001I'd like to call the April 24th 2023 uh agenda review meeting to order um Mr wildeborg President Miss Bradford I am here miss Barnhart yes Miss crabill yeah Miss Mason here Mr McManus president and Miss Walker here [Applause] if you would please stand and join me in the invitation question my name is Jason Baisden and I'm one of the pastors here at LifePoint Church thank you for allowing me to offer your invocation this morning father we just thank you right now that that you are in the midst of everything that that we can and will do we just ask that your spirit be present and available thank you that we can call on you as God to order all things that will be said today and talked about I ask that there would be support
002in the room and that there would also be encouragement and strength would we just thank you that that you are available whenever we ask for you and we ask for your presence today for those that may come in weighted or heavy-hearted or distracted I just ask that that you administer to them now in the name of Jesus we thank you that you are God of all things and you can be God of this discussion and that it can be profitable and productive for uh for all that are listening and that it will go on to be a great meeting and good things decided and everyone would leave feeling productive and ready to go out the rest of their day so God we thank you and we say all this in your mighty name amen amen
003I have asked Miss Mason to lead the pledge thank you it's pretty cool I pledge 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 thank you maybe thank you Tyson at this time I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda so moved Bradford they made a motion do we hear a second first and second session not all favorably signify by saying aye aye Kansas 7-0 or next uh the next thing on our agenda is legal services I don't know how to get your attention so um should I be raising my hands on The Voice or should I just blurt out of Scrabble can you hear me I may I suggest that since you have
004two of us on the on voicemail that I mean on voicemail on the zoom that we take all of our votes by by roll call to make sure that um Josie and I are hurt absolutely and we can do that again for the approval agenda no I I I'm good with that one but that yeah okay it may not hear us all right fine fine we'll go ahead and do that absolutely uh our next order of business again Legal Services presentation I believe our first group is cool I'm not sure what has happened but we don't have a representation from any of the groups did they go to some the wrong office Maybe you're doing this today um could they be at the other buildings I am here so the email went out so um
005not sure why the other firms are not present did they not confirm that confirmation that they've received are they coming to this building or Carolina Beach Road or over there are they on the are they on Zoom these are two of my colleagues who are joining virtually if you want to share with everybody as maybe we'll take a minute to go through the paperwork that you provided for us here so we have that Mr chairman could we in the meantime could we maybe call them and say are you on your way or something do we have contacts for them a copy of the proposals that were submitted along with um the rubric that the committee used when they were reviewing the proposal so if you like please feel free to use those to make your
006notes um as you go through the presentations we're not today is just for the presentations and then we'll actually come back next week and request approval of one of the firms that you hear here today or that submitted proposals for us so that's going to be the procedures for the process going forward after today are there any questions about that convey online are you good with that you're good with that okay very good okay can I can I just add I will say I do have copies for those um that are not here with us today so I'll be glad to get that information out to the board members that are joining us um through the zoom yeah so that's that was my question um the handouts that that are there should we just come
007down and get them tomorrow yeah that would be great if you could do that okay great thank you and I would suggest um that at this point since we don't have unless you I hate to have him start and then nobody else why don't we go on to the next part portion of our agenda and then as soon as we have uh I guess the first representation show up then we will go unless you'd like to start but it's at the board of discussion I'm happy to go now available on the phone you'd rather keep them all together okay well let's let's at least start the uh the rest of our agenda and then we'll come back to that if that's okay for us to board so the rest of our agenda is actually going
008through the agenda to actually listen to the agenda um and again along those lines you could go ahead and add that so um the May meeting will be on the second of course we'll open with a cold order roll call approval agenda five minutes a moment of reflection invocation presentation of colors remember who's doing that yet okay good thank you national anthem um [Music] very good thank you pledge of allegiance Mr McManus would you leave that for us absolutely thank you Mr McMahon foreign right now I think there may be one one okay check I'm sorry amended student voice yes good all right very good check student uh superintendents report at least 15 minutes I'll talk fast okay I'll talk to you faster quality audience will be our regular format at this point talk about
009that uh Mr McManus had requested the student discipline update how long do you need there you are gotta go find you about how long do you think you would need for that um it might be 20 30 minutes which would you for sure I'm gonna go for 30 and if we go less then everybody will be happy with you yeah it sounds great 30 minutes very good yes ma'am Mr chair is that under information yeah yes yes okay the um and you'll have to excuse me the what I'm looking at is what I printed out this morning before I left um so I may be a little bit behind in asking questions and I just I can't see what it's on me on the screen so bear with me thank you not a problem not
010a problem it's amazing um I'm not sure exactly where to put it but I do want to add an announcement about the parent form for the EC committee last time I got to do it it wasn't until like 10 30 11 30 something like that and I want parents to actually be able to access it because I think it's going to be an excellent program so I don't know if we can put it under information or where where we would want to put it necessarily but I feel like it needs to be earlier so that more parents can actually access it is anybody I don't know if anybody has any and I spoke to Josh and he said if you're given that information he'll get it even more broadly put out for you in the
011community yeah well I know that they've reached out to the communications yeah um yeah so there yeah um but to announce it they asked that I announce it at them at the meeting but is there would I put it under information or would that be would there be someplace else that I would I typically would go under Community reports but that's so latent yeah we might get done in an hour yeah that would be great but just in case I'll give you remind me I'll give you some a little bit more okay so Mr chair yes ma'am um my memory is not working really well today um but in the policy committee meeting we talked about changing the call to audience does that have to come back through this next meeting and then we change
012the call to audience is that how it has to go okay okay so um could could someone restate what Miss Bradford all I heard was call the audience come through policy come through now could someone restate that please go ahead Miss Grable if you remember our policy committee meeting we we discussed call to audience and I was just asking when that would be on the agenda yes I was just wondering what did you just say is it going to go on this agenda or I did I didn't get that part yes the answer is yes is it under policy Amendment so yes yes it would be it's down there under policy amendments very good so it won't change for correct this time but it will change for next time so we have 30 minutes for
013the student discipline uh update um then coming down to consensus items Isaac bear Early College High School mou or MOA I guess uh polling places use the agreement and question to automate this so this is the time to ask those questions your chair yes ma'am the Isaac bear is this just a re-upping every year what we normally do every year for Isaac bear I believe so but yes ma'am yes this is a renewal of the current MOA okay and there's no changes there were some minor changes just uh to more accurate accurately reflect what they're doing um but nothing else Mr chair um well Mr Anderson I read in the Isaac fair that it was a three-year memorandum of under of agreement is is that normal because a lot of our mousse are only one
014years um most of the mousse that I've dealt with on facilities have been multi-year so then C is Lee screaming and MOA for uncw's DC Virgo Preparatory Academy and actually I just found something out uh that I'd like to share with the board I mean it's appropriate that we actually still keep up the facility of I I did not know that until the other day today I found out Mr President share with me that yeah that's always been our responsibility yeah yeah so there was one change regarding that in the previous lease agreement there was a clause that uh identified major and moderate repair and anything under I believe the threshold was a hundred dollars was the uncw's responsibility anything over that was our responsibility but honestly by the time both of us responded looked
015at it determined who's responsible for it it was costing them both more than a hundred dollars so we uh we're going to assume repairs just like we would on any other facility and we adjusted the maintenance fee that they pay for that okay so I think this will be much easier for everyone involved thank you sir uh Award of contract for Child Nutrition Services is next question can we get some discussion on that I mean the whole point of this meeting was to have all of our discussion and questions so that then the other meeting didn't go till 11 11 30. and so because I don't know anything about that one can you talk about it for a minute please so yes ma'am we periodically uh will bid all of the uh nutrition the products
016and delivery the current uh the current person that has that contract closed their Jacksonville Distribution Center so they were not going to renew at the end of this year so we we had to rebid the milk purchase and delivery and um so we'll be providing mail it's uh mayola that uh was the only bidder that submitted a bid which in this region of the state is not uncommon and it's kind of what we expected so were you privileged to the questions that we were the 500 and some questions we had for the town hall did you see those I did a lot of them had to do with the food not a lot but a certainly a good percentage um how are we doing on that area I mean were those those questions and comments
017and um what were they on base off base was it just the normal tirade of angry people or I don't know about that um I'll tell you that a lot of times when I get pictures this is what my son had for lunch today and there's one item that's what that student chose to get they can have many more items and they're not showing the full menu our Focus this year in particular has been expanding our menu options we are somewhat Limited in that still fighting availability uh issues just held over from the pandemic and but we are expanding our menus we're trying to increase our participation rates but we also have to follow the federal nutrition guidelines when you say increase our participation rates what do you mean how many students are participating and
018purchasing meals through Child Nutrition and not bring in their own meals from home and where is that compared to last year compared to three years ago where is that is it lower or higher or the same so uh Mr chair I'd like to butt in for just a minute I think this conversation this is just um so about the mou right yes Maxwell ask Jason maybe I'm wrong but um I think we're only supposed to be discussing the actual questions about the mou not about the whole Child Nutrition program okay I think the idea was that if we ask questions here then we wouldn't need to ask as many um on Tuesday evening into at night but uh okay that's fine the um I just didn't think that was the complete intact to go off
019into lots of discussion but whatever you you decide so so in terms of our participation is lower today than it was prior to the pandemic and it's a little bit surprising because during the pandemic we had free meals and we were participation once once we went back to um you know paid meals or free or reduced meals participation rates dropped off that's not unlike other school systems in the state and Across the Nation they're overall participation has dropped off so you know we're we're looking at different ways to get our participation rates back up really focused on the full meal as opposed to the a la carte sales and just let everybody know we had a power surge we had a power surge so we are actually not streaming right now so we'll have to
020take a moment or two break until we get back on okay can I ask him another question yeah um we're taking a break uh folks just okay because we are uh offline right now so Mr Anderson if um if we're gonna approve an mou how would I answer the people in those 500 questions we're taking a break Pete just said go ahead and ask the question okay Pete is our chairman okay we're we're gonna break himself so um how would I answer those people that asked me about the food service we we signed an mou with a new company so what would I tell them about their complaints um I don't know what the specific complaints are you can forward those together or uh give me a call be glad to help this is a
021big big thing of questions and a lot of them had to do with food and I you know I just you know I just want to be responsible some of the questions I get is why are we servants particular things a good example hang on let me come over there okay um thank you perfect um so the next um we are now on page two uh letter E 101 three-year devices we want to get a little more information about that I had a couple questions about that actually yeah I'll show you right there there she is um I just want to clarify I saw it said Federal is this related to the user funding stuff okay and then the other question I had is what um I saw it was Middle School do you know
