawyer when it comes to uh Public School legal needs um and for our firm no matter what the issue is that arises we have experts uh special education we've got Carolyn Merkerson Eva dubis uh Steve rosson they're some of the best in the State uh when it comes to school construction Rod Malone who you've worked with for years I mean he has absolutely no peers uh Neil Remy on First Amendment and constitutional issues he trains other lawyers not just in the state but also nationally on Personnel issues we have Adam Mitchell and Melissa michau uh when it comes to litigation Steve rosson Deborah stagner tricky board governance issues that's Jonathan blurg and Ken Su and Beyond these big names in education law world
120at least in North Carolina we also have a lot of other excellent attorneys who are ready to provide uh services and to meet your needs uh this brings us to the second reason we think you should hire us back and that's special education I'll turn it over to Steve we've been following a bit of the local news here we know that special ed is one of the reasons why you know you decided to proceed with a review of legal council um and I'll let Steve talk about why we think we can meet that need I'll uh Echo Jason's appreciation for the invitation to be here on on special education you know this as well as we do special education is taking up more and more and more of your staff's time it's taking up more
121and more and more of your budgetary needs and it occupies more and more of our time as lawyers because there there's just greater knowledge uh there's a growth in the uh availability of special education services and the number of students who qualify for those Services um and what we have found is that special education has become perhaps the single largest issue that we deal with as a firm um and we've built our firm to respond to that and so when we hire new attorneys to come in we are looking specifically for people who are not just willing but eager uh to do special education work spe specifically in litigation um however I do want to really highlight our philosophy on special education litigation because that happens so often and that is that education as a
122whole is a community effort it's built on relationships special education is that times 10 right you have to have working positive relationships between staff and students and parents for the special education programs to be effective and the thing about litigation is it breaks relationships and once you get there it's very very hard to repair them but that student is going to be with you for another 2 4 8 10 years um you've got to have that relationship and so we as litigators um while I will go to the to the mat for y'all in court whenever I need to it's better for y'all it's better for your students it's better for your community if I don't have to and so we work extremely hard in special education to resolve matters before they reach a point
123where we have that breach of the relationship that can that uh cannot be repaired so I really want to highlight that philosophy of of uh resolution work of creative problem solving and um of building capacity with your staff um and with your community around special education so that you don't end up in these knockdown drag out special education fights that just take your teachers out of the classroom that take your parents um and pit them against the school system and leave everybody worse off uh than we started so I I'll stop there and uh return to Jason but happy to talk more about that I know that's been on your your minds sorry just to piggy back on that a little bit uh in addition to being one of the largest education law practices in
124the state I think we also have one of the largest uh numbers of special education lawyers as well so as Steve said you know when we look for associates we look for those who are interested and willing to do that work as of right now we have an 11 attorneys we do special ed work now some are newer Associates they're providing more of a support role but we have a number of attorneys myself included who can handle everything from covering IEP meetings answering oneoff issues to uh litigating if you do find yourselves uh with a due process petition um the the third reason why we believe you should hire us back has to do with cost Effectiveness and I'm going to go ahead and turn that back over to Steve as well um so again
125it will come as no surprise to you'all that school budgets are a central piece of your jobs uh and being good stewards of the public dollars and making sure that they go to your students um while obviously we charge for our services we view our role as one of supportive to the school system and for the betterment of your children I would rather you spend money on kids than on lawyers and that goes back to that issue around special education uh but we carry that philosophy into all of our work um and so one of the things that that we really pride ourselves on uh is avoiding unnecessary legal expenses there are firms who when you have an IP meeting or an employee uh grievance will send two or three lawyers down to conduct an
126investigation and they'll charge for all three of them all day plus the travel for all three of them we don't do that right we look at a case and we say we may need two people on this but they're going to be doing different work right I have one person if I'm working with Jason I'm going to say okay Jason you're on the motion to dismiss and I'm wri in the brief or you're going to do the investigation with the interviews of these five people I've got these seven people we don't need to double up right we've got plenty of work there's there is plenty of work out there we don't need to be setting up situations where we are charging you more than you need to pay for something that's already an expense that
127you'd rather not have um and so we look at ways to uh make sure that we distribute our work effectively that way the other piece and this goes back to what what Jason said about the expertise of a large firm is one of the largest expenses in legal work is research right looking into a problem figuring it out writing out the answer writing the memo what whatever it is that the Board needs to respond to that well we've already done those things in so many different areas we don't have to redo them for you so when you call with a question about Title 9 I've got 10 different PowerPoint presentations on our system from 2010 up through all the Regal changes that I can immediately go to the research has been done the slides been
128made you're not getting charged for that because it's already done and if I can't find it in 10 minutes on our system I can pick up the phone and call David nand who's our title n uh Guru if you will and again I don't have to go looking for that information for you because it's already in someone's brain down the hall and that's just another way that we can save you uh money in the long term uh so again happy to talk more about that uh but we do take very seriously your role and therefore by proxy our role as being good stewards of the public Dollar in this work uh and that brings us to the fourth reason uh which again we've been following a little bit of the news the discussions we understand
129again that you're facing like lot of boards you know the fiscal cliff with Esser funding going away in addition to that um one thing that we noticed was uh the number of capital building needs that you have uh and that's one area where you know we can't help you with the funding piece we understand that's something that your County Commissioners uh your legislator legislators you know they're the ones who could help you there um but uh we know you have existing needs we know that you're growing uh looked like at least from the information I saw that either most or all of your schools are at or over capacity um and that's really a testament to you I work with other boards where they're losing students so uh you are keeping them in your District
130you're growing uh which is uh really really great uh for you all and it speaks to the work that you do from top to bottom um and and and while again we can't help with funding when you are ready to take that next step we have again the best school construction lawyer in the state and Rod Malone since uh the last time we were here we've also added Sharon Lynn she's a former real estate attorney to really take in what used to be some of that local real estate work uh to build on uh Mr Malone's uh experience uh and to also just kind of provide top to bottom uh School Construction Services uh for our districts um you know they and the rest of our team ready to help you not just from the
131design process but you know once the school is built uh ready to make sure that it meets your needs and that you know all the requirements are met uh and then the fifth and final reason uh it kind of dovetails with the first is again that we have you know more capacity to meet your needs as a school district than any other firm um as Steve said we have a breadth and depth of experience that you're not going to find anywhere else we've represented approximately 100 School boards across North Carolina over the years we've dealt with just about every single issue that a school district could face experiened uh at the federal and state level with uh you know interpreting applying providing guidance on uh laws and regulations that govern the operations of your public
