001Board meeting of the year. I hope all of you have a happy Christmas season because we won't be here and we'll be having one. Before we get started, I'd like to ask Ms. Graham for an invocation. Will you bow with me, please? Heavenly Father, as we gather today, we give thanks for the blessings of this year and the opportunity to serve our Horay county school community. We as a board, ask for continued wisdom and guidance in the work that we do. And we give gratitude for all who contribute to the success and well being of our schools. We want to thank our teachers, our administrators, staff, students, and all of those committed to the hard work of teaching and learning and growth. As we move into this season of giving, we ask that our hearts
002be filled with compassion and with joy. We ask for safe and restful time off for everyone and that the upcoming holidays bring peace and warmth with our family and our friends. We trust in your continued grace and the strength of our Horry county schools community. Amen. Thank you, Ms. Graham. That was. That was lovely. Now if you would please stand with us as we, the North Myrtle Beach High School Navy JROTC will be leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Colors, halt. Left face. Present colors. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance 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. Carry colors. Ready. Cut. Right face. Forward march. Left, Left, left.
003Be seated. Thank you, North Myrtle Beach. That was well done. We appreciate y' all being here. Next we'll be. We'll have the introduction of board members. Mr. Cook, please. Good evening. My name is David Cook and I represent District 1, which is the attendance area of North Myrtle beach and Myrtle Beach. Good evening. Tracy Winters. I represent District 3, which is Carolina Forest. I also serve on the State School Board association for Regional 4 Director. Good evening. My name is Wendy Hodges and I represent District 4, which is Socastee, St. James and Myrtle Beach. Good evening. I'm Howard Barnard. I represent District 5, which is St. James, Socastee and Burgess. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Hello, I'm Melanie Willins. District 8, which is portions of Conway, Carolina Forest and
004Socustee. Thank you for allowing me to serve as your District 6 representative, which encompasses the Socastee, St. James and portions of the Carolina Forest attendance areas. I'm Pam Dawson. Janet Graham. It is my pleasure to serve District 7, which is Conway and a portion of Carolina Forest. I was also recently this Past weekend elected as president elect for the South Carolina School Boards Association. And I serve as chair of the South Carolina School Boards Insurance Trust. Good evening. I'm James Edwards. I represent District 9, which includes portions of Green C, Floyds Law, Loris, North Myrtle Beach, a small portion of Myrtle beach and a small portion of Carolina Forest. And Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone. Good evening. My name is Neil. James. It's my honor to represent District 10, which includes portions
005of the Loris, Green C, Floyds, Conway and Carolina Forest attendance areas. Merry Christmas. I'm Darrell Ricketts and I represent District 11, which includes the annual attendance area, part of the Conway attendance area, and the Floyd section of the Green Sea Florida tennis area. Thank you for it. And my name is David Cox. I have the pleasure of being the chairman of this motley crew. I love them all, though. And so it is. I need an approval of the agenda. So moved. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Like sign hearing? None. We're past that approval of minutes for November 17th. Second. We have a motion a second. All in favor say aye. Those like sign hearing, None. That too passed. We move into the discussion. Ms. Dawson, your policy committee report, please. Thank you,
006Mr. Chairman, fellow board members, Mr. Jones and staff. I want to begin by thanking the Policy Committee for their hard work throughout this first semester and for their time this afternoon. This was the fifth Policy committee meeting of the year, and we have five more left to go in this session. Today's agenda centered on BSR3, which we referred to the full board with a recommendation to approve. Looking forward into January, we'll address revisions to BSR4. We'll take up BSR5. And if time permits, we will begin to define reporting procedures for our board member survey, which we will remember to take at the conclusion of our meeting tonight. Please use your QR code and post your survey results at the end of the meeting. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Austin. Next, we'd like to ask any
007of the members who went to the South Carolina School Board Association Legislative Advocacy Conference in Charleston through the 5th through the 7th, if you'd like to give us and the public an update of what happened. Mr. Bricketts, would you like to go first? Glad to. We certainly had a very informative time this past weekend meeting. We heard reports from state legislators on what possible legislation may be affecting our schools. We were able to network with other districts throughout the state to talk about what may be some priorities we'd like to see so very, very beneficial time for our district. And I enjoyed going with the other board members here, it gave us an opportunity also to get together and discuss some issues. I would echo those same sentiments. And you know, it's always valuable to
008stay informed on our current proposals that the SC SBA is asking us to endorse. And we heard directly, like as Mr. Ricketts said, from our lawmakers and our key officials, and we heard about state and federal legislation that's impacting our public schools. And we also received a financial forecast for South Carolina, and that'll help us to understand potential implications going forward for education funding. And it was my understanding that it was about 773 million that they're starting off with as a budget surplus. So hopefully we can get a little bit of those monies. Amen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the main things that I remember is that public education is under attack and is rapidly changing, and we all need to be vigilant about keeping our eye on it and making our voices heard.