022like what the relative age of like the current devices and stuff are what they have now yeah I I'd have to find it sure okay yeah because it's a mixture okay so the life expectancy on the ones we have now is what typically four years and they've had them since I don't that's why I gotta get it if they're ready because they have theirs and then we've got some high schools that were added to it so it's a mixture so I need to get that information gotcha okay thank you it's great Builders Barnhart any questions yeah I had a question so I'm not quite sure where we are on the agenda did you add something else to consensus items after letter d yeah we're actually on E one on one three-year device through excuse me
023one-on-one year three devices okay thank you that was that was not on the list when I printed it out and then we have letter letter uh F budget amendment okay so this is a budget amendment related to some savings that we've had on the capital project it was the Mary C Williams design project so we had about 24 500 left in that project and we're we're just asking or requesting approval to move that into a contingency Bond contingency line as the county has asked us to do in the past and so if once this is approved by the board then we would carry this also to the County Commissioners for their approval before we were to make this amendment um and you said Bond contingency line what does that mean um whenever we have savings
024within um our the different projects that were part of that Bond we move it to contingency so if another project goes over we have somewhere to pull from of course with the county commissioner's permission thank you carrying on to some other questions uh letter G is the 2023-24 alternative tools modify the accountability system participation questions on that okay so um I'm gonna have to reserve a question for that until the board meeting because I wasn't able to download that um to read before this meeting okay I apologize but it wasn't up at six we could definitely pull that out and and discuss it further next Tuesday if you'd like can we hear about it now yeah I might need to but I might not I might understand it perfectly well once I read it it
025um Miss crabill and um it is actually the same process that we're in now can um if you keep in mind these three schools Lake Forest JT Rowe and CRA are considered alternative schools so by each year we apply for um their model for example um JC Lake Forest and JC Rowe use option b so 60 of their performance grade is based on um growth 20 is proficiency and then 20 is um consistency of students so because they are alternative schools we have to apply each year for them to be able to use this measurement of um the way they are assessed so it's the same thing we do every year uh it's just we have to bring it to the board each year yes ma'am so is it is there any funding associated with
026it related to it it's just this accountability it's just the accountability model we have we we can actually receive a waiver for those two schools because of that Sierra Mosley is actually an alternative school too but they use the normal model but we still have to put them up there so you're going to see that when we when it comes it's just the models that they hire their assess by the end of the year okay thank you any other additional questions if no carry on the next section is policy consensus five minutes um and that policy amendment's there Mr chair yes ma'am I didn't I didn't see any attachments to that so I didn't I don't really I'm not prepared with any questions they were attached later on in the afternoon yeah yeah because I
027was looking for them too and again too we can pull things up next week for sure new business is the ELA adoption there if if it's okay there were no attachments with this because we were actually we just um share with the teachers and the principals the winners of the adoptions remember if I could just take a moment Mr church so just to recall we are adopting a new Ela adoption and I actually have I don't know um we actually have a presentation that I can share but I can definitely hold it off too it's just basically with the adoption process we allowed our teachers to vote for this process ninety percent of our teachers voted for the process um and overwhelmingly and you're going to see that and I apologize pull up my um
028this bully can you pull that that I won't go through the whole presentation but I do think there are some things and Dr Walt is here as well in case you guys have some additional questions let me just one quick question about about how long do you think that you will need today I think um maybe two depends on how many questions you guys have but at least 20 minutes right okay okay um and if you think you're going to have more questions after I finish just giving you an overview now I would say 30 because this is something and the big thing about this is we do have to finish it up and vote on it on May in May so we can get the materials okay thank you and if you're done earlier
029okay okay so um you see here and this is not the full presentation because of the simple fact as I shared we are actually we just calculated with teachers votes over the weekend and we're pulling some things together but I wanted to make sure I share with you guys the major pieces keep in mind that each one of you will be coming and we will be doing meetings so you can actually look at the curriculum adoptions that we've done these will be samples of those adoptions so it'll be a particular grade and I also share with you the [Music] um links so you can go in and actually see because I want to make sure you're comfortable with um this so I just want to share a couple of things with you so you'll see
030on Tuesday night basically we're going to give a detail of the rationale and I don't have a clicker so okay D child the rationale and you see here the the things the uh Four Points I am just going to highlight a couple things that I want to make sure and if you have any questions we can discuss this but I will go in more detail um on Tuesday so I am going to go to um of course you see I'm going to ask Miss Bowie to go down to slide six Miss Bowie teacher survey feedback and when we get to the actual presentation I'll share that's just basically how it fits in the street to strategic plan and all those pieces but I think it's important for you to know that the teachers ask for
031this if you recall one of the things the teachers asked is for a new curriculum adoption for ELA and I'll share with you in a few minutes why they were asking for this so about a 450 responses keep in mind that in middle school this was elementary and middle keep in mind if they're departmentalized so if I'm a third grade teacher or fourth grade teacher and I just teach reading or a sixth grade teacher and I just teach reading that is why some of the numbers are lower because the only teachers who did this were all the classroom teachers who taught reading or Ela and then the AIG teachers the ESL teachers the EC teachers everybody was a part of this process so I just want to make sure that's the biggest so the 90
032is of those teachers only 10 of those teachers didn't respond yes wow I know they were this is something keep in mind this is um I think I shared with you before one of the biggest things teachers were asking when I first got here we need to look at a new adoption because of our science or read science of reading non-alignment and because the current curriculum we have we don't have the text in students hands so those are the big things but you'll see that as well and you see here what teachers were saying and next this is just where um if you go to the next slide and I um the teachers felt like it was not aligned to science and reading the the text in the hands and if you see these things
033the TV was limited for the current program that we use we are um the only District in the state that uses that correctly and it is not vetted for Ed report so the nation's report card is Ed report and they vet curriculums they let us know and normally we want to make sure we always have a curriculum that is not only vetted by every port but it is green okay so these are just some of the big reasons why the teachers wanted to um change curriculums we'll go to the next slide Miss Bowie and because the curriculum we currently have now as well teachers have to fit spot a pull a number of resources so normally when you buy a curriculum they have overwhelmingly so many resources where the teachers don't have to pull resources
034our teachers are spending so much time actually pulling in resources and trying to find that quality material and the power of a quality curriculum is extremely um invaluable when you're talking about moving student achievement and I'm gonna skip down Miss Bowie because of time to teach your survey which is slide number 12. and this is the feedback that the teacher said that they wanted to see so remember the process and I'll go over this in detail with you on Tuesday but if you remember we share what the process was we've actually identified teachers got um different and from every school had a committee and principals and different people at the school and this is ask them what did they want to see in a curriculum and these are the things that they said they want
035to see so then we took these things and if you go to the next slide and Dr DeWalt her team created the rubric proposal request so the request went out and the um different companies actually had to complete this rubric to come to the table and um the next slide after that it actually shows you um the amount of teachers and how the committee was actually formed who it was made up of and I'm gonna move a little faster now the finalists is the next slide so we actually now know the finalists and the teachers are getting ready to the principles have been um email that information they are sending it to their teachers so we started with three um finalists with K-5 and as I share with you once we start looking and looking
036at the material they would not align with some of our current programs and one of the things that we did was we promised the teachers that we would not change some of the foundational things that we're doing because they've been doing those for two to three years they like them not another change right so we promised that so this the one that's marked out it wouldn't fit with that so we had to remove that and then it's not as strongly aligned to the science of reading okay so the winner for the teacher selected great minds which is wits and wisdom so when you go back and look um in the this week and when you come we'll be showing you that for K through five and if you go back you have those General accounts
037where you can actually go in now and play with wisdom now um both of the curriculums were high quality written wisdom though is also the same company of our math curriculum so the teacher's problem this is Patrice talking this is not what the teachers have said but when you look at the different way the the curriculum is set up it was probably very familiar with that and of course it's a quality curriculum and we would not have put it in front of them now for our six through eight we actually um teachers selected McGraw-Hill am I correct McGraw-Hill so we are really comfortable with all of these curriculums but it was a teacher's choice and the principles but of course the teachers had a louder say than this um because just sheer volume it was
038their choice in in the schools came with that and the next slides are just showing you how the teachers had just pictures of the teachers actually going in and being able to look at the content and and actually looking at that and the last slide that I will bring your attention to tonight I mean today is the actual cost because we are adopting a new reading curriculum I'm sorry so when you look at the cost overall um for the first year it will be um to a roughly 2.8 um because this is not the shipping and handling when you add the PD in there and Dr wall I'm going to let you speak to that because it looks different on my screen than what we've discussed so I'm thinking that um I'm sorry can you
039talk about the cost um yeah hi I'm Logan I'm the director of curriculum and instruction so the cost for the first year and when we bring to you on this information on Tuesday will be higher than the years two through five pass that's because uh we're gonna purchase up front all the materials and then have a as you can see for that uh K5 sort of a delayed payment plan across but we will be able to purchase all of the middle school materials up front and then we'll also include the professional development cost for that included in the proposal that we bring to you all um because we just got votes in we are still in some negotiation process and making sure that we're getting uh the best deal for our students that they have
040high quality curriculum but that we're being fiscally responsible at the same time okay and we really as I said we this is hot off the presses but we know we do not excuse me if we do not bring this to you in the may we have schools who won't start school with the quality read and adoption and that's just not acceptable so I just I do want you to know is not you're going to get more information on Tuesday but that is why you don't have that full presentation and is not uploaded but um the teachers are excited since they're excited we're excited um and any questions oh sorry thank you okay sorry thank you so we'll give you 30 minutes for that okay Miss crabill um you had to brought forth the board of
041education development slash training discussion how long do you think we should a lot for that 15 minutes 10 or 15 minutes so I just wanted to run through some of the possibilities and then listen to what other board members might think that we need and um and then just yeah so I think 10 minutes 10 or 15 at the most well let's go with 15 that way there again if we get done a little bit earlier nobody will ever complain I don't think right okay thank you we'll say 15 thank you ma'am the Sutton next we have the county budget request for the fiscal year 23-24. yes sir I think maybe 15 minutes I'm just gonna go do a quick overview of what was presented last month and just ask for your approval of that