132schools uh public bidding construction Finance open meetings public records teacher uh discipline hearing dismissal Student Assignment uh and uh Discipline matters finds and forfeitures um public records open meetings I mean really just pretty much everything Robert's Rules uh for anyone we have one registered parliamentarian Ken Su and one of our other partners Carolyn merkus who also did your EC work for a while and she would also be your EC lead if you were to uh to hire us back um either is or is working towards and close to uh being a registered parliamentarian um and in addition to all that work uh you know I've heard a couple of points about how to keep cost down and one of those is to you know stay ahead of issues that's one thing that I think we
133take a lot of Pride on and that we really try and do uh you know whether it's providing to you with template legal documents that you can use without having to come back to us to generate something that's custom depending on your needs whether it's uh contracts related to procurement or uh teacher contracts and those types of documents um and uh and also you know on any particular new change in the law that comes out we try to stay ahead of those we try and give you the guidance that you need so you can make good decisions um so I'll go ahead and stop there but the point is um you know the 20 Attorneys at darington Smith were here for you every day at all hours on all issues whether they're large or small
134and uh you know really our goal is to help you do what you do best which is educate kids and to be able to focus on that um and I think I might have mentioned this the last time uh that we were here but you know for thanington Smith this is really more than business for us um a lot of the attorneys at the firm myself included we were former teachers uh I went from teaching uh in Vance County uh to law school knowing that I wanted to be an education law attorney uh I wasn't any good as a teacher is the hardest thing I've ever done uh but it was a way for me to stay involved and I felt like to be able to continue to have an impact um while we don't
135have children in your schools uh we do have children in the public schools um we have one uh one of our attorneys Adam Mitchell who did your personnel work uh for the last year um who was actually a member of a board of education at one point so we have experience that we can bring from all levels of the education World um we're committed and we're honored for the opportunity to be able to work with you I believe you have copies of our proposal if you don't I have extras uh it includes our proposed uh billing fees um one thing uh that I'd like to also point out is um I know this came up last year but if the board is interested in and wants to know about uh flat rate fixed fees we're
136you know willing to consider that and to uh propose something that we think could be fair for both as well and at this point I'll go ahead and pause for questions thank thank Mr Weber and we'll start with Miss barnhard and board memb just reminder you have a question and a followup if You' like at that time thank you thank you Mr woodor um after hearing some of my colleagues questions I I hear a resolve around the concern for the the um how do I say this the dynamic personalities that we have on the board so it leads me to a unique question i' like to hear the answer for for procedures where do you think is the bless placement proceeding as being an attorney on the board so that you don't appear to be
137biased or leaning towards any one of us on any issue that is not a question I was expecting for see so so I actually I prefer not to be at the board uh Podium with any of my boards just because I mean really it's hard to see me so if I'm trying to get someone's attention if it's the board chair uh during public comment or something you know if I'm sitting at the end of a row no one can see me I might have to nudge the person next to me who nudges the person next to them and that just draws way more attention than I want to raise um to your point it also avoids the appearance that you know whatever the random scene arrangements are that uh you know that I am somehow
138uh uh you know working closely with or favoring one particular board member over another one of my other boards this actually came up recently where uh there was some concern just because I wasn't familiar with some of the history in the district and would occasionally ask the board member next to me uh for the back around on an issue where other board members were concerned and I straight away offer just to move in order to make sure that that was not an issue um so so I'm happy to sit wherever you want me to sit where my boards want me to sit I don't have any particular preference other than uh you know if I did get a choice it is to be somewhere where I can be seen uh and also be a little
139separate it also takes a little bit of pressure off during public comment uh you know as much as I like to have the rotten fruit thrown at me as well um you know it does give me a little bit of separation thank you uh Walker I don't know what that was um thank you I really don't have a ton I'm very familiar with you guys um already maybe a little too much I think as I've been here since 2020 but um you had in your proposal um I think a partner named Michelle is she part of The Proposal is one of the main attorneys or no wait Melissa sorry um were you you were supposed to be the lead and then was was going to be your second or I believe in our proposal it
140was myself as the lead and then Carolyn merkus be the other lead for special education matters right and then we had a list of BIOS at the end where Melissa Mish show might have been oh so so he wasn't like one of the main attorneys on we're all available to answer questions uh you know our kind of the model we work from is to have one particular attorney who's assigned to our board to cover board meetings be the key point of contact with some that are larger and have more needs uh we'll have others who fill in on some of those specialty matters uh like Carn murus would really be the lead point of contact for special education I have background in that I do that work so I would be available as well um
141I think the last go around Adam Mitchell who's one of our lead Personnel guys was doing your personnel work so it really depends on the needs of the district how you know large they are in terms of I was justed that so follow up real quick thank you um so maybe maybe I don't remember this but I know I'm sorry I'm still in the travel question again but I don't remember what it was the last time because you're yall in Raleigh too right yes ma'am okay I mean sorry I won't steal it then you can ask something Miss Mason travel costs yeah we're happy to to to talk through that I think um you know just based on distance who travels build and hourly rate you know those could average from 800 to 1,000 one
142way we try to bring that down um uh is we try to work while we're driving whether it's scheduling and taking calls um from your own staff uh so you know that's free legal guidance whether it's on the way there sometimes it's on the way back uh even for late meetings we do try to make uh the most efficient use of that time as we can because we know for a lot of our clients um that it's a sunk cost uh so the other thing to is uh if we're not taking calls for you often times we're scheduling and taking calls for other clients and we don't double bill for that so that's also time that can be taken off uh when it comes to travel and if Steve has anything else you want to
143offer no I would just for Clarity on that last point if if for example we're driving to your board meeting and we get a Personnel call from a county in the in the center of the state we build the active legal work over the travel right so the travel always goes second if we're able to do other work and we do not double bills so that if on the phone for half an hour it's a half an hour for the phone call and half an hour comes off of the drive next Mr MCM than Jason hello Jason welcome back good to see I think I know the answer to this question because you know us and you've been here um regardless of how we individually feel or group up you're going to give us the
144best advice you can regardless or not yes I can still see you just don't like to talk though the the answer to that is yes yeah that that is always our goal um you know certainly here we we've dealt with interesting issues it's one of the kind of selfish reasons why I know I want to come back uh it's not uh just uh frankly I mean the people just good people top to bottom just a well-run organization uh yall create some interesting issues uh that keeps me on my toes particularly when it comes to the Roberts rules uh you know he referenced the training I think I did maybe two or three of those during the year uh and I say that you are probably my only board where there are motions to amend motions
145to amend uh and so it definitely keeps me engaged and I really do enjoy that and challenged I'm glad we are well remembered by wait I tell you um I brought my copy of Robert's Rules just in I need I may need it um explain to me you know you talked about EC and stuff what is your thoughts on you know how winning a case how how important or are there multiple ways to win an EC case uh I'll let Steve go ahead and take that and I can jump in as well so one of the conversations I have um with clients a lot in litigation comes out of a concern for setting precedent right if we resolve this case this way there are going to be nine more that are going to ask for