009That was said over and over. The other thing is, again, I was elected as president elect this past weekend, which is like vice president of the school board association, and I look forward to serving for you. And I will yield to the rest of my board members for what they got out of the event this weekend. Thank you, Ms. Graham. I had the honor of attending the conference as well. And one of the things that resonated with me was the question was asked of the legislation that was there, what is the hot button this year? And the answer I thought maybe just something in general about schools, but their answer was, who's going to be the next governor? Because they said, that's going to impact your education. And I understand that now, but it was
010not the answer that I thought was going to come out of their mouths as the number one hot button. Also, the deputy superintendent of the South Carolina Department of Education, Ian Headley, was present, and he stated that their priorities are still the same. So that was good to know that they're still on the track for their top our success, support and safety in our schools. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So this would be my third year that I got to go to the conference. And there is definitely a recurring theme that we see every year. We talk about teacher and support salaries. Obviously, you know, that's very important for all of us, the relationships that we have with our county councils and how important that is. That was something that we as a
011school board have. We started last year to, you know, re implement that, visiting with the county council and getting together to be able to share ideas and whatnot. I personally think that that's very important for us. The one thing, I guess, in a lot of these, you know, recurring things we hear when the. When the gentleman. And I can't think of who it was said that, you know, you know, who's governor next is going to be, you know, the big telling thing for me, it made me realize how important it is, is us as us for citizens to be able to. When people are running, when it's an election cycle, if you're concerned about elections and. Or, I mean, if you're concerned about school and education, we need to find out what those people who
012are running, what are they thinking about, about education? What are they going to do to help make education better? What are their priorities in education? Some of them, as they. They go through and they talk, you know, I hear things that just, you know, it doesn't. They don't excite me a whole lot. And this has nothing to do, you know, it really doesn't have anything to do with partisanship. It just has to do with. It doesn't matter. What side of the aisle are you on? Are you putting kids first? And that's, you know, that's what's more important to us. Anything is to put the kids first. We need to put aside any of these other things that we. We are, you know, we're sitting there in our minds, you know. Oh, you know, I said
013it at the. I said it that day. I said, it depends on if you woke up and drank the blueberry Kool Aid or the cherry Kool Aid that day is what you're going to decide for your kids. Well, that's not. That's not the truth. What's important for the kids is what is going to educate the kids, give them the best education. That's all. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all for attending. We appreciate. We appreciate the input. Next, I'd ask Ms. Allen to come up with the enrollment update, please. Good evening, Mr. Cox. Ms. Wellings. Board members and Superintendent Jones have just a few slides to share with you. I do want to remind you as we talk about this, this is only a snapshot in time. It definitely does not tell the Horry
014county school story because I can assure you we enroll and withdraw students on a daily basis every single day. And so we promise to give you an update. And this is what I'm going to do. I will tell you we'll have another update at the end of first semester, and that one will probably be more relevant because we do tend to see students leaving after first semester or enrolling after first semester. Your middle and high school students tend not to want to come in the middle of a semester. So looking at the first slide, I'll share with you. You've seen this slide before. I just keep adding columns. Eventually I'm going to probably run out of room. But you can see if you compare the enrollment from October 24th, which was our last data point,
015until 12, 2, that's when we cut up. We have to have a cutoff or if not, it'll continue to change. So 122 was the last time Mr. Lee James pulled the data for me, and I truthfully appreciate all he does for us. But you can see we had an increase in enrollment in elementary, a slight decrease from those two time periods in middle and a slight decrease in high school. On the far right, you will see the variance, the difference between the projected and the enrollment as of 12 2. And you can see we are still below. But if you remember that very first enrollment meeting, we were a little over a thousand different. And you see we've made up a little bit of difference there. We're only 764 students off that enrollment period. Okay.
016On the next slide, and that does include. I put it up there, too. It does include pre k through grade 12. I think the question came up last time, did that include cd? So it does. When you look at new student enrollment, and again, I'm only looking from 1024 to 1202. You can see the numbers there and where we actually increase. So we do have 156 students that. That are new that enrolled during that time period of 10:24, 25 and 12:02. That's 22 school days. So you can see we're averaging two to three students a day. All right. And then on the next slide, and this one's a little messy, but I want to keep comparing it to what you've seen before. So you can see the withdrawal information. On October 24th, we had 2,857
017students who'd been withdrawn since the the first day. And now that total of withdrawals is up to 3,040 students. And that was since the first day. And then you can see. I broke it down elementary, middle and high. So you could see the withdrawals. You can see the number of students that reported they're moving out of the county. And then you can see the students who have reported that they're remaining in Horry county, but they're attending a charter private virtual school. Homeschool or adult education. I would remind you here too that this is reported by the parent. That's why we have some in the other category because some parents, they withdraw their children and don't give us a reason. Now Horry county schools just make as many attempts as possible to find out. We look
018for records requests from other schools. But there are occasions where we really never know where the child is going. But that is self regulated, reported by the parent. And then on the last slide, and I did put this in there just so you could see a comparison. And then I want to give you one other fact that'll show you just how numbers do sometimes not tell the whole story. But you can see how many people that we have said has gone out of the district and you can see the enrollment based on what the parents have told us between some of the charter schools that are in our district. But the really funny part about this, and I'm just going to pick one, not trying to pick on any school, but the very first one,
019if you look at the Discovery School, it looks like that they had 290 students. Now they got four more, which is true. But y' all, during this time period, since the beginning of the year to 12, 2:57 students have come back from the Discovery school. So that tells us that they're coming back. They may be turning around and going back. There may be new students to Horry county who join us for a few days and then decide to go to one of these programs. So it tells us that this slide probably tells me more than anything is that students and parents are looking for options and that we have to be willing to expand and look at those options as well. Which is why we're monitoring the data so closely this year. That concludes my
020presentation, but I promise you I will be back. Does anybody have any questions? Any questions? Hearing none. Thank you Ms. Allen. Thank you. Mr. James, if you would. Numeracy. Good evening. Chairman Cox, Vice Chair Wellands board members and Mr. Jones, thank you for another opportunity to come before you to talk about our students performance. Tonight we'll be discussing the R2 monitoring report for numeracy which is related to our students performance in the area of mathematics. We will start this discussion by looking at the Kindergarten Readiness assessment. This may seem very familiar because the KRA as it's commonly called was included on the R1 monitoring report. It is in both reports because it pertains both to literacy and numeracy. What is new for this report is we've included the results for 2025 our current kindergarten students.