042budget recommendation and just depending on you know the conversation that the board's going to have but I wouldn't need more than 15 minutes okay 15 minutes and the last thing we have before committee reports is legal services I think we should get at least a 20-minute discussion there it may go plus that but we'll say 20 minutes on that committee reports I'm actually looking at Miss Walker because I know we have a legion meeting that's going to be have some new things so yeah I'm happy to do that thank you ma'am are there any other committee reports like I said I want to give you a little time for mine so you that one will be in there are there other things uh Mr chair I I'm just about to walk in but I'll do
043it right here the um is it possible to have a report from um our legislative committee about where we are on some of the important roles that are um circulating out there like where we stand uh Miss Barnhart did you hear that yeah I had sent out an email of trying to find another date that we can meet together so we have not had a foreign or opposition of ongoing legislation um but we are in the process of policy to talk about potentially redefining the legislative committee and so we don't have an update from the one so much I don't know if you heard Davis you said that yeah I did no I was really looking for just not anything for us to act on just um I mean I'm trying to keep up like
044like Ms Bradford suggested that you know get a little folder and keep up with them and that I thought that some people on the legislative committee might be keeping up a little bit more closely than me because that's all I was looking for but I'm good with whatever that I mean it's their committee that's fine all right is there any other committee reports that would like to be brought forward um can I just ask the question did we decide to um put Melissa Miss Mason's exceptional children under committee reports are under information I'm actually going to give her a minute or two out of my uh Chairman's report uh because it is something that really needs to be heard and her concern is at this point especially if it gets to be a long night
045people are not here anymore so at least that announcement can be during that um uh I'll give her 30 seconds that's fine I'm sorry there should be yes Mr chairman committee report and if I need you another one head start at that time thank you ma'am at that point we will have correspondence announcements closed session if needed and a German is there anything else you need to do for this yes sir last month we suggested that the district could bring forth a strategic Plan update per month it's really the will of the board but we could do it anywhere you'd like we could make it a standardized portion at the front 10 minutes we could put it in the whole business we could put it in information but if the board would like we could
046bring a an item from the Strategic plan monthly so you're hearing two updates per year um my suggestion would be under information if we put a b in is everyone yeah put it in here now strategic Plan update uh Miss Barnhart Miss Craig did you hear that yes I think that sounds good okay very good we will add that is there anything else we want to do before we hear from uh our legal uh group groups if not we'll move forward with our agenda as provided at this time uh and I do apologize for having you guys wait just a little bit but we would love to have the uh the attorneys from Poynter School uh present so or give me the description below a second get in boy I'll tell you it's just printed
047right in here right here right there right there got her running shoes on I think no you almost had to get a toilet flush like sorry oh sorry well enough on that note thank you so much for being here today thank you so much for having us Dr Foster the administration board members thanks for having us and a special thank you to miss Allen because she's been so good about communication and answering questions throughout the process so we want to make sure we recognize her efforts in um in our getting here I'm Rachel hitch I am one of the founding partners with the education Law Practice Group at Boyner school with me I have Brian Shaw who is another one of the founding Partners Brian and I have worked together for going on 21 years
048now so um you have a team that's pretty familiar with one another at least so I want to talk to you a little bit about Pointer scroll but uh you know I don't want to focus a ton on that because if I were you I'd be thinking I want to know what the education law section can provide but just as a little bit of background pointers role traces its Beginnings to 1883 so the firm has some Longevity if you if we have nothing else right now that you can think of we definitely have longevity and um the current firm was formed in 1986 through a a merger of two firms we have construction law sections at pointer scroll we have experts in government redistricting we have a local government section at point or Spruill we
049have an employment law section at point or scroll we have a litigation section at point or sprawl and all of those folks all of our nearly 96 attorneys and 64 legal staff across four offices are poised to support our education Law Practice Group in doing your work should you choose for us to get to have that honor um a couple things that I want to talk to you about today because if I'm new I'm thinking I want to know what sets point or sprawl apart from all the other education law practices and we're not going to you have made good choices on the firms that you're interviewing today we know those folks and you have chosen good firms to talk to for certain but a couple things that we want to focus on that we're
050proud of about our work um the first is our experience and I'm going to go back on each of these the second is our responsiveness and the third is really our approach with a focus on training how we kind of approach our provision of legal services to our school boards we represent boards all across the state some of whom are smaller than you some of whom are larger than you um when you look at we we provided a very detailed response to your RFQ and in there you'll see the 11 members that that constitute our education Law Practice Group and if you sat there and added up all that you all asked for the years of experience for each member and we tried to make sure that we honored your RFQ to the letter but
051if you go in and add that up we have almost 200 years of experience in our education Law Practice Group that's a lot of years of experience um we usually have Partners at board meetings you guys have board meetings the first and third Tuesdays of the month it looks like from online and Brian and I are both some of our senior partners and we're both available the first and third Tuesday of the month so you would have the opportunity to have a lot of experience not just at your disposal but actually at your board meetings um you know I said I would talk a little bit about experience which I did and I'm happy to answer any kinds of questions that you have about that but I want to talk a lot too about responsiveness
052um when we start working for new for clients that are new to us one of the compliments that we always get and that we take great pride in is our responsiveness many of the people in our education law section came to education law by way of Education families they are former teachers they are children of teachers and so for those of us that practice education law in the education Practice Group at Poyner public education is extremely personal it's not just a way to make a living we could have done other kinds of law we chose this because this is our purpose and our calling so that means when our phone is ringing at midnight we know that there's a nervous administrator somewhere who absolutely needs to hear from us and we are readily available I
053if you text me at two o'clock in the morning I guarantee you you will get a tax response at by 2 15. we are always always responsive you can ask any you can call our clients and ask them we stand by that if someone is needing us we will respond to that need right away if I get a text message and I'm already in a meeting then I can respond we have such a deep bench in our in our group that it's easy for me to text someone else and say hey someone is calling call them back and see if they have an emergency help them through whatever they need you know I can be done here in 30 minutes or whatever it may be or do I need to step out is it an
054emergency that we need to step out for so we are very very responsive we take a lot of pride in that um again we answer emails phone calls text messages days nights weekends um and I again I think one of the reasons that it's so important to us is because it's very personal to us we don't feel like this is just a job we feel a very deep commitment to public education in general but also to the boards that we serve we understand intimately the issues that you all deal with and we want to be readily available for you another thing I said that kind of sets us apart is our approach so you will find certainly law firms that that can defend you on claims and that is part of our job but we
055see our job as going far above and beyond just defending you in litigation that comes your way we see our job as helping you to be proactive we don't want you just to answer litigation we want you to learn from litigation we want your administrators to understand okay you know it's Monday morning quarterbacking so it's not a condemnation of the administrators but it is a sit down and say what you've spent all this money on litigation what have we learned from that experience what training needs to happen What gaps need to be filled what needs to be done to make sure that you might make another mistake in the future but let's not make this mistake again and we like to have this conversation some of that is because a lot of us are former
056teachers and it's just almost in the DNA to try to teach the folks that we're also representing this is what we need to be doing differently and I will tell you and this may not be well received but I feel like I need to be honest about it you know if we're going to start a relationship if there is a chance that we could end up being your attorneys we want to be very honest with you and you have had some substantial legal issues in the last four years for certain and we know that we we of course we did our research we want to know as much as you're looking at us we also want to know what is it that this board would need and we really would love the opportunity to help
057you take a look at those things and figure out you know we don't want to go down this road again we don't want to do these things again so what kind of training in fact you all ask for a very specific format for the fees proposal and we honored your exact format that you asked for because you're the client you're the boss right so we laid that out there but when we do retainer proposals one of the things that we build into our retainer proposals is an awful lot of training as part of the retainer because that's kind of putting our money where our mouth is it's easy for me to tell you that we believe in training but when we include that as part of the retainer proposal it shows you that we will
058we will come down here and we bring teams to do training all the way from your top level administrators down to your special education teacher you've got you know 22 year old first year special education teachers who are making very significant decisions and running very significant processes for you every single day and many of them did not come out of their teacher prep programs prepared for the legal ramifications of what they're doing so we do that through the training is a significant part of our approach and and we want to be extremely proactive you know we want to not just be able to defend you we're well ready to do that we have a lot of experience at almost every level and we've been we've got folks who do training at the state level we
059have folks who train the special education attorneys in nationally and we're involved at every level of that kind of work in this Arena and we use that it's we love to train those folks but our very favorite is to come back to our clients and go to this even down to the classroom teachers and try to help them my my what I always say is I'm more than happy to defend you my best days I'm arming you so that you're not you never find yourself in that position I've been asked by Boards before well how many cases have you won let me just tell you when you find yourself in litigation there are no winners is is my opinion that if I'm standing in a courtroom no matter what the outcome of that case is
060there's already been a loss there's been a loss of money every dollar you spend on me is a dollar you haven't spent on kids I understand that you are stewards of public money and we're very cognizant of that we try to deliver the very best of service so that you get the the best bang for your buck in terms of your legal services [Music] um so you know and we see that there's a big need and a big um push I think for trying to avoid litigation because of the expense of it um and that's not just that's that there's a monetary expense there's a human expense there's the expense of the relationship with families in your community there's the expense of teachers no one can afford to have teachers leave because they got involved
061in some kind of litigation if it's a good teacher because we don't have pools of teachers waiting across the state Across the Nation we have teacher shortages so maintaining those relationships making sure your teacher your good teachers feel supported by the pathways that folks are taking on your behalf those are really important aspects to providing legal services to you that might be above and beyond what you usually think of in in the legal services that you receive we have trained Title IX investigators Title IX is a huge area right now for complaints and investigations and litigation we have three trained investigators in our education Law Practice Group I mentioned EC attorneys you know I have practiced EC defense for almost 21 years and the way EC defense looks now versus what it looked like 20
062years ago is there's been an unbelievable change the the number of EC cases that are being filed is exponentially more than it used to be and maybe more importantly the way that it's practiced now is very different than what the way it used to be it used to be somebody might pick up the phone and call a board attorney and say you know I have a client that came through my office and they didn't get these speech services and we would look into it and if they didn't get speech services we would go back and say yes our speech person was on maternity leave we definitely owe that child services let's make it right and move on and those days have have all but passed us so we oftentimes don't hear about the issues until