146the same thing uh and while I always affirm that concern with my clients I ask them not to get caught up in that to the detriment of making the right decision today uh so when we look at winning a case um I go back to what I said a little bit earlier about relationships which is a a win in a Cas is one that produces a good educational outcome for a child um a good pedagogical outcome for staff um an efficient and cost-effective outcome for the board and one that puts you in a position to move forward with the business of Education that to me is a win now I am also a very competitive person and if I have to go to the mat I will and if we're going to go there then
147you're going to then you know the uh aggressive Steve it may come out uh when we once we get once we pass that line of of no return we have to go to court um you're going to get full throated defense um and and and a uh the full uh backing of of our farm in terms of trying to win that case at court and and that is what we do and we go all the way up I've been uh to the United States court of appeals for the fourth circuit on a special education case um we won that one and uh you know that's something that we're very proud of right when we end up in that scenario that uh we we put together really really high level um advocacy work in the federal
148courts um I am and some of my colleagues are in the office of administrative hearings routinely for special education hearings and again once you get to the point if I've got a parent on the witness stand I will always be polite I will always be kind but I will never back down on the questions that need to be asked the points that need to be made um and uh and bringing the information to the court that it needs to know that the school system has done uh Done Right by this student so all of that is to say winning is the better outcome when it doesn't end up in litigation but if we have to go there um winning is very important to us and we'll do everything we can legally ethically professionally to do
149that uh next M grao um thank you for being here again good to see you both um I did like that you mentioned um about you know your interest in construction and and that kind of stuff because we do have you know some cap be addressing but and I also wanted to make sure that we I sent my congratulations to Mr Malone for being a legal Elite of 2024 so in the construction Arena so that you know sits well the um I also was very you know impressed you and one of the other presenters talked about you know all the things things that you do um and that you can do right on your staff bonds and forfeitures administrative hearings defense before the EOC the OCR the doj um helping with policy development real property
150matters and constitutional issues for our students and staff so that is um one of the things that um I liked and the um and the Deep bench that you have for areas of expertise so I guess what one of the questions I have is um what is your you know not policy but procedure or preferred method of informing all board members of information that is happening like when do you just give information to the board chair or to the board chair and vice chair or do you um disseminate information to all of the um board members um appropriately U I think it would depend on on the issue I mean if it's something like the recent changes in the title n RS that's something we want to make sure that the whole board is aware
151of uh you know I think that question had come up uh with regards to one of the firms uh you know the B Administration did recently issue proposed RS I think just yesterday the Texas Attorney General and several other State Attorneys General have sued to block those so we certainly track that uh so we can give guidance uh to you so you're aware of it but also to your staff who deal with that on a day-to-day basis um similarly to uh state level legislation um um one things you know I I tried to do and that I do try to do with my uh my boards is to provide updates on any relevant uh State legislation whether it's you know during session or after the session uh giving good information so that you know what's
152coming down the pipeline if it's something that hasn't you know already passed uh so you can speak with your own uh local legislators about it as well as things that have passed so again you're aware of it your right to work with your staff on um implementation uh one of the other things that we track are you know uh you know key and relevant uh cases uh so with regards to one case that uh I know we've discussed coming out of West Virginia with regards to uh transgender student athletes there was recent a decision at the fourth circuit around that just two weeks ago that we're studying and we're preparing to push out uh some guidance to our clients about that as well just so they're aware of what the outcome was and ready to
153respond to it um it's one of the things that we take a lot of pride in uh you heard from pointer scroll that they have uh connections at the state level with DPI and I used to work at DPI as well we try to stay plugged in there as well as with ncsba who's one of our clients uh so we can be ready to uh inform you all and all of our other school districts about U the things that you need to know the only thing I I'll add to that specific to your question is that a lot of boards have policies that govern attorney communication with the board and how that's done um I'm not personally familiar with your policy on that but I have several boards one of which has a structure where
154the the chair can call the attorney directly but then the policy requires the chair to report the answer um that the chair can authorize an individual member to call the attorney but then that individual member is obligated under policy to report back uh that committee chairs can call the attorney directly and provide that response to their entire committee um and that then there's also obviously emails that go to the entire Bo so one of the things that we try to do is tailor that to the board uh to make sure that we're meeting your needs and if and if it's a board that's very comfortable with just the chair having that conversation that's what we can do um if everybody needs the same information we can do that too thank you follow no I'm good
155with that okay good I see some policy changes um before what's just happened with Title Nine how how were you advising your boards to enforce the fairness in women's sports did you advise them check birth certificates what about their transfer students what were you advising before what just happened uh I don't know if you want to answer that one uh well the law is the law you know the state law came down I know your board was in front of that uh in terms of that issue as it with regards to uh Middle School sports during my time here um the state law passed in the fall and our guidance to clients was to implement uh I will have to say that I with my current boards I didn't get questions on implementation so I
156can't say how I advised on it with regards to them uh in terms of the details uh but we did push out information so they knew what it required and our guidance was to do what the law said yeah that I think is is exactly the answer I would give with the addition that um this decision that's just come down from the fourth circuit um what two weeks ago right uh is about that West Virginia case and one of the open questions is how broadly applicable is that case decision to a law like North Carolina's because what was overturned was West Virginia's law does that mean that North Carolina's law is also subject and so in situations like that what we will do is come to you and say look here's our best analysis of
157the opinion here's our best analysis of uh what that means for our state law which obviously is not within your control in terms of the law itself just its implementation um and then to advise you on here are the risks if you do this here are the risks if you do this here are the risks I think as Jason mentioned early in the presentation and it will surprise you not at all there are Boards of Education who have you know directly Divergent uh opinions on the politics of that issue and and that's not our issue right our our job is to advise you legally so that you can make a decision that is consistent with your values your constituents desires and the law to the best of your ability um and so you know we
158don't take sides on those things uh we advise here's the law here's how we read the law here are the risks of these courses and then y'all make that tough decision thank you Mr okay gentlemen I do want to thank you very much for coming in today and again as I've mentioned you heard we will be voting on uh a law firm next week so thank you all very much thank you so much board members we will continue on um Miss Sutton you have uh posted the uh Legal Services terms and conditions please that document for the Board review not necessarily for decision today but that was the document that I had planned to update once the board makes a decision on which firm um and the length of the contract I would just update