021If you recall, as of the reporting of the R1 report, those results were not yet available, but they have since then become available and are reported here on this slide. You can see that kindergarten students entered this year very much similar to how they entered last year. We have 28.2% of students who have demonstrated readiness for kindergarten and about 71.8% of students entering kindergarten who have demonstrated some foundational skills that prepare them for the curriculum. Again, this test is required by the Saconaway Department of Education. It is not a reflection of any of the growth or any of the instruction that occurs in kindergarten, but a reflection of where students enter our system and serves as a starting point. Next, we will look at formative assessments. Formative math assessments are given to students in grades
022three through eight. In grades three through five, students take the MAP Mathematics form of assessment, and grades six through eight they take the IREADY Math Diagnostic. Both of these tests result in a quantile score. Quantile score is similar to a Lexile in that it measures a student's ability in the area of math similarly to a Lexilerant measures a student's ability in reading. Because the quantile metric can be used to compare student performance across both tests, that is the metric that I've shown to show you that I've chosen to show you here tonight. It is worth pointing out that the average expected growth for a student over the course of the year is approximately 60 quantile points, and last year our students in grades three through five far surpassed that, growing 205 points, and students in
023grades six through eight passed that as well, growing 70 quantile points. One final note, it is worth pointing out that students entering this year since the fall of 25 information is not included here. Students entering this year in grades three through five had a median quantile score exactly where they started last year at 470, while students in grades six through eight entered this year at 820, which is certainly evident since of our students continued growth in the area of mathematics. Next we will look at the SC Ready Summative assessment. Each year this assessment is administered to students in grades three through five and they earn one of four performance levels. Depending on their performance on this test, they can score does not meet, approaches, meets or exceeds. On this chart, the top two categories which
024are meets and exceeds are combined to show overall proficiency at the elementary level. We have seen steady improvement since 2022, with this year's last year's group scoring nearly 60% proficient at 59.6%. This is a 2% increase over last year. Also, middle school students showed an improvement of about 1% with 42.8% of students scoring meets or exceeds. While there have been improvements at the middle school level, we're not satisfied with the percent of students scoring at the proficient level. The inconsistency between elementary, middle, and high school assessments suggests a misalignment in these assessments to the core standards. Next school year or this school year, a new math assessment will be given and we are hoping that this alignment issue is addressed through this new assessment. Regardless of the assessment, we will work diligently to diagnose middle
025school student performance and implement strategies to improve outcomes. Next, we will look at the ALGE I End of Course Exam, or the EOC as it is commonly called. The EOC is an assessment that is given to students at the end of their Algebra 1 course. This assessment results in a numeric score between 0 and 100, which is typically converted into letter grades A through F. This assessment counts as a student's final exam grade and is 20% of their overall grade in Algebra 1. The two charts here show the percent of students who passed the exam and the percent of students who scored C or higher. There have been significant improvements over the past three years in this area. Last year, 74.3% of students taking the Algebra I test scored C or higher, which is up
02614.3% since 2022 and 2.5% since last year. The passing rate has also increased. It is up 18.6% to 90% since 2022 and 1.7% from last year. These gains reflect the use of intentional instructional strategies and the hard work of teachers, students, and school leaders, as well as your continued support of our students. Math Instruction the final three slides has some new information for you that I recently added to the R2 numeracy report and they are related to our student performance. Advanced Placement Exams There are three Advanced Placement Math courses that are commonly offered in high schools across our district. They are AB calculus, which is differential calculus, or the first calculus course, BC calculus, which is integral calculus, the second calculus course, and AP statistics. Scores on this exam range from 1 to 5, with
0273 being commonly accepted as the passing level and the level at which students are able to earn credit from universities and colleges. Last year, the percent of students scoring a 3 or higher in the AP Calculus AB exam increased from 83.7 to 89%. This exceeds the national passing rate of 64%. Now we look at the BC Calculus exam. Here we can see the number of students taking the exam did increase, as did the passing rate for the exam or the percent of students scoring 3 or higher. Nearly 90% of the students score 3 or higher who took this exam. This also exceeds the national average of 81%. And our last exam that we'll look at today is the AP Statistics exam. Last year we saw a significant increase from 64 students taking the exam to
02888. That's a 37.5% increase in test takers. While seeing only a 0.5% drop in the percent of students scoring C or higher. 76.1% of students in Horry county who took this exam scored at a level three or higher, which exceeds the national average last year of 62%. Although these high passing rates are excellent and we're certainly proud of the students and the teachers, I want to point out that our aim is not to have simply a high passing rate. We want to increase the students participation in these AP courses that will provide them access to college credit, prepare them for college level expectations, strengthen their critical thinking and problem solving skills, and promote academic success beyond high school. Expanding AP's participation ensures more students experience high academic standards and succeed in advanced coursework. And that
029concludes my presentation of the R2 monitoring report. I'm happy to take any questions. Ms. Graham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for that report too. Very good, Very good. I think there's just a typographical error on page seven. The second paragraph that talks about below are the median quartile scores for students in grades two through five. And the assessment is at the fall of 24 and the spring of 25 and the fall of 26. That should be 25. I think I'll make that correction. And when you talked about the quartile scoring, you said that the quartile is taking math and English together. Did I hear that right? I apologize for that. Thank you for asking. Let me clarify. I was comparing a quantile to a Lexile. We use the term Lexile a lot to discuss
030a student's reading ability and the complexity of text. Metametrics also issues a quantile which is used across several assessments that measures a student's ability in mathematics and the difficulty of math skill, skills and concepts. Okay, so they're similar but not related. I apologize. Thank you for allowing me to clarify. Thank you. Something else. I can't find it right now, but I was looking at the middle school and how they were shaken out and they're doing well in elementary. Good in high school. But in Middle school, there seems to be a problem with math. Am I reading that right? Yes, ma'. Am. We have seen lower performance in math at the middle level compared to elementary and high. My argument would be that there's likely an assessment issue. Of course, we don't. We don't tend to
031make excuses or pass blame. We're going to work to improve those results. But it is difficult for me to believe that the students would perform so well in elementary and even better in high school, but struggle in middle school. I'm hoping that this new assessment will address that issue. Okay. And the other thing is, it appeared that the courses that are more rigorous, like calculus and algebra and all of those. Yes. That the students are performing very well. We have a very good pass rate in those. And my concern was that the last paragraph you said in your. What you gave us was that we're looking to expand in these courses, but how can we do that if in middle school they've taken a big dip? So we. What are we going to do? I