063there is litigation but even then we very much take the approach that we're on kind of two paths we're preparing for litigation but we understand that's the worst case scenario we're trying if this is a seven-year-old student you may have 14 15 more years that your district is going to be working with this student so what can we do we consider ourselves in those cases kind of creative problem solvers what's the issue what's the concern how can we arrive at something that's that's good for the district and good for the student um so EC litigation has got gotten huge for sure our attorneys present at the Personnel administrators of North Carolina Hank conferences just about every conference we have sponsored and led the training at the North Carolina Association for school administrators law Symposium for
064many years the folks from our our group so we have tons of experience training it's one of our favorite things to do our goal would be to teach again we almost say that we're trying to work ourselves out of a job you know we want to teach your folks how do we see the situation how are we analyzing the situation what do we think should have been done differently so when that situation arises again they have the opportunity to make decisions that that keep you out of court without the necessity for a lot of legal intervention at that point now you guys have had that had therington Smith for quite a while and they are very good attorneys the one thing I might be thinking if I'm sitting in your spot thinking about the possibility
065of A Change Is how does that transition work that would be a question and I know it is because I went back and listened to the board meeting at which you decided to put out this RFQ and that came up how would that transition work and so I just want to reassure you that we've done that many many times we did it not so long ago with Johnston County a school system that's a little bit larger than you guys and and my home school system so um one of the things that happens is a lot of your records are now are digitally maintained now and so and they're provided to your Council digitally so if you decided to make a change and you wanted to transition those cases we have a good relationship both ways
066um with Farrington and what we've done in the past is we can sit down and and or they can send us a list these are the current cases we have for New Hanover County the board can decide if there are cases that it makes sense that it's cost effective for you to finish out with Barrington that's an option it's entirely up to you as the client you are in charge of how you want things managed but basically we get those new cases that are coming over they just upload the files and we receive them in our office and then we usually set up what we call a transition meeting with your some of your top level administrators and we want to hear about those cases and and even more importantly what we want to hear
067about the cases that aren't documented there that your administrators know are on the horizon this one's not a case yet but it's about to Bubble over and so we start trying to figure out some strategies where can we go with that how can we keep that from boiling over what can we do on that so the transition piece while it may seem daunting as a board to think about a transition it's not something that's new to to education law firms as far as boards changing attorneys and then exchanging you know what files need to be carried over and what information needs to be transitioned they are and again we've done that many times and and we would we feel that we could do that seamlessly for you if that was the route you chose to
068take um we go ahead then once we get them and we kind of open files and we like to keep a running list of open files for the board because you are stewards of public money so if I'm you I'm going to want some kind of check-in on the files that I haven't been with my attorney to say where is this are we wrapping this up is this not moving along why is this stagnant if that would be the case you know just so you can have some level of accountability and we have some level of accountability for the cases that you the work that you've given us and so we work through that we can keep a running list we can keep some kind of update we can keep a Google Document another way
069that you can sometimes reduce your costs which most boards are interested in is trying to figure out we try to talk with the board about how do you want us to receive work who among the administrators is authorized to give us a phone call because if I get a phone call just from a principal or a teacher at a school my first thought is going to be does my client the board recognize that this person is calling me because I'm about to start a meter so we just want to make sure we understand who are you authorizing us to work through in terms of receiving work you know do you want that to come through the superintendent's office do you want it to come through the EC director or the superintendent however it may be
070but we have those conversations so that you can keep up with what's going on with your cases and who is able to to start a bill running for you within the school system I that's that's basically what I wanted to tell you all about what we think how we view ourselves and what we think sets us apart we've given you a list of references I would add to that list Johnston County Lynn Andrews is the board chair you should feel free to call her and ask her if you have wonder about how that transition might go um Ryan and I are free to answer any questions or Brian do you have anything you want to add that I didn't cover I think you've covered quite a bit uh you know the best day I ever
071had as an attorney is the day I hired racial hitch I've never regretted that and if if you choose us we hope you do then you will never regret working with Rachel hitch everybody asks for her all the time awesome and I will say uh you have some very good firms you're looking at you will get outstanding legal counsel if any of those firms uh I know the attorneys in each of those firms a tremendous amount of respect for them all I uh I've been practicing education law for 40 years 10 years in Maine and 30 years down here she said something like 200 years of experience some days it feels like I have about half of those half of those in but I've seen a lot I've seen a lot the history of our
072particular group I came down and joined Richard Schwartz as a well-known School attorney and the firm became Schwartz and Shaw he was Richard Schwartz and I was Brian Shaw and then in 2021 of all of our firm other than Richard moved over to pointer spruills and created the education Law Department so over that time we've worked for a lot of school systems we've added a number of new school systems since we've joined pointer and it's worked well uh I just want to say uh representing school boards is a lot different than it used to be there's so much more contention divisiveness than there used to be that's just the nature of the times it's the nature of the issues that have come up the way I handle that is first I just treat every board
073member with respect every board member is elected they won votes from the people they're entitled to respect even if it's if they're the only person in a minority they're entitled to respect uh and I'll try to listen to them but we follow what the majority rules the majority sets the policy of the board we don't set the pause nobody asked us the board wants our input or once input from what other clients that we have represented have done in similar circumstances we're very glad to provide it but it's only as advice to the board and then we will Implement carry out uh faithfully and with enthusiasm whatever the board majority votes for so we're there to provide legal advice we will provide candid legal advice uh to whoever is in charge we don't we don't
074color Our advice it's our best legal advice you choose it or don't choose it you make the decision and then we go and and defend you and the best we can or push forward the best we can totally that's some of our philosophy we're uh again we're glad to answer any particular questions or talk about issues that you may have for your Council well my suggestion would be why don't we go around the table questions uh and then we've got actually have some Barnard's questions here too so I'll just walk why don't you start of course sure thank you Mr chair I do have a question and you don't have to give me an exact figure but um do you think that special education or exceptional children is the most utilized area of expertise needed
075for districts do you feel like that's the biggest chunk of what you guys do so we have a team yes it is a big chunk of what we do it's one of the it's the most likely area for litigation but some of the things that I have read about in the paper that that you're experiencing lots of other boards experience as well you know some of the other kinds of issues that are coming up are you know book removals that's a big one now transgender issues that's a big one now you know there are lots of lots of divisive issues out there but special ed is probably the one where people are most where boards receive the most litigation we have a team in our within our education Law Practice Group we have a team
076of folks that practice primarily special education I generally lead that team on that team we have for example an attorney who has a doctorate level school psychology degree who can she's well qualified to help with evaluations and things like that and so we that team stays very busy with special education issues across the state for sure we also try to stay ahead you know know we consider our our job not just the the part that you pay us for but we also consider advocacy on behalf of public school boards as part of what we do for example we've been involved in some pushes to try to incentivize um School psychologists because we had as of a couple years ago across the state we had 25 counties with no school psychologist on staff which is a
077very high number and so we've tried to work to make some incentives through dpio and that and things like that so we we also work on advocacy for school boards that we think will make a positive impact on special obligation on that I would just say it's imperative that whatever firm you hire you hire a firm that has a lot of experience and expertise especially it's not an area to learn on the job right I just feel I think that that's very important to our district and that's why I asked that question and different things like that we present at the North Carolina DPI EC conference almost every year um present for lrp which is a large group that does special education professional development across the country and present for them those most years so
078we are very very very involved on that Friday thank you very much thank you Professor McManus good question Mike Will you answered my first question about accessibility I know that a channel board he doesn't start texting until about midnight anyhow how many school systems do you represent in North Carolina we represent a bunch if you look at our response I did you've been a lot yes we represent a bunch so let me I don't want to leave anyone out because I don't know who may be watching us here today but we represent the Johnston County School Board we represent Anson County forts some of them were special counsel where we may only do special ed or we may only do Personnel but what pages in some capacity thank you we represent page 25. we represent
079Anson Asheboro City Clinton City Dare County Franklin County Greene County Johnston County Kannapolis City Martin County Montgomery County Pamlico County Pender County Rockingham County Sampson County and Wilson County as of right now and then some of the ones below are agencies and boards that we have worked with but we are current we don't represent them on a regular basis thank you thank you first of all I want to thank you for your presentation I was very very good and you did answer a lot of my I had like a whole two pages questions and I actually get two questions because Miss uh Barnhart sent me her question so I'm gonna lead off with her question first and it's something you touched on but didn't go too far in depth with but uh it's a two-part
080question that she sent in in regards to sports how do you interpret Title IX law in regards to sports would you be confident in defending a school system that supports biological separated Sports I.E males against males females against females okay so that that's a tough question right now and I'll go ahead and tell you a couple things about that first I'm familiar with your former policy that you recently you're going to 543 vote so we understand what what's going on in your county on that issue um right now I think where we are in some of those transgender issues with sports specifically is that the law is developing so quite frankly I think it could be defended either way because we don't have enough law one way or the other to say for certain that
081it has to be x-way or it has to be y-a I think right now when the law is evolving that that's There's an opportunity there no one knows how some of those cases are going to turn out particularly in North Carolina um so I don't have a person personal or a legal problem with looking at either side of that issue I think they both have valid arguments at this point and it would be up to a board's discretion on whether they wanted to be sort of the Forefront of how that may turn out in the future and kind of guessing as to what that ball might look like or whether they want to take a more conservative approach and wait to see how the law develops and then adjust their policies accordingly okay now now
082for my question um it's a financial question but is there all you know in your portfolio is there only a per hour charge or is there a possibility of a flat free per month and what about travel time so you know you're not local so as you're traveling we're on the phone with you is that you know is that additional charge or is that you know a great time to talk to me because you're already paying for me to travel yes uh we did not put any retainer proposals because they're not asked for but most of our clients for which we are general counsel do have a monthly retainer so we're very familiar with that and we usually have this menu if you want a thousand dollar a month retainer then you get this if