159this document so if there's something in this document you wanted changed or if you preferred some different wording then I'd be glad to take that and make the adjustments before next week I looked at it last night and compared it it to for example the one we just did with porner spru and the one we just did with sink and they're completely different and so my first question would be um who prepared the document and what attorney firm has reviewed it so I used the Vogal contract as the template which I think was the one that we used for um um the sync contract that you guys just reviewed um okay so it my understanding was it was the same template and that just the dates um and the names of the firms were different
160so if you would prefer me use so I apologize if it wasn't the same as the sink I thought the sink and the Vogal contract were the same there's a ton of of of dialogue missing there's a number of paragraphs completely missing in the sink and I didn't I didn't notice that it looked like I have them all right here um but it just it just was so different I wondered where this one came from yeah so it I took the Vogal contract and I just changed I just took out the name of the firm and the dollar amounts and the DAT SP if there's another contract that you prefer that we've used for attorneys in the past I don't mind using that template um or if you want me to do something different and
161send it to vogle for review I don't mind doing that thank you um yes so I I did notice that there were some differences but they um were ones that I appreciated um two a couple things I wanted to ask in legal services in that first paragraph um I would like to see some wording in there where the um billing client um the the the law firm who is billing has to assign um names to each one you know each one and we are currently getting that but we have initials but with no Legend on who those people are um I'm concerned that we if we have a law firm that we don't know who is who you know in Billing so I would like to see some specific wording about that um under costs
162where in the second line where it says build at our cost does that mean um does our mean us new han County Schools or does our costs mean like some governmental cost or what does that mean um that was the cost that um was agreed upon through the proposals and so I think you're right it would be better to actually put what that rate would be instead of making it that generic wording yeah that's confusing um I like the um the change where it said upon mutual agreement the contract may be revised at any time so that we um so it looks more like some of our other service provider contracts where we are allowed to terminate a contract and I believe in Mr vogel's contract those words were omitted did when he um signed
163I'm not positive about that that's what I think I remember um the that um under monitoring and auditing I liked the words I don't recall seeing these before but they could be in there um shall permit the board to evaluate all the activities conducted under this contract as dictated by the board so it gives the board um a lot of latitude on um if things aren't going the way that we want it to go with representation that we have a chance to talk about it and then then um finally on page three um down at the bottom where it says assignment you the law firm shall not assign subcontract or otherwise transfer any interest in this contract without prying written approval of the board and um to me that includes when you add new people
164after we sign the contract based on what you presented to us so um I'm assuming that each one of these presentations they all told us who would be representing us and if anybody else is different then we would need to be clear on that and that to me comes particularly into play with um our our first presenter because they actually offered up that they did they weren't skilled in most of the areas and they would have to get me people um to or they would have to ask other people to assist them so I wanted to make sure that we were clear on that that we get to approve whoever else they ask so with that being said is it the will the board that perhaps we add an amendment to the contract and we
165reference that in the contract where it lists the individuals that would be working um otherwise the proposal is a separate document so I don't I so I think that would be will of the board if we wanted to add an appendix that had that detail yeah and I would like for the board to be to discuss that before we approve pardon me make that motion yes I would be I I would like to see um the yes that to have the people that could possibly be providing services like several of them said these three or all five and you know poter SC said we have this number of people are doing you know education law construction law I mean there's so many people that are on staff I don't want to limit it because if
166if we've already seen that they have said these people might help us I don't know how best to do that I'm not a lawyer but I just want to make it clear that we get control when a new person comes in and if we've already agreed to their presentations and the staff that they have on hand then I don't have a problem with that but I do have a problem when we have change major changes like 50% change you know of a of a law firm and we don't know who the people are and have had no say so so however you think we need to do it or um an attorney you know either we can yeah we can use Mr goal who is our legal counsel to do that we can consult another
167you know contractual law you know firm to help us with that um that kind of thing is that's your motion I know it's it's on you have is there a motion in there I know I keep going in out I hear myself um I don't know how to make the motion um I the I I don't know how to make the motion because I don't want it to be difficult but I want it to be clear I'm concerned that for instance r or during Smith if you ask them to list out everybody then there going to be pages and the contracts going to be 15 pages you get everybody's name on it so I don't I don't care I don't care how long the document is um because if it protects us and we know
168who we're going to get or who we could get then that's what I want to know okay who we could get so we have is there a second hearing none we will continue um any other discussion Mr chair second for discussion I would like to have more discussion but I mean I'm not necessarily going to vote for it or not I just okay so we have a first and second to okay that's fine is there other discussion on that point again this is list thank you Mr chairman um what my colleague was talking about earlier one of the one of the firms outwardly said that they are in the process of hiring I think it was even in the application so it sounds like if they're not in the firm now that we're we're not
169going to have access to them and that to me that doesn't make sense um because if it's a firm it's an umbrella it's a group of people I I believe I mean I could be misunderstanding rather than an initial being fil build to us she what my colleague is saying is is to have the name out so that we know who that individual is that is doing the work for us rather than an initial and I have no problem with that aspect but knowing that one of the proposals is saying that they're in the process of expanding their firm I don't want to limit and say well no only these five people in The Firm are allowed to even though they just hired two more they can't work with us does that make sense yeah
170so just to clarify thank you for trying to clarify what you thought I was saying um and yes that is true um when we had Fairington Smith they did initials they gave us a legend so we knew clearly who we were getting each time and um right now we don't we have initials but we don't know clearly who we are getting so I have no problem with people adding new people but when we hire them B like let's just say we hire them based on the credentials that they presented to us and then they those credentials change significantly I think we should have a say so in um knowing who we're who we're getting you know to cover the significant void that was left I don't mind people adding new people because that's good and
171um so I'm not that's why I don't know we we need to list everybody I just want to know who we're getting each time Mr chair thank you well maybe um a solution may be to put in there um if there's significant change or if there's someone new that that it has to be revived or the contract can be revised I don't I mean CU I I see the points on both sides um because they're also I'm not going to say I'll say this later um but you know knowing who we have is is is correct I mean I I don't mind listing everyone at the same time there is a question about if there are some firms that are going to want to add people way later on after we've already signed a contract
172CU we don't I mean I guess we we need to look at terms as well it's all going to depend um I don't I'm not a opposed to um putting something in there that basically says if it's significantly changes or I don't know what the wording should be but I agree as well um but it'll be trickier with the bigger firms yeah and and okay [Applause] um I think all firms have attorneys come and attorneys go um and to restrict them like that really sounds um a little more controlling but I have to address this um the fact that we have initials right now because we've we've we've as a board we've literally attacked The credibility of our board attorney and doxed him and one board May went on to their social media to dox