032know we've got the rise with reading, which is awesome, but we need some rise with math, too, I believe. Yes, ma'. Am. A roll with math or something. I don't know. So let me address this one, and I think that's a great observation, Ms. Graham. And I've heard that from other board members and community members. So that. Not criticism, but the observation I get from the community is, Mr. Jones, all this rise with reading and you never talk about math. Well, let's unpack that just a little bit further. Most of our math skills are similar in some ways to our reading skills. There's the multiplication tables, right? There is this idea of practicing and practicing and pract. We call it explicit structured instruction. Okay. That strategy is what we're using in literacy. It's what we're
033beginning to go back to again in math. There's this other idea that these word problems that kids are getting and asked to in real time, not only do the math, but break down the vocabulary. And the word problems have historically been really tough for our students. I would argue that with rise with reading so that we can decompose words into parts will help our students do better in that moment when they get that very complex word problem that might be about a subject they've never seen, but the vocabulary will allow them to get to the math of it. And so the other big change. And, you know, kudos to Mr. James and his team. We have new math standards, and I can't talk about math without I got Some feelings about what we've decided to
034do as a state. Can you put Algebra one on there for me? Next year you're going to see less kids take Algebra one in South Carolina. Not because they're not ready, not because the only reason they're taking less. Less kids taking algebra is because we live in South Carolina and for some reason we've been told that we have to put geometry in 9th grade and algebra 1 in 10th grade. Board members, you know where I stand on that. I've said this multiple times and our kids are ready for algebra 1. Just look at the scores. Our kids can do it, right? I'm not sure whose kids couldn't, but it weren't the ones in our county. And so I'm passionate about it. I really appreciate the discourse, especially when we can start talking about quantile as
035related to the measure of mathematics because it's very similar to that of Lexile and has bands in the whole nine yards. So I'll get off my soapbox, but thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bernard. And then Mr. James, thank you. Can you back up a couple of slides? Yeah, that one will do. We had a good discussion with the St. James Intermediate Principal and I agree. I think the testing is messed up because our students do extraordinarily well in elementary school and they do extraordinary well in high school. That tells me they're learning in middle school. So the testing doesn't reflect their learning. It's a testing problem. What I want to know is, can you tell us where they are in grade level? You know, they're posting now their reading and their math. Can you start
036to give us where the students are in math on grade level? Yes, sir. Thank you for that question. It's an excellent question. It goes back to a point that Mr. Jones just made. By using a score like quantile or metric like quantile, we can establish those grade level bands and track students progress through that. Even though we have an assessment issue on a particular test, because the quantile is consistent across these tests, we can take a quantile and compare them from test to test. So what we, what we would need to do is develop those bands and start tracking that progress. I can't tell you today, but I can tell you we had that conversation just this morning and that is something we're looking forward to doing. Well, I, I think you and I have
037had this discussion. If we can get that, then we don't have to worry about SC reading anymore. We don't have to worry about declining 6th and 8th grade tests because we can tell parents where their students are reading at grade level. And that's a simple way to do that and everybody understands that. I want to encourage the superintendent to proceed on that. And that answers the question about are we emphasizing math? Yes, we are because we can demonstrate they're performing at grade level on math and it's not a testing question. Thank you, Matthew. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. James, I had one question for you. And Mr. Chairman, if you would allow me, I have one question from Ms. Allen that I wasn't quick enough. My question from you, Mr. James. We talk about the
038value of the AP testing and we talk about our desire to see increases in that percentage. I would hope that that's not at the expense of all things offering less dual credit courses. That's just a comment. I knew I've been approached many times about parents that believe in dual credits as well. So I want to make sure that as we expand our ap, it's not at the expense of reducing dual credit offerings. Yes, sir. I think that's an excellent point. We need to offer a wide range of options for students to select from based on their secondary, their post secondary goals. Dual credit is certainly a very valuable option for, for parents and for families and something that may meet many students goals. I will say we heard from Mr. Poston at our last board
039visit who discussed at length the emphasis that certain colleges place on AP exams and for students who want to go in those, those courses. I would certainly encourage them to take AP as well as dual enrollment. But I think you have a very valid point. It would not be at the sacrifice of dual enrollment. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, could I. Yes. Ask Ms. Allen a question? Sure. You let her off the hook too quickly. I thought I had escaped. Mr. Well, if I had this beforehand, I would have had my question formalized. But we talked about the increase in the students that are attending non Horry county schools and we saw an increase from 2,853 to 3,040, a net increase of 183. So they saw an increase in student enrollment, which means
040they probably came from our schools. But then we saw a net increase of 165 comparing between October and December. So if I add those two, we lost 183, but yet our net gain was 165. So we grew by 348 new students during that period. Does my math, does that reasoning sound right? It could be more or less. Well, that's a snapshot in time. It looks like we lost this particular snapshot but remember, a student could enroll today because we only pull the data at one particular point. To actually tell you the true picture, we would have to track every single student that comes in and goes out. But like today, we could enroll a student. And if I pulled the data today, he'd count as a new enrollment. But he may turn around and withdraw
041tomorrow. Well, the reason I bring up the two different numbers is I don't think I grasp the amount of change that's occurring. And we say we saw a net increase of 165 students. That's this much. But if we add what we lost to it, it's this much. And I know that the total was still a small percentage of our student population, but it represents in my mind a significant amount of change or churn that our teachers, our staffs, our schools are dealing with. Absolutely. I totally agree with you. You're right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to ask the superintendent to please let us as board members know what can we do to support you and your staff. And I'm not asking for an answer now, but if you could inform us as
042board members, is there anything we can do to support your efforts in bringing a little more cohesion and sanity to our math curriculum issue? If. If it means we need to communicate directly with our state department of education or with our education committee or whatever you think we need to be doing as a board to help you in your efforts to. To right the ship in terms of testing, I would appreciate it. And correct curriculum. Ms. Dawson, thank you. Thank you for that. And board members, thank you always for your support on behalf of kids. I know hearing Mr. Cook talk a little earlier. When we think about what's best for kids, some of our kids might need Algebra one in tenth grade. Some. Some of our kids might need Algebra one in seventh grade.