083you have a two thousand dollar retainer a month you get that a three thousand dollar retainer some more depends on how many board meetings you have how many extra workshops you have whether you want policy work built into the retainer or built in separately and we now have a few clients that have just a overall retainer it's a monthly flat sum covers everything except litigation because litigation is very hard to predict and it's hard to come up with a number that's both fair to you and to us on litigation but we can carve out litigation and then do every other service for a monthly retainer now it's a higher sum but the advantage is you know exactly what it's going to be you build it in your budget and and we talked with the client
084about how we developed it it's designed to be fair to both sides and maybe some months you win as it were some months we win as it were but it's designed to be fair it's not designed to to try to take advantage it's just a number that a client feels comfortable with can budget then you never have to worry about a phone call either of it because it's all it's all built into it now we do Bill on Tenth of hours so that's a six minute phone call and you can accomplish a lot even billing on a six minute call so I will have clients say well it's about five minutes and 55 seconds it's time to time to hang up I I get it they want to save money you want your money to
085go to Children you want to get the legal services that you need but you don't want to pay more than you have to but we will talk with the client and work out an arrangement that suits everyone acquaintances to look at what that might look like super Angel children also wanted to look at that and so you're the second part of your question I always try to do double duty if it reduces the bill for our client so I'll even say if I need to talk to somebody and I'm going to be in the district coming down for a board meeting I'll send this meeting at the board meeting because my job was maybe so I'm always early I was in your parking lot at two o'clock this afternoon because I just it I just
086don't like that rush I want to be available lots of times leading up to what I'm there to do people have questions and I want to make sure that I'm present so that they can get those answered but I'll also call and say well I'm going to the board meeting tonight if you want to run over to the central office we can talk about that that issue in person you know I'm already building you for being at the board meeting so you're getting two Institute for kind of for that time so and I wanted to follow up just a little bit on your first question about the transgender just give you an idea how unsettled the law is maybe aware that West Virginia passed a statute that says Sports participation is my biological gender a
087federal district court judge issued an injunction against that about a year or two ago found that that was likely to be illegal the very same judge changed his mind and ruled in favor of the state a couple months ago ruled that there was no violation then the fourth Circuit Court of Appeals which is above they put a stay on that ruling until the fourth circuit can hear it I tend to think the fourth circuit is going to be pretty favorable to the transgender athletes that's just by the makeup of the case and the way it's gone Supreme Court has not ruled yet and there's new Administration policy from the Biden Administration that would allow transgenders uh by biological requirements in certain circumstances so it's very much in flux and as Rachel says that means we
088can't guarantee what the result would be but whatever decision you make there is a good faith position in support of you what you do you can have a policy may win it may not win we would defend you support you either way I see no basis whatsoever for any personal liability because the law is uncertain if you knowingly violate established law you're in trouble but if it's uncertain then there's no life though thank you Miss Mason um mine is kind of related to mediation and and I'm just curious like if there is like a percentage of that you could give of like how many cases you have settled out of court or mediated to to get um get it taken care of outside of sorry there's no doubt in my mind that a majority of
089our cases we are able to resolve through kind of creative agreements one of the things that I always try to do is sometimes it's easy to when we get accused of something a lot of times it's the folks on the front line take that very personally your EC teacher for example who's been tirelessly providing services and who's accused of not providing good Services she takes that very personally so one of the things that we try to do is is come in and we can talk her through it that's not it's not about you it's not they're not attacking you personally but I always look at it as here's an opportunity to try to repair something before it's a retrievable and honestly now that having that having been said we have a lot of experience litigating
090those cases as well there are times when no matter what you're willing to do you're not willing to do the thing that is requiring being required of a person that's assuming you and when that's the case you sometimes you don't have any other option but we have resolved a lot of cases at mediation and I actually try to sit down and I always try to encourage our folks when you're sitting at the table to ask like uh let's get to the heart of the concern what is it that you're afraid of what is it that you want what is the need you think is not met what you know like let me get to the heart of the problem because that's where I'm going to find a solution and different boards have different uh feelings
091on settlement some feel that let's say you can settle a case for fifteen thousand twenty thousand dollars that's a lot of money but when you look at how much attorney's fee is going to be a hearing uh EC director involvement teachers involvement it might make a lot of sense for this one case just have it go away kind of a nuisance value but then the concern is well does that encourage more litigation if the word gets out that you sue bring a lawsuit you'll get twenty thousand dollars and maybe start getting more losses so there has to be a very uh close analysis of each case and not the sense that anybody consumed is going to get settlement makes it worthwhile Mr thank you thank you you've gotten most everything I've had thank you for
092that um let me start with my really easy one if I understand it Rachel you said that you and Brian would share the duties you would be the person who between the two of you one of you would come to our meetings and one of you would always take our calls did I get that right we don't have to share it but we just I was just saying that either of us would be available if you wanted a point person we could do a point person for sure but I don't want to I don't want to give you any misconception so we can have somebody that is assigned to you but I can't promise that there will never be a night when that person has something else that someone else may have to step in
093um but we can if you want to appoint person a certain point person we can absolutely do that okay and she was pointing out that we looked at both of our schedules each of us could do it if you wanted Rachel to do it that's great if you wanted me to do it that's great uh but you would have at least two choices along experienced Partners in The Firm okay I think you handled my questions on the a transition really well and you touched on how much you know about our school district but could you talk about that just a little bit more because sometimes when you go places they say oh you're from New Hanover you know um how much how up-to-date are you on where we are sure so let me speak first
094off on a personal level when I was 16 I used to visit Carolina beach and I and I lived in Pennsylvania and I promised myself at that time that I would someday have a place that Carolina beach so like six years ago after scrimping and saving or whatever I bought a tiny little condo that needed an awful lot of work at Carolina Beach so let me start by saying on a personal level anytime I'm not at work my choice is to be here in New Hanover County at Carolina Beach um in that capacity you know I have I'm not gonna I'm not gonna misrepresent that I'm somehow a part of your community because I live in Garner but I will I am here frequently so I'm reading the paper I'm hearing from people at diners
095you know all the kinds of those kinds of things but above and beyond that you know I don't know what would be a turning client privilege on the stuff that you've had but I've gone back and looked at what's in the newspaper you know what are the issues that are facing this board regularly can I make a positive do I believe I can make a positive impact on their responses to those issues and my answer is yes I'm I'm familiar with recent OCR complaints to the extent that we're publicized I'm familiar with lawsuits to the extent they were publicized I've gone back and looked at your board meetings to have an idea of how the board meetings run you know who's attending board meetings are they extremely contentious you know is there is there a
096place there where I can make a positive impact as far as the board's relationship with their Community [Music] um you know just whatever is available out there I've looked at I've gone to school ratings for your schools to try to get a feel of just to understand how big you are I'm going to look back to work like where you fall and the sizes I know that you're 311 in the country in the size of your school system them I think you're about 15th maybe in the state for the size of your school system so just trying to get a feel for what what what's out there if it was out there for me to learn about you then I have looked at it thank you yes ma'am sorry okay going last all the questions
097are taken but the um on the way back too huh I'll let you go twice okay the um so a couple things I had so I first of all I appreciate the fact and the answer to your question to where do you stand on the sports issue to not having a stance on the sports issue because we would have hoped that our Council would not have a stance on anything you know that they except for what they learned so I appreciate hearing that um so the and I've seen several of unit people from your company at or your firm at ncsba conferences and the um Caspa you know that's coming up and so um tell us a little bit about your relationship with them because we we are a member of ncsba we subscribe to
098their policy updating services and value their services so I was just wondering how you guys worked with them well sure we have a very good relationship with them uh I've taught I've given presentations I think every summer for the last 20 years of their summer school board well I better stop talking about it I have somebody who knows about it but uh we think most clients should subscribe to that policy service 10 years ago I wasn't necessarily certain and we were doing a lot of policies separately for for school boards they've kind of taken a big lead on on that uh and we like their policies for the most part 95 let's say but we always think there's some times that they don't have a quiet ride or it could be improved upon based on
099experience I just had one the other day where there's an issue I won't get into the client or the particular policy but I said in light of this experience I think this policy should be Rewritten because it didn't put us where we wanted it to be so our general approach is to have those policies come through US review them suggest any changes sometimes they're from us sometimes they're from the administrators of the board but then but work on those policies I think they're they're a very good set of costs yeah I think I think it's important to use our legal counsel as help us with our policy so that we don't go spinning off into like you know the Wiley Coyote World get it we agree and when they when you use that we can
100do as much or as little policy work but one of the reasons that we suggest that is we think it's a cost-effective way for clients to get a face for policies instead of having somebody drafted but I will say that when they when the school boards Association sends you policies they send you a correlation table and in the correlation table they talk about the items in that policy that are discretionary to the board we will often weigh in on that we've seen this over here and here where the we feel like it's our job to tell you that pros and cons of different options and it's your job to decide which is best for you what's best for New Hanover may not be what's best for a job still it may not be what's best
101for Kannapolis City or you know so that's why you are the elected officials but we work through those policies we're very familiar with them we have we have common areas that where we look at them enough that we would say we suggest you tweet this year but we suggest in this area where you get to exercise your discretion that you exercise this way or think about these considerations but you know we work very well with them and we do Defense work for the school boards Trust but we do have enough to do it yet a familiarity with clients that take that service so it's usually not the first time we've seen the policy we may have addressed it the previous week and that makes for efficiency office and we actually try to to funnel this
102policy revisions through somebody in the office who's managing a lot of those policy revisions because instead of no one else has to get up to speed somebody else has already been through a lot this or Association policies yeah I appreciate that thank you scribble do you have a second question um yeah I did but it went on my head that fast the uh oh um on page 25 when you were talking about your you know the your general counsel versus special counsel special counsel just means like um you're not their general counsel but their general counsel might have called you for expertise before the board decided and our local person for something else a perfect example this would be special counsel but a perfect example is sometimes boards want to use a local person for
103um real estate issues to search Real Estate title or whatever and sometimes we'll say please do because even though we can do it for you somebody who's in town that knows the history of a piece of property may be able to do it for you more cost effectively so we might have somebody do it but the special counsel is usually we're working for them in a particular area sub part of education laws like Personnel or special ed where it says board attorney we will generally be there at the board meetings yeah and we have technology to participate so for example if you wanted us a person Ally in the policy committee meeting because you didn't think it was it you didn't think it warranted the cost of driving down and and hanging out with you