173them so why in the world would you expose your people's names out there so that they could then be just vilified by board members it's just it doesn't make sense and until we stop our bad behavior I don't want to tie a law firm's hands um they're lawyers they've gone through the bar they're you know they're upright people um this vilification of our vendors it's it violates our policy for one thing every time it's been done it's been a clear violation of policy but it continues to happen and I don't want to see us start down the path with a new attorney firm doing that again if a particular board member isn't happy with the choice that this seven people body chooses and so I I just don't think that we need to step out
174here on a personal thing and change the way we do it we don't say if we hire uh a construction company we don't say if you hire a new principal in your construction firm we want to change your contract we don't say that when we hire um um um a software company we don't say we we don't say that with any vendor it's just getting into the vendor's business too much um yes the board uh attorney would come to us in close session or even open whichever applies and say hey we have a new person this is who they are um we want to introduce them to you but that's normal professional business and I would prefer to stick with that thank you Mr chair so let me clarify what I'm asking I don't mind
175and don't object to adding more expertise to our legal firm I do take issue when we lose a significant portion of the areas that they promised us and that is that is my only point on that and I did want to just ask you know Mr Anderson a question that if a if a general contract man if we if we have a en contractor like you know on a construction job and they hire Subs they have to submit paperwork on each sub correct and when they change Subs they have to let us know that we're changing Subs um so we would have them list their major Subs so GC would list for electrical mechanical um site civil um and then if there was a change for whatever reason they would have to submit justification for
176that change along with u the credentials of the replacement company correct and that's that's what I'm asking so that we know that the replacement people are comparable to what we hired and and that's all that I'm asking with this legal firm and however we have to write that in is is is up to you um as our you know guider on that and our legal counsel can give us guidance on that that's my only point we already are doing something very very similar cor I I just wonder if we're already covered on our own policy because I believe it's 6120 I could be wrong on the number but we are allowed to name multiple entities to work with and as far as the legal field goes so in the event that we hire a firm
177and we want a specialized interest in a certain area we have the right of as the board to do that so that I hear your concern and I believe that we're already covered in policy I could be mistaken if once guidance want to be given our attorney then Happ do that but it should be in our contract as well as in our policy why because that's how we operate our policy is how we operate this walker yeah I'll try not to keep that stretch because I couldn't put my finger thank you be careful now um exactly what I was trying to say the last time I think that we are being presented with proposals that have particular names on it and I understand that um I think it it is fair that if there are
178sign there are new people that are working with us we should at least be told and and and maybe the point is the billing should be a lot clearer I I don't know if that's exactly what you're trying to say um but it is good to know I mean because you are given a proposal and that's one of the reasons I asked about the name on one of them because that person wasn't here and they were one of the main names on there I know just it's just good to know who who who um who is working for us and what their Specialties are and there was one firm that did talk about how they might add more I mean I would like to to know that you know who they are and cuz we'
179vetted we've we've had the chance to sit here and and talk to people and vet with them and ask them questions but we not had to do that if new people come in so I I understand the point of that I don't know how you would word that in there but maybe there should be a clause about if there's significant changes to the firm significant loss of of contractual promises what you know something like that like if we're changeing the elect Electrical Company then we want to make sure that that Electrical Company can provide the exact same services or better than the one we hired and it should be the same with our law firm and we currently don't know who all the initials are um even though I asked M would you go ahead
180and succinctly tell me what your motion one more time'll votee on it before I do the motion again is it's my understanding that we aren't adopting this right or that because I thought I heard Miss Bradford say she doesn't want it at all no I I didn't think we were adopting it tonight I we were just she was asking for feedback on it so I'm not prepared to vote on accepting it or not accepting it so then do I need to make a motion to change the contract or can we just give her guidance and have her come back because Miss Bradford is obviously going to be giving some guidance on from what she has compared so you know how do we do that do we want each of us to give her guidance or
181do we going to bring it back at the next meeting Mr chair yes ma'am what if we sent our guidance to you and then you dealt with it if you are a person that would be fine why don't we do that I'll p a sudden we can work on it together then I will withdraw my motion thank you okay we will continue on uh there was a uh I'm getting ahead of myself beginning teacher support Dr Barnes thank you sir oh one one thing before you start Sutton there has been a question I would imagine since we're going to be voting next week we'll be able to keep the packets between now and then cor okay the board members said ask that yes good evening board good evening are these sharable since they've been presented
182out loud okay than so thank you back to Dr that's right I'm going to serve as your pallet cleanser this evening this is all 100% good news so we'll be happy to hear I wanted to share with you the success of our beginning teacher support program it's been a Cornerstone and fostering the next generation of Educators for new Handover County schools on a 5year cycle aligned with the North Carolina State Board policy we do a uh beginning teacher support audit from the state and we just recently completed our monitoring visit in March and I wanted to share some of the results with you DPI commended several aspects of our beginning teacher support program they highlighted the comprehensive beginning teacher orientation they also recognized the orientation breakout sessions offer diverse topics to provide well-rounded foundation for
183new teachers we also recognize the strength of our classroom presence in our support system all of our beginning teachers receive ongoing non-evaluative feedback from dedicated team of mentors BT support Specialists and peers and it's a more supportive environment that allows them to experiment refine their skills and grow with confidence we do needs assessment and Survey Data Drive our targeted professional development plan ensuring that the training that beginning teachers receive is directly applicable to their classroom needs they get monthly training options with choices and our BT support Specialists ensure implementation through follow-up and guided observations these are all areas that the ncdpi monitoring team highly praised new han County schools and in their final evaluation we were given a distinguished rating the highest Mark in seven out of the 10 areas that they review additionally they
184put us on the Exemplar list for beginning teacher support for the state so that other districts can come and monitor what we're doing in their own districts as well we acknowledge there are a couple areas for growth we refining the mentor selection process and working with principles to implement stricter timelines for professional development plans and evaluations but in conclusion in conclusion our beginning teach teacher Support Program empowers our new Educators by helping them develop skills and fostering a supportive environment I want to throw a little bit of data at you most national research shows that between 44 and 50% of new teachers leave the profession within five years and in the last three years our beginning teacher support program has retained between 855 to 91% of our teachers return for the next school year so
185that alone shows the strength of this program uh I know that we've got Beth wedded um Katie think and Andrea Reigns are our beginning teacher support programs and they work tirelessly with new teachers helping them get better at their job so just wanted to make sure you knew that that audit had passed successfully and I just want to say I'm going let everybody to say something but I want to say congratulations to everyone involved uh you know I I can only Echo what you said I think it's so so important to get those young folks that are starting out in the teaching profession supported and and you know enjoying what they're doing and I have seen too many that you know you know spend a year in there and say there's the door I'm going