043Right. So I would just propose for us to really think about how do we get the necessary curriculum to our students when they're ready. It blows my mind sometimes that a sixth grader who might be taking Algebra one. We have some. Correct? Correct me if I'm wrong, not a lot, but we have some. Do they also have to take the sixth grade? Middle school? Folks, let me just explain to you what we just said. A sixth grader who is taking high school level courses because the adults in the room can't be flexible enough has to take a sixth grade test. And I encourage us all to be scratching our heads about that one. And so, Ms. Dawson and board members, I will get back to you on this. This is something that we love. Math.
044We're all math people. That's what Mr. James tells me. So we're all math people. And we will come back to the board with something that I feel like is best for our kids and really probably stretches our adults. So. Thanks. Anything else? Thank you. Thank you. Next we have a naming request. Mr. Rickett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a request that came from the Green Sea Floyd's advisory grants through the facilities Committee. So I'll defer to Mr. James for any questions they may have about the name he request. He messed it up last time, so I was going to give him a chance to tell the right thing. We have a request to to name the community room at Green C. Floyd High school after Rodney McPherson. Mr. Rodney McPherson and he is from
045the Green Sea community. Last month I said Floyd's. But it. This request comes unanimously from the Green C. Floyd's advisory committee as well as the school Improvement Council. It went to the facilities committee. It was endorsed unanimously to present it to the board. So we're having discussion on that tonight. The desire would be at our next meeting. We vote to approve. So if there's any questions Mr. Ricketts or I will try to answer. Hearing none. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. Turn it over to superintendent. Thank you. Chairman Cox, Vice chair Welland board members, everyone who's here tonight. As we enter this holiday season, I want to take a moment to speak to our community. This is a wonderful time of year. It's full of celebration, traditions and joy. And our schools are filled with concerts
046and service projects and moments that remind us of why Horry county is such a great place to live and to learn. But I also know that this season can be hard for some of our families, some of our students even, and even some of our staff. For many, the holidays can bring stress. It can bring loneliness. It can bring financial anxiety. And the weight of the personal challenges that we that we have during this time can be very heavy. So I'm asking us all to look after one another during this special season. To check on a neighbor, to reach out to a colleague, to offer a kind word to a student. And if those things that we're feeling seem overwhelming to any of us, I just ask us not to hesitate to ask for help
047during the season. Season. There's no burden too small out there. It's not too heavy that we can't face together. And we want to maintain this special season. So let's do it together. This community is strong. It's strong because we care about one another. So let's carry that spirit with us through the weeks ahead and ensure that every member of our ACS family who feels supported, they feel seen, and they feel valued when they're not at our schools. Also at this time, changing gears, I'd like to recognize our new Director of Transportation. I don't have his walk up music with me tonight, but if Mr. David Benson could please stand and Mr. Benson has decades of experience that he's bringing to the team and I'm confident that his knowledge will cook the quickly make an impact.
048And I just want to say welcome sir, and welcome to your family. Y. At this time, I'd like Tanya Picket to come to the podium who's going to talk briefly about our partnership with Ory County Council called Handle With Care. Good evening Chairman Cox, Vice Chairman Wellens, board members. Mr. Mr. Jones, I'm super excited to have an opportunity to talk to you guys about our Handle with Care partnership that we began using last school year. Horry County Schools has partnered with Horry County Fire and Rescue on the implementation of Handle with Care. This partnership is just a confidential notification protocol between school districts and first responders to better support students who've been exposed to trauma. Some form of Handle with Care exists in all 50 states and has been effective in supporting students who may
049have been exposed to traumatic events. This initiative is gaining traction in South Carolina and we are so excited in Horry County Schools to be one of the districts that's using this simple yet effective protocol. Right now we've started our partnership with Horry County Fire and Rescue because they're the first responder agency that deals with the entire county. So anytime someone calls in our county and they need fire rescue assistance, it's going to be Horry County Fire and Rescue. So that's how we started the initiative. The county is looking to expand it to other first responder agencies, but for right now, we're using Horry County Fire and Rescue. Both Horry County Schools and Horry County Fire and Rescue work together with our IT departments to create a unique and confidential email address to execute the protocol.