104guys for a little bit then that's okay too we have all the technology that's required to do that we don't like to do that for board meetings because um you know a lot is going on in a board meeting that you can't really pick up virtually we have done that during covet where Ward's asked us too but the preference would be in person but it's entirely up to you and you're the client you tell us you want us there but you want us to participate virtually to save the drive time and that's what we'll do yeah and I thought you said you Olympics we I love it down there you can go most weekends and find me at Kate's um one more thing yes sir if we ask you could you give us the retainer
105proposal by next week absolutely whatever you want and I just want to reiterate the reason your RFQ said give us this information if we want to retain our proposal we'll ask for it later and so we we did that but we can put together the chart for you if you all would like to see that thank you so okay so I have two other quick questions um one is so you had said that you have a point person do we have any voice in that like if you say well no we're gonna switch to this person or that person um sure I mean we if so if you decide that you want some this person over here or um it's not uncommon that I'll bring kind of an associate along at no cost to you
106because you know someday I'll retire at my little place at Carolina Beach and if I'm lucky enough to work for you now and then then I then I want to make sure that somebody else who has that institutional knowledge is available to you when I'm gone okay and one further question I know you said that you know litigation can you give us an example obviously with no names and that kind of thing of a scenario where you were successful in litigation uh sure we have many situations where we were successful in litigation um we did this isn't something that we've done recently but probably one of the biggest wins Brian was on and I had a part in was a 91 million dollar verdict in favor of a school board um when they see the
107County Commissioners for additional funding for the school system so largest jury burning neighborhood and they changed the law they changed uh uh there was a county not terribly far from here that was going to close an old historic school because Google wanted to close it community group fought it I'll tell you I personally thought it was a shame that the building was lost but that was the school board's call as to whether they were going to try to convert it to something else or were they just going to raise it to the ground they raised it to the ground no problem litigated it one won the case in federal pool we've been successful in litigation on condemnation cases where schools had to use property to build a new school we've been successful in litigation and
108Special Education cases getting them dismissed at the federal level employment discrimination cases okay thank you Mr mcminness anything else oh sure let's walk we do thank you very much for your time today and please if you would give us that additional information that would be very helpful we thank you very much for your time thank you so much for your time have a great rest of your day thank you thank you you're going home going to Carolina Beach next we are going to have uh therington Smith good to see you as always good afternoon board members uh chair wildeboard Vice chair Bradford superintendent spouse my name is Jason Weber I'm an attorney with Darrington Smith I'm your current board attorney I'm joined virtually I Believe by my colleague Neil Ramey who should be floating around
109on one of these screens somewhere and my other colleague Carolyn Murchison who practices in the EC world I had been here at two but she had to get to another board meeting Neil actually needs to head to a board meeting in probably 20 minutes which is a good thing that I'll be quick and brief and just leave a lot of time for your questions I didn't want to say that you know we're grateful to have the opportunity to share with you this afternoon why we think and why we hope that you should continue to choose us for your legal services needs and as you know we are at the law firm that currently represents you we're not new to you you're not new to us we've been providing Services since about March of 2020 as
110general counsel prior to that we served the school district various discrete matters including litigation and other items over the past three years we've worked hand in hand with you with your staff with your schools and a wide variety of manners we've been in the trenches with you whether it's with Personnel whether it's with special education litigation contract negotiations wrestling over difficult policy matters and when dealing with a number of other issues and and with that kind of a history you know it's kind of easy maybe to lean on that and that this might be an easy presentation for that reason but in other ways it's a little more difficult because we've been here you know us and you know we're here to try and argue for why you should keep us so so I'd like
111to take just a few minutes to reintroduce our firm to you reintroduce myself to you then I'll spend a few minutes telling you in a little more detail what we do on a day-to-day basis and then I'll be happy to answer questions from the board and my colleague Mr Amy will as well a little bit about me I'm a native midwesterner grew up the son of a pastor in a small town in Indiana came down to North Carolina in 2008 to teach I taught fifth grade and Vance County schools in Henderson and I did that for two years to Teach for America I realized teaching was not for me it's the hardest thing I've ever done and I thought law school would be easier and it is so after I served with TFA from 2008
112to 2010 I went to law school at Wake Forest University I spent my Summers doing work for Education law with the Winston-Salem Forsyth County schools and also interned with the state at DPI and the State Board of Education following that I was able to do a fellowship with the State Board of Ed and then was hired on as in-house counsel when chairman Bill Coby was the chair and Buddy Collins was the vice chair and I was there up through 2008 18 and had a brief stint as their interim general counsel they wanted me to stay on as general I said I wasn't quite ready for that yet got a great opportunity from thurington Smith and I've been there ever since so a little bit more about my or our Law Firm Darrington Smith has been
113an education law for more than 40 years we have 20 attorneys who are dedicated solely to K-12 education that includes two of council and we are the largest specialized education law practice in the entire State we currently serve as general counsel to over 20 Boards of Education we do specialty work for others you won't find any any other firm in North Carolina who has more experience more breadth more depth than in our firm and we have the capacity to meet all of your needs unlike other law firms we've all we've also resisted the trend of mergers or expansions we don't have multiple offices that allows us as a firm to keep a really close close-knit relationship with each other and also with our clients you know we're not a small practice in a regional Law
114Firm this is the bulk of what Darrington Smith does and it's what we've done for a significant amount of time you can depend on us to be here for you and our other education clients today tomorrow and decades from now School law itself is an incredibly broad practice but it's also a very discreet one in some ways but no matter what issue comes up we have some of the state's leading experts on it if you have questions or concerns or issues related to the First Amendment other constitutional law issues then Mr Ramey is one of the best experts in the state he trains other lawyers on it if you have a school construction issue or a contract issue or a bond issue Rod Malone is the best attorney in the state at that special education
115Carolyn Murchison Eva dubison two of the best they've been doing it Carolyn the longest she does National presentations State presentations people often lean on her when they have you know significant questions difficult issues if you have litigation matter Steve Rawson who you're familiar with he's one of the best literators in the state tricky board governance issues that's Jonathan blumber and you know the list goes on and on our our firm's philosophy is pretty simple we're we're lawyers we're not board members we're not administrators we're not policy makers we do really excellent legal work on whatever any of our boards needs and asks different boards have different goals different priorities different constituencies different communities and that's really not our business as I tell my boards and the staff I talk with you know your job is
116infinitely hard harder than mine I read the law I give my best interpretation and guidance but at the end of the day you're the ones who make decisions not me so so I stick to the law and we all stick the law give the best advice and guidance that we can we represent boards you sometimes want to go one way on an issue sometimes they want to go another way on an issue and we stay out of that our role is to give you good sound legal advice unbiased tell you what the boundaries are where the guard rails are and then we tell you the risks and at the end of the day you're the ones who choose and to get a little more specific in terms of what we do I think sometimes as
117board Council we kind of forget that as board members you might not have a good sense of what we do on a day-to-day basis and the work we do in day-to-day operations we really do work hand in hand with your staff whether it's on a daily or otherwise basis across various departments with Personnel we work with your HR department on everything from hiring and licensure questions to HR investigations sometimes that's just a five or six minute phone call sometimes that's assisting with a weeks-long investigation with special education as you've heard earlier that's an area that's growing not just for New Hanover County Schools but for school districts across this state and we work with IEP teams whether it's joining meetings where the parent has an attorney or if there is any kind of dispute resolution
118process that's going on it's a busy it's a growing area we do training for staff and if you do end up in litigation we're there to defend with contract reviews almost every contract that comes before you is either on forms that we've helped your Administration develop in order to cut down on costs or it's one that we've taken a look at and assisted with negotiating we're always there to help make sure that we're protecting your interests and making sure that you get what you need with student related matters that can be anything from student discipline suspension sometimes there are custody disputes where we get involved in helping staff with subpoenas and other matters right now I'm working on an issue with trying to help some of your staff stay in the classroom teaching instead of
119going to court to testify so we work you know on a very close level with your school staff to make sure that they are ready to do what they want to do which is worth their kids school construction you know we work with your operations team to help with rfps whether it's construction issue or procurement issue or anything related to operations you know retaining Architects drafting complex agreements and the last point I'll highlight are Bond forfeitures as you know finds and forfeitures those proceeds belong to the school system Rod Malone is often out here making sure that you get your money that you're entitled to and over the last several years he's been able to help secure hundreds of thousands of dollars for your district and I'll stop there but um you know the point
120is we are on the phone uh in answering emails on a daily basis almost every day whether it's an issue that's big or an issue that's small whether it's with school level staff administrative staff or you board members yourselves and you know our our goal is really to help you continue to do what you do best which is educate kids and as you heard in the previous firm this is probably something that's consistent across Ed law because again it's a broad practice area but it's also a very discreet one there's not a lot of firms who do this kind of work not a lot of lawyers who do this work but uh process is more than just business it's personal many of us either have kids in the school system or we have spouses who
121taught or otherwise worked in the school system or we ourselves we're teachers we even have one lawyer who was a teacher and a former board member um so so this is I mean it's really less of a business Endeavor and more for us it's our way to give back to public education we're committed to serving our schools and we're committed to serving you our proposal that you can see in the documents we have a current contract with the hamburger County Schools our proposal is just to continue that there are several years remaining on the extensions we're happy to consider other options if that's something you'd like to do we also propose an hourly rate as opposed to a retainer if retainer is something you'd be interested in learning about I'd be happy to work with
122partners and get something to you on that as well um at this point I will see if Mr Ramey has anything he'd like to add otherwise we'll take questions thank you Jason yes if I may board members thank you for for having me here and agreeing to have me remotely I'm sorry I couldn't be there in person I've got to head out for a board meeting um myself uh in a few minutes here um just I took a couple notes um listening to the last couple of presentations Jason's and Corner Sproles just wanted to add a few points and then we'll be happy to answer any questions um first it was very interesting to hear um Brian and Rachel talk about their philosophy very similar uh to to the way we view our role as
123lawyers I think you're going to hear a lot of commonality from any good education lawyer on that um because it's just you know people who've been doing this for a while understand the proper way to do things for example you know training is better than defending lawsuits and it was certainly described to that philosophy so mainly just want to validate everything that both Jason and Rachel and Brian told you about about the philosophy for good representation of public schools on size and experience I think Jason there were some questions about the size and prior experience I think Jason mentioned we're the largest in the state with 20 any lawyers dedicated to education law specifically we also have other areas of practice in our firm and those lawyers can be available as need be but I