186to go find something better to do and make more money doing it so correct thank you thank you to everyone involved M crille yeah I um yeah congratulations I mean that that's always wonderful to hear um I am wondering if our distinguished rating and making the Exemplar list um was was based on the current Staffing that we have now and if there was any comments if we were to change that that Staffing would we still be distinguished and on the Exemplar list well in working with our um beginning teacher support team which is all funded through title 2 uh we have worked uh at their own request to keep as many of those staff members who are directly tied to teachers still doing that work thank you Miss Mason and M I'm really good with
187seeing things on paper is there a way for us to see like the results of this audit like do you have paper copies or email copies that we can see sure what I'll do is when I we get the final copy delivered to us I'll put it into the board memo so you guys can have a copy of it you and I'm just following up on that can you send that to all the media Outlets as well sure anytime you would like yes we certainly can um that would be lovely really it's been a it's been really really good work for them to do so we would be more than happy to do that I'll work with s to make sure that happens awesome great well again congratulations thank you sir thank you thank you
188that's good news I like good news um parents Bill of Rights hello so we were asked to provide an update with some um guiding questions on the parent Bill of Rights so what I want to do is kind of just everything basically is on the website but I will highlight some of the procedures and processes and I will um start with the first question or section and I'm referencing the attachment of the questions that we were provided as God's questions the first section basically talks about the parents legal rights and I want to walk you through on the website where you can where you can find the answer to this and all of the other rights because the website we tried to make it as parent friendly as possible if you will recall the state
189does not require this to be done um until um a later board decided to have it done earlier I say that to say our template does look different than some of the state templates because the state just provided their template maybe a couple of months ago so please keep that in mind um so for for the first one is the right to consent or withhold on participation and the reproductive health so what you would do is you would click on the parent guide to student achievement and walking you through this so how do you get to that page it is the it is on our website under commun student families and quick links up here if you look right up here she's going to guide you through it because I want everybody she's going to
190guide you through how you get there I just can't see that with the light okay yeah that light is dim okay so students and families parent Bill of Rights and it's also on the quick links got it okay so for this particular right you would click on parent guide to student achievement and this is what is your student learning so then you would click on that you would go down to Family Life homepage scroll to the bottom of the page and we can look at elementary and you will see there we have the pacing guides for parents to see we have the videos we have the slides we have the workbooks the teachers we have everything on this page for parents to see about this content I'm going to bring your attention to the permission
191slip if you'll click on the permission slip where is it um you go right here see growth and changes permission right form video in Spanish y okay so here you clearly can see you cannot participate in this without a written consent from your parent so I guess what I want our parents to know and the board to know we have gone over and Beyond to put things on this website um we put a lot of information that was not necessary but we're trying to be as transparent as possible for our parents um that is one example of the rights you you can also go into a parent right to know and you can get a lot of this information as well so what I want to see if anybody has any questions about section one
192or where we should be able to find something if not what I want to do is I want to talk about question to and how will we be sharing this information with our parents so we've already shared um the information we just did a connect ad recently go ahead I'm sorry um so for people who are listening that want to follow along they can pull this document up because it's in our attachments for the board the general board Mee no it's no no no no they can go to our website no but I'm talking about the questions that maam that is that document is in is it on the board agenda or is it today it's on today yes ma'am yeah so what um I want to talk about with um section two is two
193main things first of all our parent guide to student achievement is what we were just looking at that tells you everything that is going on in the school system academically and even then some um how will we um make sure our parents know about this even more as required by state law we've already shared this but we have the oblig to make sure that all of our parents see this and are giving this information the first days of school so what we're going to do is follow the state's model and the state basically is going to um survey districts and have them attest that they've done these things so we're going to have um the district put the it's on the district website but we're going to have a banner to say hey here's the
194parent Bill of Rights the schools will have it on their page as well the schools will also include it in a welcome back letter or information um we're also going to work with Parent Academy and ask them to um provide and educate our parents on this and then to make sure that documentation is done we will be surveying our principles with these bullet points and attesting that they have done all of this information so that is our plan which is aligns to what the state requires us to do they're going to have us ATT test and Survey that we've done things so we're going to find follow that model for this component the other thing that I wanted to bring your attention to and that is question um three um how are we following the
195law for parent request and we have qual Trex if you will remember um Miss Brinson showed you that we actually have a system can you go Mrs um baggie and go to so you have two um bullets there you have one for information and one for help I will tell you at this point in time we have not received any requests for help we have a few that we have received for information they have an average time of being closed in 13 hours hours so if you'll click on that and I don't know if you'll be able to see anything but it kind of gives you the information and it tells parents that this these things are on a timeline that we have to um address them in issue and it walks them through that
196portal yes Mr chair um I I was just curious and I don't know if this needs to be a directive but I know that we've updated some policies and just expectations and things and the board had previously adopted some curriculum I think it's um prudent for us to make sure we're reevaluating the curriculum and making sure that it's in it goes in effect with all of our policies that we've updated in past so I don't know if that how often that happens but I think that um can very easily be a directive just to well any whenever we adop policy when right but I know we adopted curriculum um last last year and so and there's been a couple different policy changes and so if there's anything in the curriculum that we've adopted that we
197might say this might not go with some of the policies now to to change some of things and that might come from some of the parent requests and looking at and reevaluating some this new policy so like I said I don't know if that needs to be a motion or well let me just share that our curriculum that we adopted follows um State and District policy and standards so we cannot adopt anything that um for example one of the things I was going to highlight is about curriculum that does not teach sexual sexuality and things of that nature that is not something that we've done before nor are we doing now so our curriculum we teach the standards so the teachers have to teach the standards so what we do is we um as you
198know have plc's and things of the nature where we plan with teachers we provide them the curriculum that we do because we know that we don't have those items in our curricul but we also have to do such things as walkthroughs and observations to make sure that we don't have people who have maybe have some misguidance or did not understand so as far as having a policy match curriculum we have to by state law so because the state's policies we have to follow so even if ours were to change we've got to follow the state's policy and they wouldn't allow that if that answers your question great um Miss um Dr fac under forms um am I correct in assuming that only parents of students or parents Guardians you know um of a student in