050When our partners at Horry County Fire and Rescue report to a residence or a scene and there is a school age, child or children present or affected by the incident, they send a Handle with Care communication directly from their Harm reduction Division to us in Student Services. That's just simply to alert us that one of our students has been involved or affected by an incident and that we should simply handle them with care notices that we receive Only include the student's name, their age, their school, and the words Handle with Care or the acronym hwc. It doesn't give us specific information about the event or the incident. Once receiving the notice, I reach out to the schools, the student, school principal, or the lead school counselor directly. I let them know that I received a
051Handle with Care notification on one of their students. I ask that they check on the student immediately and that they make sure that he or she is okay. They see if there's anything as a school or a district that we can do to support that student and assist their family. Oftentimes, the student or the family will trust us enough to share more in depth details about the traumatic event. Sometimes we already know what's going on because we've seen it in the news or because we've heard from other members of our community. But the support could be very, very simple. It could range from something as simple as letting a classroom teacher know that a student may not have an assignment today because they were involved in a traumatic event last night that didn't allow them
052to prepare. Or it could be asking to postpone an exam or an assessment because the student is not in the emotional space to do their very best. Or it could be something huge like providing resources for basic needs that a student may have lost or damaged in a disaster, or referring the students for more in depth counseling services or maybe even a health assessment through our student health services, just to help build some context and perspective. During the month of November, I received 7 handle with care notes notices and they seem to increase as the year goes on. We love being a part of this program because in addition to strengthening the working relationship that our school district has with our first responders, it also provides us a low to no cost, high impact strategy
053that helps us build protective factors and resiliency for our students who may need our compassion the most. The ones who are the most in need need, who oftentimes we don't even know about it, reminds them that we are indeed the trusted adults we say we are. And it reminds them that we're there for them. One of the things that we know from working with this program is that many of the students who are affected by traumatic events may oftentimes show no signs they might not even be present in school on the day that we receive the notice. So this partnership helps us quickly identify those students who need our assistance, even when we don't know they're in need. It builds our awareness. And that awareness allows us to observe students look for changes in their
054behavior and their appearance. It allows us to offer accommodations when we need to and build the bridges between families, communities, schools, and first responders that are needed to promote overall student success. We love it. This time I can answer any questions that's a summation of the program or Entertain any comments, Mr. Cook. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Pickett. Wow, that's, you know, that's my kind of program right there. I. I love this. I might have missed it. Who's the point person when the report comes in? Is that you? Is that directly to you? That's awesome. So where are we with local municipalities With. With this program? The county is trying to expand it to. To local municipalities. I think there's some funding that they're using to expand it, but right now we're just using Horry
055county fire and rescue. This is a partnership that started last year between the South Carolina department of public health and. And different county. County governments. And they approached us and asked us if we would be a part, and we were so excited. Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Pickett. Thank you. Next I've got Mr. Dumas. We've got some arts kids to celebrate. Is that right? Yes, sir. Excellent. Let's do it. Good evening, Chairman Cox, vice chair Williams and board members and Mr. Jones. We are thrilled to announce this year that congratulations to the theater companies at Myrtle beach high school and Socastee High School. They competed against 18 other high schools at the South Carolina theater Association's annual convention, and both schools brought back numerous awards. Myrtle beach won the state
056championship for their production of the ninth train, and three individual members of their team won all star cast awards. Grace Pena, Ethan Benezra, and Jasmine Parlier. Saukstey High school won the studio series competitions state championship and the overall best ensemble award. Individual team members also won awards. Their director, Meredith Taylor won the best director award, and Justin Rivera won best actor, while Lauren Christensen, Quinon Johnson Allen, and Parker Vile won all star cast awards. These schools will represent Horry county at the southeastern theater conference national championships in March in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Congratulations to all those theater kids and families. That's quite the achievement. Thank you. All right, Ms. Borsier, we have a couple of other recognitions, and I'll go ahead and call up Tashina Chestnut and Jason Cox if y' all could be at the
057podium. We'll just keep running through these. Good evening, everyone. Tonight I'd like to share two recognition technicians. For the third year in a row, the Conway High FFA program has another state Champion team this year, Walker, Tyler, Miles Guidewin, Rachel Allen and Aliyah Waterson west brought home first place in the soil judging career development event. Aliyah also was the highest scoring individual in the entire competition. We'd like to congratulate these amazing students and their advisors, Savannah Cox. And we wish them the best of luck in the national competition in Oakland this spring. Next, we would like to congratulate Conway Elementary School's Go Green Club, led by STEM teacher Sandra Matthews on winning a champion of the Environmental award this year from the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services. And they were one of 13 schools
058to win this award out of 85 applicants. So these awards are issued each year to foster environmental education and action in South Carolina's classrooms. From kids kindergarten through 12th grade, teachers apply for grant funding by outlining a proposed educational project that focuses on pollution or waste reduction, water or energy efficiency or preservation of natural areas. Conway Elementary's project is to create a pollinator oasis by retrofitting a dry storm water pond to create a native pollinator garden. And the Champion of the environment award grants this school $2,500 towards this project. Good evening. SA High School's Ms. Lucia Watson has been named the 2025 Teacher Educator of the Year by the South Carolina Health Science Educators Division. It is a division within the South Carolina association for Career and technical education. Ms. Watson currently has Health Science
059Science 1 and Health Science 2. Next semester she'll be teaching Health Science 3 to complete that pathway at Sacustee High School. So congratulations to Ms. Watson. An outstanding and well deserved honor. Thank you. Good evening. We would like to congratulate coach Phyllis Elvington. She is the girls and boys cross country coach at Green C. Floyd's High school. This year she was named the 1A boys cross country coach of the year by the school South Carolina Track and Cross Country Coaches Association. She's coached cross country at Green c Floyd's for 28 years with her husband Charles. So congratulations, Coach Elvington. Thank you, Chairman Cox. That concludes tonight's recognition. Boy, don't we have some talented folks in our district. Amen. We really do. Chairman Cox, I'd like to note that while I congratulate Conway High School, on
060the soil judging, the second place team was Adler High School school in the state. So we have both of the teams that will go to the international competition this coming summer. They both are from Horry county. So that's a tremendous achievement for us. It really is. Thank you, Mr. Ricketts. That's good to know. Next we move into public Comment at the appropriate time. You'll be recognized by me, the board chair, and you will be given five minutes to speak. A minimum of 30 minutes during the regular board meeting has been allocated for citizens to speak in case of abusive or vulgar language, profanity, threatening remarks or comments of purely personal attacks on students, staff or board members. The chair will rule that person out of order and ask him to relinquish the floor. We do
061not accept unsolicited commercial services. We do not accept political candidates or confidential information about students or employees, board members or others. The chair will rule the person out of order and require them to relinquish the floor. Please note, the purpose of this public forum is to give the public an opportunity to make the board aware of issues the administrative staff have been unable to resolve or to express a viewpoint concerning board business. The board will listen to these viewpoint expressed, but we will not respond. The board will direct the superintendent to do so within two weeks if possible or needed. And having said that, the first person up is Ms. Nicole Hartigan. Special Education Services, please. Alrighty then. Is corinne meyer here? Corinne meyer. All right. Ronnie blackmon, jr. Ronnie blackmon, jr. All right, Ms.