124think that makes us by far the largest I think second largest in States surrounded a dozen was probably not mistaken with lots of men around the longest for I think 45 years our education practice was founded in 1978 and has been I think consistently been the largest education practice in the state since that time a couple of other points EC litigation has been discussed in or EC work in general very important I'm sorry that Carolyn I couldn't stay longer go to her board meeting because she is I think stayed an even national leader in that area but we have I was just looking at our website I think we currently have about eight or nine lawyers who can do who can handle due process petitions which we're seeing unfortunately many more of these days across
125the state um and uh otherwise I have plenty of other lawyers who can handle it meetings and address other special education related questions a couple of other quick points ncsba I heard there's a question about a relationship with ncsba we we know that ncsda very well in fact that their their current legal director and director of policy used to be a lawyer at our firm as was the previous legal director and director of policy we are we also actually serve as general counsel to ncsba on on legal issues so long-standing relationship with that organization um and then just I think two more quick points uh one was on fee structure as Jason said we're happy to you know we're very content with the current Arrangement um and the current agreement we're also happy to revisit
126it if the board you know is interested in something else what we have found over the past few years is that clients do seem to like and appreciate uh this the fairness of the pay-as-you-go philosophy that it's just an hourly rate and if you can turn something around very quickly that shouldn't cost very much money if something takes longer it costs more and for that reason we've tended to shy away at least we don't proactively suggest this idea of retainers that incorporate you know sort of perks or benefits you know trainings or board meeting coverage that my view is and it's fine to do it that way and model floors do it that way and again if you're interested in a proposal along those lines we can put one together it's just generally our view
127has kind of come around to be that it's it's a little much to ask clients to be looking at a bill and trying to figure out if something is fair right if it's you paid X thousand dollars for the month uh but you're not getting an itemized invoice showing the number of hours worked you know it may be it's just harder to interpret whether you're getting good value that way whereas you pay for the work performs and no more seems very straightforward and fair so that's what we've we've tended towards it again we're open to other structures and my last Point Jason I thought did a great job summarizing our firm and our practice is just to say a brief word about Jason I mean I think in my view you guys hit the lottery
128when you got Jason to start covering your meetings I think he is as good as it gets um for Education law lawyers I've worked with him for a long time and I really think he's you know has every skill that that I would want for for a school district if I were a federal board member or superintendent um we he's kind of famous around the office for being the guy he never stresses out about anything he's absolutely unflappable uh very thoughtful and careful uh person he stays in his Lane at all times as a lawyer and so I think he just really hit the jackpot with getting him as as your as your point person but again all 20 of us are available at any time that's all I had to add and Jason I
129would be happy to take any questions any questions thank you can I call you at 2 am in the morning you can okay pull your answer that's it that's it I've learned to answer the question that's asked it depends his stuff at midnight so you know he's responsive for something I was called out of bed to uh join a board meeting closed session after about an hour after I'd gone to sleep so thankfully the partner at the meeting gave me five minutes to slap myself and wake up and I was on question just because we have gone through this a little bit like if we stay with you and and you're you're the person we want do we have a voice in that because in your expense I think it's kind of a you know
130oh we're switching return you know I know certain circumstances are beyond our control but absolutely I mean we work at uh the pleasure of the board and so do I if the board for some reason not happy with my services then uh that's something I would kick over to Neil and others to offer other coverage options absolutely the other way if we say they say well we're going to move you can we have a voice in that I would have to defer Mr Ramey but uh you know I believe again we yes first I don't foresee that happening as long as you're happy with Jason uh I can't imagine why we were moving but uh but absolutely as Jason started any any any concerns or questions at any time about the service we're providing we're
131happy to you know we just want to serve you as best we can if that means getting someone else involved or making transitions in in whose covering your meetings we're happy to explore that at any time it's amazing I have no questions I'd like to pick up where Pete left off because obviously I've been following the board for a couple of years and you're the third attorney from Darrington that we've had so we've had a transition every time um and you know how do we where are you going to be in two years we're going to be next year you know that's that's a concern it really is because we have to get up to speed with every new attorney just because you're within this giant Law Firm you know we have one person that
132we work with primarily so how would you respond to that well I think a couple of things so I'm the the face of our firm for you but even before I started as board attorney I was working behind the scenes whether it was on contract negotiations assisting column public records requests and it's like that with some of our other attorneys in our firm too so even though I'm the one here who's with you at board meetings and that policy and other committee meetings there's an army of lawyers who are working on discrete issues who are familiar at least with those issues if not with others you know the other benefit of our firm with the depth and breadth of experience is we can often save time there's something I don't know I go to Neil
133or Carolyn or someone else they are generally familiar with a number of the issues that have come up or I've been able to bounce ideas off of them and we're able to collaborate um you know I I think you know terms of me personally you know I'm here for the Long Haul Deborah stagner was close to retirement she's the health Council now with the firm Colin is boxing his way across Europe somewhere at the moment but I have kids in a mortgage so I can't really do that but I'm in a position where I'm here and I want to stay here okay um you know if I could just add to that Deborah was started as an interim counsel you know when you Bullard left too so that was you know I think she she
134ended up staying in that in that role for for a while and that that worked out you know great I think but I think her transition out was probably another some point she was interested in the first place but as Jason said we have no no no no designs to pull Jason unless you want to change we're happy to discuss that okay in this cradle I wasn't done oh I'm sorry um I'm not being disrespectful but the first term that presented showed us their longevity of practice both of them were Partners they'd been at it a long time and can you address coming in you graduated law school in 2010 did I get that down right pardon me 2013. and you started to practice law in 2013. that's correct okay um okay um I'm gonna
135talk about the white elephant in the room it's been said that we have a conflict of interest with Farrington Smith and the lawsuits that we have and the representation back and forth between what's ongoing and the insurance company and so on so I'd like you to address that as well as you can in the setting the conflict of interest do you believe there is one no I don't now I'm aware that this issue came up when Ms stagner was your board attorney that there was an article in Port City Daily and there was one particular Community member who said there was a conflict because uh Miss stagner was serving as general counsel and defending you and your cases there is no conflict under the North Carolina rules of professional conduct it there just simply is
136not completely agree okay um no I'm happy with Sarah Jim Smith and I'm the um pretty well versed I don't know if if now would be a good time or if it would be a better time when we discuss it when we vote on just again um that there isn't probably one or maybe the question would be are there any of our senior staff that Farrington Smith does not um serve and answer questions for um or or is it pretty much an all everybody uses you guys for some issue within their jurisdiction the responsibility every area yes ma'am coming back no Bradford no thank you I did have I'm gonna go back to my financial question again and I did hear for some reason maybe I could not hear from the gentleman up there quite
137as well as I would like to but there is a possibility of a uh retainer and so if you could answer that same kind of question that I gave before uh you know would there be a problem coming up with a retainer so we can look at the two of those and also travel time I am corrected if when you're driving you know is that is there an additional fee or are you kind of ours while you're driving here as far as finding yeah I follow you and ask you a question it takes you a lot yeah those are those are good questions I do get a lot of calls when I'm in the car because that's billed just like our other time we are happy to put together a retainer proposal if that's something
138you'd like to consider okay and I'm not going to ask Miss uh uh Bon Hart's question simply because as you since you're our general counselor you really can't deal with that awkward position yes sir all right thank you thank you thank you so the reason you don't get a retainer because you feel like maybe it's better more cost effective to do the hourly rate is that why yes I mean we found that in our practice the pay-as-you-go model is much or as little as you use it so you control that you know we work when you call or when your staff call and we cover board meetings with retainer proposals I'm sure Mr Rainey can speak to that a little better than I can but you know that's flat and if you use it great
139if you don't then um you know as Brian said sometimes you win or you lose you know we don't really want that to be the case for any of our clients you pay as you go thank you any other questions from any board members not whatsoever thank you very much appreciate it and we have both I think they came in okay Mr chair we have our student here and we're supposed to talk before do we just tell him did I misspell this presentation they're here okay when I came in but I haven't seen since no [Music] all right more come back please board because bubble is here I was just trying to see where we're at to advance he's in the private property give me one second please [Music] all right [Music] that's awesome foreign
140[Applause] foreign go ahead thank you uh welcome thank you very much for being here today thank you for having us thank you Mr chairman and Madam Vice chair and members of the board of Dr Foust thank you for having us uh we are the Vogel Law Firm or we go by Vogel I am Jonathan Vogel I'm joined by three other attorneys in the law firm Leah Singh Terry Wallace and Jonathan Singh and you'll hear from them shortly we are a law firm that is based in Charlotte we represent clients all over North Carolina in fact have clients all over the country The Firm focuses on education law and solely education law in the areas of K-12 higher education and student loans we are committed to the area of Education law we are passionate about education
141law students families student loan borrowers and the like we describe ourselves as a boutique Law Firm what does that mean what is a boutique Law Firm a boutique Law Firm is a firm that so solely focuses on one area of the law there are Boutique law firms in different areas of the law there are firms that focus on criminal defense or family law divorce child support the like and other areas we're a boutique law firm and we solely focus on education law uh we don't believe there's another firm in North Carolina that is like us we have six lawyers and one paralegal and what we do is we represent our clients including school boards in a smarter way we think it's a smarter way to represent school boards by combining experience and having a lower
142overhead so for example we don't have a downtown Raleigh office building with high rent we don't have an expensive marketing department we don't have a billable hour requirement for our attorneys that provide some pressure on them we don't have any pressure to to have more School Board more and more School Board clients those types of things are typical of kind of the big establishment law firms as a boutique Law Firm we can focus we can focus on a smaller number of school board clients and we could provide individualized attention those other things that are characteristic of a of an establishment Law Firm it's not really we think that the most appropriate way to represent a government agency like a school board and that's because a School Board needs to get the biggest bang for their
143Buck right we understand the financial pressures that government agencies are under including School boards that is more pronounced these days maybe than in the past we think school boards need and what you're looking for are the top-notch lawyers and you'd like to see lawyers who have a lower overhead and so that they can return the savings to the school board and to the taxpayers and that's what we do there's no sacrifice though in your attorney knowledge and experience you're going to get top lawyers with years of Education law experience experience at the federal government level experience at the state government level experience representing school boards including one of the largest school boards in the state in the country that's what you get with our Law Firm that's what you get with a boutique Law Firm