199the school system can fill out these forms we can't just have like Joe community members say reconsideration for the material that's being used in our schools so what we have in um Miss Bron if I missp speak please um correct me but what we have with this is you have to put your student ID and student information in am I correct you do for the request for information and the parent health concerns but the request for reconsideration form we do not that is the the form that we have been using we will be updated when we update but we do follow the policy and the policy says it has to be students or or parents that's what I thought okay I just wanted will be coming back thank you that policy will be coming back
200to the policy committee Miss Mason and I are actually working with Mr vogle on that as well and it is you have to be tied to the district for that with a student in the school not student in you live here yes I'm sorry yes Miss um in regards to the forms that are there um is it possible feasible whatever to um also include the family life form under there so it's accessible um additionally uh in looking through the the website the student survey bubble is is pretty small when you click on it there's not it's there's not a lot to it um and I know in policy you need parental permission is there a form that we could develop um for parents to do so or thoughts on that so the the student surveys
201um depending upon any surveys that are approved by the board which they would have to be um unless they belong to the CDC risk surveys like youth risk or um tobacco um they would have to be announced at the beginning of every school year for participation and each of those surveys if board approved or if determined um would have their own permission form to be specific to the topic of the survey so there's not a generic one so that it's actually way more specific to what the survey would would ask but would it then be added to this did it get its own little bubble here yes if it was um if a survey was determined to be adopted and added to that list then it would be included there for parents to find it
202for ease of access and to follow up what Miss Mason's other question was um to add the Family Life there um for approval on the screen was said justce right under form you got room you had three there and you could add one easily the only reason why uh and we can do that we were trying to make sure parents had all of the information before they fill that form out so we wanted them to go to the site to get all of that information and not just put a form up to be sure that parents really understood what they were signing up for but we can do that I just wanted you to keep that in mind that's why we did not put that form there we wanted it with all the slides all
203of the information so our parents were more say forced to look and see if this was right for my child can we then cross reference each one with a link the link goes to here and the link goes back to there so that they can you know click back and forth in between them that would be relatively easy in terms of website and you could you could probably add um items that would require consent that show the information and the form right there in that same section yeah well basically I guess if if I'm understanding we would put the entire family page website just on that page because it's all of those items L yeah yeah exactly a link so they know there's more depending on which one they get to that would it would
204it would cross link them um you know you guys are on here all the time and you you've worked on it but even just doing it now it's a little you know new and you know parents are busy and they may have a language barrier although I see some of this is in Spanish which is wonderful um so I'm just trying to make it as easy as possible for them to navigate it thank you for that feedback and I will just say one more thing I I want you guys to know is that we um will have to report out um um the for the report is actually the 15th but DPI will be um providing us the process I actually have training in a couple of weeks on the process and they will be
205providing us with the template in June because as you know we're required to report out from the request for information and the parent um um request so just wanted you to be aware of that and I'll turn it over to Mrs so the the um carrying on through those questions um section 4 through 8 um just except for um number six because number six um refers back to age appropriate instruction for kindergarten through fourth grade and as Dr facon mentioned that falls in the um the guide to student achievement so um four five s and eight are um mainly related Rel ated to um student physical and mental health um student services training remedies regarding concerns for um student physical and mental health procedures or processes and um then um the pral right to opt
206in protected information surveys all of that information has been um kind of collapsed into one standard operating procedure for our staff um and that would that has been disseminated to our student support staff so that includes um counselors social workers um any other school health staff and to administrators and that guides them through that process should some of these situations occur such as a student is expressing um um interest in making decisions about their own health well-being their own mental health whether it's gender identity and really guiding staff in how to support students in having that conversation with their um legal guardian their parent and so that is um is a standalone um standard operating procedure for staff to be able to follow that guides them through that um and that was provided for you
207in board memo and then um so I think that answers the the majority of those but to also clarify the information is on the website in a few different places and for example um thank you I'll use this one for example Miss baggy is so good um so you can see parent notification regarding student physical and mental health here on the website it guides parents through understanding how they can communicate any concern about a procedure or policy that's implemented and then um as you move through you've got um the two white boxes if you can scroll um you've got opportunity if a student says well I want to use a different name or pronoun then this is where that documentation exists that before that happens even in casual use or um just in dialogue so
208we don't change Student Records um without absolutely formal means of changing Student Records a student can't say I now go by this name and now my student record should reflect that that isn't how Student Records work um but if a student says well I would like to be called this name or this is my preferred pronoun um it has been expressed to staff that that is no different than um seeking a parent um parent permission for a student to participate in athletics or parent permission for a student to participate in a field trip that requires parent um permission now the law does does um say that we should notify parents we go a step further than we'll notify you of course that this is what your child is seeking but before we make a change
209in how we communicate with your child we want your permission so that's that additional step the next one and you see um white lettering under the two white boxes student Support Services training this is an example of required training by the Department of Public Instruction that is specific to state board policy and general statute with regard to our um Mental Health Plan and so because these are the required trainings this is what we have linked here that's our District's plan for the required trainings um and and yes this is the parents Bill of Rights is a a very detailed um piece of legislation so there's a lot of information and everything can't exist on one cover page so it is very embedded but with logic in where things fit together um but of course and
210and Miss baggie has been like right there with us along the way um in trying to organize this and in ways that seem sensible to to parents but again like Miss Bradford said we look at this much more often and we're going to going to know which things come next but feedback from families is always appreciated on how they can find this information to be helpful but don't ever forget the search button on our website so keywords are always and Miss baggie is pointing to it right there the search box so you can always put information in the other thing I want to mention there was one question toward the bottom you want me go quickly you have something you have like four minutes oh sorry I'm on a roll here I I see that
211I I I've learned many years ago not me away smart you want me keep okay I'm gonna keep going and then and then I'll entertain any question you have Mr oore I'm sorry um there's a a question um after the set of numbered questions um the fairness and women's sports act there were questions added to the end of this and I want to offer some clarifications um so do we require um parents to certify um the student sex based solely on reproductive biology so a couple of different things are um are what we monitor first of all um the um sex assigned at Birth is identified on sports physicals and on the pre- participation evaluation form that is signed by the parent that is also um used for the physical um that is signed by