062Pat. I know she's here. Thank you, Mr. Collins. Thank you for Boyd, for having me. Yes, if I can possibly get here health wise, I'll be here. I've got a lot I want to talk about, and tonight I want to talk about recesses. I have written the bill and I have circulated it throughout the state to have 15 minutes of recess outdoors in the morning and 30 to 45 in the afternoon in K through 5. Now, Mr. Senator Thomas Alexander, president of the Senate, called me. His secretary called me. Or no. Yeah, she called me and they wanted additional information, so I sent it. I still need a sponsor for that bill. And the governor's office emailed me that there was not enough playground space for children to have recess. And that's terrible. Elementary school
063should be limited to 600 children and there should be plenty of recess space. I went back to Daisy where I used to teach, and I think they've built the gym on the playground. So Daisy's got. They don't have enough room that they should have. And PE is not recess. Children need to be outdoors. They need to run and play. If you look at a child, you don't have to take a child growth and development course to look at a child and know that they're in motion. And when they sit for two hours, they need a break. You do. If you sit for two hours, you Need a break. You don't need to have to go four hours without a break. Last week a teacher told me that she went to school at 7:30 and didn't
064get a break until 3:30 and not even for lunch. That shouldn't be against the law. It really should. And these children. You need to get those pill boxes. How many children have medical issues in our schools? I haven't been able to get it. Senator Stephen Goldfinch said he would request the information. I haven't received it. I did get the suicide report I gave you that we have about one suicide in this county a week and a lot of it I think are goes back to school and school based. They start in about seventh grade. Little boys committing suicide and a lot of them commit suicide after they're 30 from effects of what happened in school. We have unhealthy children and we need a report on how many medical issues we have at each school. Now
065if you're going to have a school you need no more than 600 children in that school. And if we have 48,000 children we need 80 schools. You can only know about 600 people and know their parents and the family atmosphere of knowing each other when you're. I taught in a school of 1800 and I'm telling you I was worthless as watching the hall because a boy could grope a girl and I wouldn't know him and nobody else knew him or claimed they didn't. So you have issues when you have the masses. When you have 600 people you could have a coherent family of children. And you need two ball fields, you need a playground area, you need a gym, but you don't need it on the playground. You need the gym, where the gym goes
066and on these playgrounds. I want to come back and talk about using playgrounds for outdoor education. Those playgrounds. You need a student from Clemson in forestry to come and design your playgrounds and make them suitable for outdoor education for the children. I want to talk one night on outdoor education but the recess, I mean some schools are giving recess before school and after school. That's no help. If a child is tired at 10 o' clock, an 8 o' clock recess or 7 o' clock recess isn't doing her any good. Or if she's tired at 1:30. An after school recess is not going to help. We need recesses after two hours of formal instruction and we need a shorter school day. Our children are not getting enough sleep. Lack of sleep causes anxiety and the seniors
067at St. James are saying that they Vape because of anxiety. They're having a crisis at St. James and all over this county, probably with vaping in the high school from anxiety. So we need recesses to relieve this anxiety. And we need a shorter school day so that they can get more sleep. You are doing pretty well mentally, but you are failing socially, spiritually and physically. I give you an F. Mentally, you get an A. Thank you so much, Pat, for your kind words. Next. Matthew Smith, are you here? Matthew Smith, are you present? Well, I guess not. So that ends our public comments. Now I need a motion to go into executive session. So moved. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Those like Sign hearing? None. We're adjourned. Mr. Chairman. Yes, ma'. Am. For
068the purpose of executive session, we'll be discussing the potential purchase of land and current litigation. That's correct. Thank you, Ms. Whalens. Rebecca. Session. Mr. Chairman, I would make a motion that we return to our regular session from executive session. All in favor say aye. Those like sign hearing? None. Mr. Chairman. For the record, it should be noted that no decision decisions were made and no votes were taken during executive session. Thank you, Ms. Whelan. Now let's move into consider approval of BSR2. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The policy committee first reviewed BSR2 on October 6th of 25. At that time, members and other board participants requested revisions which were incorporated into the document and reviewed again on November 3rd. Finding the revisions were made per the committee members request. The committee voted to forward to the
069full board for discussion at the November 17th meeting. At that time, no further revisions were requested by board members, the superintendent or by staff. Tonight the policy is before us for action and it's my pleasure to request your support for BSR2 as presented. Thank you. Mr. Nelson. Have a second? Second. Okay. Please use your machines to vote. Unanimous. Thank you. Now, Mr. Lee James, if you would come forward, please. Chairman Cox, Vice Chair. Well, board members and Mr. Jones. At our last meeting, we discussed the R7 monitoring report related to college and career readiness. And there have been no changes since that time. Motion to approve. Second. Okay. Please vote. Thank you, Mr. James. Thank you, Mr. Gardner. Good evening, Mr. Cox, Ms. Wellens, board members. Mr. Jones, there have been no changes to our
070report from R6 from our last meeting. Second. All right. Please vote. Mr. Gardiner again. Also, we presented R7 at the last meeting and there are no changes to that report as well. Move to approve. Second. Please vote. OE I'm sorry? OE that's all right. Mr. Gardiner, continue. Okay. We also shared consideration the 202627 budget parameters and assumptions. And we ask tonight that you give approval to those. Second. Mr. Chairman, I have one question on that. I know that in the K through 5 allocation you are recommending lowering the student class size. I wholeheartedly agree with that. My only question is, I want everyone to acknowledge by doing so there's going to be an additional number of classrooms required going forward. So when we approve this, as far as part of our budget assumptions, we are
071saying that we're agreeing that we're going to provide the classrooms that will be needed later on. So just want to make sure everyone understands that. Because I look at a particular school in Aner Midland, for example, they have limited areas they can grow. So we're going to have to look at the implications to that area. So just be mindful of that. I wholeheartedly support this. But I think we just need to be aware that there are other ripple effects from this assumption. Motion to approve. Second. All right. Please vote. Okay, Mr. Gardiner, one more time. And finally at our last meeting we presented a 2026-27 personnel allocation formula and we're asking that the board will approve the 2026 Personnel Allocation Formula with the understanding that any changes to the formula will be considered by the
072board at a later date. Move to approve, Mr. Chairman. Second. All right, please vote. Thank you, Mr. Gardner. You may be seated. Mr. Jones. Chairman Cox. Board members. Tonight I move that we provide a one time December holiday bonus for all eligible Horry County Schools employees that are in good standing. This year our staff delivered the highest graduation rate in Horry county school's history of 89.6%. A true system wide achievement that reflects the work of every districted role and school based position in our district. What we're saying is we're asking for 896 gross amount for 6,600 full time employees that are in good standing. 448 gross for 71 part time employees and 158 positive pay employees that are all in good standing for a total cost of $6.48 million. This recommendation both recognizes exceptional collective
073efforts and begins our transition toward a more predictable compensation approach in future budgets. I intend to build a one time performance based compensation into the regular planning tied to collective district performance attendance metrics and sustainable budget parameters. Mr. Chairman, I move we approve the superintendent's recommendation. Good gracious. Okay. Please vote. Sure. She goes first. She's a lady. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to ask the superintendent since we have initiated action to provide holiday bonuses to employees in the last few years that I've been on this board, I would appreciate very much if going forward, we would consider including holiday bonuses or any other meritoriously awarded bonuses to employees at. As part of our budget process so that these bonuses are actually baked into the budget recognized and allocated as part of our disbursements in
074the budget cycle. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Superintendent Jones, for giving us an explanation of that. Again, you've done a good job of coming up with these options. I appreciate that. But I did want to ask the board to reconsider. And because like you said in your statement, it's all a group effort, everybody had a part in making these numbers, these fantastic numbers happen. And we are trying to build a community culture of unity and goodwill, which is what you said. But it reminded me before of a parable of a master teacher that had hired. He was a landowner, and he hired people at different times of the day, and at the end of the day, he paid them all the same amount of money for those that worked
075all day. They were very unhappy because they felt that they were entitled to more pay. But the master teacher was giving grace to. To everyone. And the bonus that we give is a gift. And what I think we're trying to do is give the gift of grace as well, because all of our employees are valued. All of them have a role to play in the results that we. The wonderful results that we have. And you can't always determine, use proportions to get fairness. It doesn't always work that way. So I'm asking us to consider giving everyone the same amount of $500 because we're all in this together. And if we do that, we can. We can across the board give everybody the same thing and save almost three quarters of a million dollars. And to
076me, that's a win win. Okay, so do you want to make it? I would like to make an amended motion that we consider giving everyone the same amount of $500. Amanda, clear these. She needs to second to the amendment, say that the motion is to amend the motion. Yeah. So now we need a second on the amendment to proceed. Could we have the parliamentarian please come and help us through this? What was said is correct. You need a second to the. To make that amendment attached to the original motion. Ms. Graham's amendment was to give everyone 500 bucks. Right. And save three quarters of a million dollars at the same time. Okay, so. And you've. Okay, we, we need someone to second. Second her. Her motion. Hearing, none. I guess we'll Move on. Yeah. Okay.
077For lack of a port. Okay, so now what do we do? Kenny, you have. Wait a minute. Howard's got a question. Oh, Mr. Jones, I. I certainly will support this, but when we had the budget discussion, there were two other items. One was an additional assistant principal or fixed assistant principal pay. That the amount of money we're paying on a Christmas bonus was paid for either one of those items. And we didn't have the money to do that. And I said at the time, you watch, we will pay a holiday bonus. And here we are. Because we've underestimated our amount of revenue and over estimated our, underestimated our expenses. And so we ended up with. With a surplus and we're spending it on a holiday bonus. I'm not going to ever vote for this again.
078We need to put it in the budget process. Like Mrs. Dawson says, if we're going to pay holiday bonuses. They compete during the finance, during the budget process and it comes out above the line than we pay it. We don't come every time at Christmas and pay a bonus out of some surplus that we suddenly have. That's not fair. It's not fair to the things we don't fund because we don't have the money. That's not to say holiday bonus wouldn't have come out ahead of those two of the items, but at least it would have had to compete. That's my only concern. It never competes. It's always just a gimme at the end of the year. And I will not vote for that again after this year. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Didn't you
079say that in part of what you said it's going into the budget. Okay. All right. So now we're back to the original motion and, and second. And we should vote on what Mr. John said. All right, thank you so much. We had two abstains and no, we had two nos. And the rest. So the motion passes. Thank you all very much. Now, Miss Allen. Yes, sir. At the last minute I present a proposal for the high school refresh devices. We recommended the Dell laptop 3140. The amount that we're seeking approval for is $10.9 million. There have been no changes since the last meeting. Okay, we have a second. Please vote. Okay, thank you. That motion passed is as well. Thank you, Ms. Allen. That concludes the use of our machines. Next we have personnel recommendations.
080Point of information, Mr. Chairman? Yes, ma'. Am. I just wanted to give the board a heads up that in sometime over the holiday season there will be a communication from myself and the Superintendent and Mr. Generette regarding GC02. In GC02, there is requirement that we. We consider training requirements for board members. So just expect to see an email from Mr. Generette or myself over the holidays asking you for input over any training input needs for board members. For example, we might want to have some online parliamentary training or other options that we'll be presenting presented to you. So please be on the lookout for that over the holidays. Mr. Chair. Yes, ma'. Am. May I ask that we get that before the holidays? Because I promise you I won't be looking at emails during the
081holidays. I'll try. I'm on vacation now. I'll try to get it out to you. I hear that. Okay, we're moving to the consent agenda. New to motion. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion to adjourn. Mr. Chairman? Yes. Before we adjourn, I'd like to note the. The passing of Mr. Joe Kenny. Joe Kenny was the first district athletic trainer for Horry County Schools, and he paved the way for the athletic training that we have right now. So he passed away this past week, and I just wanted us to make a notation of that before we adjourned. Thank you, Mr. Ricketts, and his Honor. That makes good sense. Okay, so all in favor and in memory of Mr. Tokin, thank you so much. Second all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, like sign hearing? None.
082Word. John, thank you so much, and Merry Christmas.