212the physician prior to a student being able to participate um those are also matched with um the gender that has been designated in power school that is consistent with the birth certificate and if there is a mismatch in that then that is reconciled before the student participates in um Athletics and it's based on that um reproductive sex or biological sex so I did want to make that clarification for you and that is monitored by our athletic directors as they monitor um student eligibility for sports going I'm G back up a little bit um my question and this came from when we were at the ncsba conference they were talking about the implementation piece as far as asking questions from because often times our counselors will ask kind of generic questions of our students and when
213is that switch over from talking to our students and checking on them to becoming a mental health questionnaire and so how are we guiding our staff on ensuring that we're we're checking on our kids keeping accountable but not Crossing that boundary of doing an oral questionnaire and not notifying the parents so if you speak to that yes so all of our staff um of course are reminded and have to maintain a connection to their code of ethics that match their lure areas so one you cannot be assessing or evaluating a student without parent permission um but you know that exists similarly that exists in the world of um education too and in special education um so you can't just have a school psychologist walk into a classroom and start asking a student questions about how
214much skill they have in any area um without parent permission so um we train on that pretty consistently you know this is this is where you are having dialogue and checking in on this is where you are creating an assessment that would then um require your professional judgment and Analysis okay and and that's in the that's on the other side of the coin that would require prayer and permission um and then also being really careful that we aren't auditorally or just verbally surveying students for any kind of data collection that didn't give the parent the opportunity because surveying students doesn't have to be survey and writing it can be um collecting information that's then going to be used information of a private nature thank you that's what I want to clar be on thank you
215board members I just want to point out we are at right at 6:00 right now so we are at a 4 hour limit we could go ahead and finish this conversation and move uh the report card and the committee reports and the rest of close session too because we seem to have a lot of extra time a some extra time never say that uh some extra time for next Tuesday's meeting uh is that okay with everyone yeah I make a motion to postpone the rest disc delay the rest of the I are we sto okay we have a motion to postpone all the everything including the post session next week first and second any discussion yeah I just had one question are we going to we put it at the end no I know that
216I'm sorry I'm asking about the stopping we're going to put the rest of it on the end of our next meeting Yes except it could go under old business because we're well committee reports can go under committee you know the2 uh cards that would be new business just okay it's it's okay okay yeah I mean it's just really looked at it I just yeah the teachers I just wanted well get it okay let's get that done can I ask one more question before we come off of um this discussion in letter in number nine letter letter C question number two um okay the question says well I labeled fairness in women's sports number nine because it appeared that it was a separate category okay sorry um sorry so we don't have any intermural sports right
217right okay so that's that's not an issue but on the number the c number two where it says are there any males boys based on the students reproductive biology who have played who are currently playing um are we actually going back and looking to see what we have done in the past and making some sort of list that we are holding people accountable to uh so um so the the answer hypothetically well um the answer is no we do not have students currently playing on teams that are inconsistent with the requirements under um the parents Bill of Rights or the fairness and women sports act and um any um athle atics um governed by the um North Carolina High School Athletic Association under different rules um I have not gone back to examine any of
218those in the past but what we um consistently do right now um in accordance with our policy and in accordance with the um fairness and women's sports Act is monitoring athletic eligibility to be consistent with um the um sexual um the biological sets of the the athlete but the law doesn't require us to go back and see what we have done no and that's not a current process okay I just it's in it's in these questions so I wanted to make sure that we were all clear that we don't do that and we're not going to do that and we're not required to do that we're monitoring eligibility eligibility now based on the new law and parent pill of Rights okay m b um we talked on Tuesday um about to transfer students so would
219you just address that oh that you're talking about me um so the the the kind of the fine details of this is um and and that's why I wanted to bring up the the additional point so is it is it possible that a student can transfer in with an updated um or revised birth certificate that is a change from the gender the sexual um gender or sexual um biology reproductive biology determined at Birth so there are some situations where um students um are born with both sets of reproductive organs and a determination is made so that that's true um medically um but the another situation would be if a student or a parent has petitioned um officially um for example um before a court or for a judge's determination on the change of um a
220um the sexual gender so that's why for us with regard to athletic eligibility the students um pre- participation or sports physical is essential for us in compliance because that um asks the designation at Birth it then does ask another question on how a student identifies but the designation at Birth is the um is the determinant and then that is signed by the parent and then that is used um as a part of the sports physical that is signed by a physician and then if there is a mismatch between that and the gender identity in or the gender identified in power school then that's when there's a discussion on eligibility and that has not happened transfer transfers are in power school at that point though transfer in students yes so a student who transfers in and
221that birth certificate AG gender would be determined based on the birth certificate in power school and if the sports physical it doesn't align with that then that's when we would um we would investigate further to determine compliance with the law and we do have a motion second on the table that we do need to address uh and that is to move all the rest of the business except for now the case to for card next week um all in favor please signify by saying I I I all opposed no I thought we decided we were going to go through it in five minutes we okay sorry sorry we're going to keep the report card yes okay so Mr chair I was looking at the um next week it doesn't have a slot for the committee
222report so I guess we just got to add that in well we just put it as old business it it has to changer okay okay all right so that we that's 70 and you have four and a half minutes go I'm going to take three and a half no um I just wanted to make the board aware that um in listening to our teachers we have finally we've been working on this for about two years now um revised our K2 report card and there were three reasons that that was done um teachers wanted to make it uh provide a clear um standards for parents to understand remove any duplicates we had and to address the pacing Concepts um so as well as to talk to power school so this report card we had before which
223you see the old and the new did not talk to power school so our teachers had to do a number of things to get that report card um completed for their students and we have displayed and I won't go through it uh the timeline that we have been working on to get this done so as you can see teachers and principals were initial uh um integral part of this process and like I said this is something we've been working on for a while because we had to make sure first we got it right it talked to power school and we wanted to make sure that since the teachers asked for something we gave them what they wanted so we also collected our feedback I want to point out that we do have have um a
224couple schools right now pting the software behind the scenes so the parents are still going to get the report card they've been seeing but the teachers are actually using that software to make sure are there any issues before we roll it out in July for our restart schools and in August for our Traditional School so if you have the opportunity to talk to a k through2 teacher ask them about this they would love I'm sure to share because they're very excited um we have about 300 K22 teachers um and we had 150 fill out the survey and we have a number of them to be in um a part of this process so I hope I didn't go too fast on that but okay any questions I would entertain a motion to adjourn so Mo
225second all in favor please signify by saying I I all allos stay okay we're