144you get the biggest bang for the buck and school boards need individualized attention need lawyers who will meet with them who will get to know them get to know the superintendent get to know the senior staff get to know the school board chair and vice chair and school board members that's what individualized attention is and that's what we can give you that's our business model that's what a boutique Law Firm is we represent fewer school boards we're selective we give you the individualized attention and we have the capacity to do it as a boutique Law Firm we save you money because we can offer you a monthly retainer an all-inclusive monthly retainer what does that mean it means that you have predictability you know that there's a certain amount of money that is going to
145go toward your legal spend every month and it includes virtually all legal services and what that does is it gives you as board members and it gives the superintendent and his staff peace of mind to know that if they need legal advice if they need legal counsel they can pick up the phone they could send us an email they could schedule a meeting and they don't have to think and they don't have to worry about whether that's going to be a billable time it's all included it encourages the superintendent and his staff and the board to reach out and seek the legal advice and it's a low monthly retainer and we can do that we can save you thousands of dollars per month the only thing that is outside the monthly retainer would be litigation
146or investigation work kind of the high higher Stakes work that is unpredictable we are very experienced attorneys as you can see from our proposal that we submitted and as you can see from the slide you're looking at a team of lawyers who would represent the board in the school district who have experience at the federal government level which is very important considering the activity coming out of the U.S Department of Education and the office for civil rights regarding Title IX compliance regarding gender identity issues including in athletics they're including issues that are coming out regarding idea that is EC students very important to have that kind of federal government experience and we have lawyers who have state government experience we have a lawyer who served as the general counsel of the DPI Department of Public
147Instruction that's the highest level that's the highest legal position in North Carolina state government for education so let me say a little bit about about myself I'll go first and then I'll introduce the others to you and let them say a few words I've been an attorney for about 28 years now I have worked in the area of Education law for the better part of 20 years I have served at the United States Department of Education as the deputy general counsel that's the second highest lawyer education lawyer in the federal government uh in a office of general counsel essentially an education law firm of about 50 lawyers I have served as an attorney in the Civil Rights division of the U.S Department of Justice in Washington DC as well providing advice to the highest levels
148of civil rights lawyers for our federal government including in the area of Education law I've also been a federal prosecutor with the United States Department of Justice Prosecuting fraud cases I have represented education sector clients for many years in higher ed and K-12 and in the area of student loans as well currently I'm the board attorney for the Cabarrus County Board of Education which is the eighth largest school district in the state 35 000 students to let you know that I would be your go-to I would be your contact I would be your board attorney I would be the attorney who attends the board meetings and attends your agenda meetings and attends your policy meetings and it won't change it won't change you will have one lawyer who's your go-to who's your point of contact
149who attends the meetings I can tell you it won't change I can promise you it won't change that will be consistent throughout I will also work with you on preparing for board meetings you know setting the agenda with the chair and with the superintendent I will be the superintendents first phone call and virtually all areas and counsel the superintendent on issues like Communications and student services and I want to stop for a moment and talk about EC students and special education special education is an unbelievably important area for school districts I probably don't have to tell you that it is also a very litigious area most school boards will report that special education spend and the time for the attorneys ranks among the highest if not the highest we are passionate about students we are
150passionate about special education and we have represented school boards and school districts in numerous special education matters and we have a method to the way that we represent school districts when it comes to these types of matters we take them very seriously we examine the documents the IEP documents the prior written notices we understand what happens and then we speak to the people who are involved we speak to the people who are in the IEP team we ask them questions we talk about the allegations that are in the petition and we learn We Gather facts and that enables us to give the school district and the school board the best advice to understand the strengths and the weaknesses of the matter where do we go from there we try to resolve these matters and we
151try to resolve these matters in the best interest of the school board because that's our client and therefore it's in the best interest of the school district and we do so in a way that respects the families and respects the EC students it's not contentious it is litigation but the school board and the school district have a special mission to serve students so we do it in a way that protects their dignity we do it in a way that protects their rights as well I want to introduce some of the team members and let them speak to you a little bit about their background and the types of things that they would work on with you I'm going to start with Terry Wallace [Applause] good afternoon members of the board Dr Faust my name is
152Terry Wallace um please forgive me my voice may go out on me a little bit my allergies have been acting up this week that's a place for him um my area of therapist would be Title IX and employment issues Title IX unemployment compliance from two hot button topics these days number one they can be a substantial resource drain to school districts if you do not get on get in on the front end of an issue um I think Jonathan talked about this before the role of the general counsel will be is a risk manager that is basically looking at issues on the front end and looking at worst case scenarios and working backwards to make sure that we can avoid those situations but also be prepared to litigate the matter if if necessary litigation is
153expensive it's going to drain time it's going to drain resources it's going to take away resources from the school district and so having a firm that can step in identify the issues understand the culture of the district and work staff in an efficient manner so it doesn't waste time and money is essential um I can speak from experience I just finished saying Title IX lawsuit and federal court it's a successful verdict for the District of Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools back in January this case has dragged on in litigation for four years the issue has been going on for seven years and it's not over yet they've appealed the case is in the fourth circuit but that's just one area where you can see a substantial drain on resources you want to make sure you have a
154team that comes in understands the issues and is able to deliver results and I think having a firm our size and expertise is able to Pivot be nimble and adjust is beneficial I think I've spoken more than my two minutes all all yields thank you Terry okay Leah good afternoon I'm Leah Saint thank you for the opportunity to let us come and speak with you I know you've been hearing from lots of lawyers this afternoon so we respect your time um it is our privilege to speak with you and just have the opportunity to share a little bit about ourselves I have worked the past couple years as the court attorney joined me with Jonathan sink who also happens to be my husband in Cleveland County where we have served them in the entirety where
155we've covered all all areas of their legal needs from bond forfeitures to EC issues to Title IX issues to working with their I.T director and operations and finance and HR the list goes on and on as you all well know public education is complicated there's a lot of matters and so you do have to be nimble to borrow Terry's word um and that's what we can provide we pride ourselves on being responsive and building relationships truly enjoy getting to know people and having having that Rapport and I think when you have that Rapport you can then figure out what is the what is the ultimate goal what's a creative solution to help solve these various issues that may arise for the school system so I look forward to working with the various teams in New
156Hanover as well if we are afforded the opportunity Jonathan Vogel and I have had the opportunity to work together in Cabarrus County I kind of play like to say second fiddle to him on some of the EC matters there when a due process petition is filed to come along and support him and helping navigate that process and some of my favorite roles having extensive experience in alternative dispute resolution is a focus in mediation that if there's an opportunity to mediate a matter I love mediation it can oftentimes save the school district stress money drain on teachers and and like I said come up with Creative Solutions that works that protects us we don't bend but we can have good communication and find Creative Solutions so I've probably reached my two minutes as well but I
157look forward to answering any questions y'all might have down the road thank you let me just say that Leah is a certified mediator I mean this is this is her Focus this is her her passion is to resolve these matters and she's been an unbelievably important uh part of the solution in uh in resolving EC matters and others for our school board clients and I'll say that Terry who you heard from is the go-to litigation attorney for Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools his Title IX trial victory in January received a lot of press attention and is uh perhaps the most prominent uh litigation victory that Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools has had in in decades uh Terry Wallace is just a standout educational litigation attorney in North Carolina and frankly nationally I want to now turn the podium over
158for a few minutes to the former general counsel of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction Jonathan sink thank you Jonathan and thank you to all of you Mr chairman Madam Vice chair and members of the board for carving out time to hear three legal presentations uh this afternoon we are grateful to be in front of you presenting today uh if you would have told me in 2008 or 2009 that I would be going into school back when I was still in law school I would have just blown a gasket there was I didn't know what that was it was not a real thing to me I was going to go through and be a real estate attorney so in fact at the time I was getting my real estate license which has served me
159well in this role of some real estate and finance issues that come up disposition acquisition of property but I did it was the end of the world economically and that's what was out there and I was doing my first day at Outback Steakhouse making money during law school and I got a call from Andre Mays at Charmeck schools which was the largest school system in the state at that time George battle was about to come in and Lead as general counsel Andre was interim she Andre taught me the vast bulk of what I know about special education law Section 504 matters OCR which those are my those are kind of my go-to things and on top of that I've learned the finance I have learned the construction Bond forfeiture is her language but I'm learning
160that through her Japanese to me at first but I spent eight years with the Lord in-house in the largest school system at the time before Wake County passed them and sure enough Terry Wallace was in there litigating away and on the phone settling cases when he you know could save the district money so that's how I got my start from 09 to 16 I was practicing laws it was a it was trial by fire I think it was a hazing process at first they put me on truancy cases and I proved that I could handle those and then eventually by the spring of 2015 I was getting to do the trials in court that we just didn't want to settle because the cost savings didn't make sense you know we'd sell them when it made
161sense but then like these guys have talked about Leah you know you go to the mat you go to trial if you have to and it makes Financial sense for your fiduciary for the board so that's where I come from Jonathan did mention that I I had a stint it feels like a past life a few years ago in Raleigh a whirlwind of gigs up there but among which I was the superintendents general counsel Mark Johnson at the time it was a great run there and eventually just had to choose family and and come back home and so learn the ins and outs of that building what goes on behind the due process complaint when it comes in who is talking about what and how can this get resolved more quickly as opposed to fighting
162blindly that was the big thing that I learned as the GC in Raleigh with DPI Leah mentioned we we do serve a top 25 Side school system today Terry's still doing work for Charmeck schools you're with Cabarrus so we have the capacity to handle New Hanover we love New Hanover thank you thanks Jonathan that was great I'm glad you had the opportunity to meet the team that would that would represent the school board and School District let me turn now to our slide that tells you that we are proactive we are responsive and respectful and tell you what that means our approach toward representing school boards and school districts we think differentiates us from the other firms we are proactive we think about compliance right so we don't just react it's not just um you
163know putting out fires and when I talk about being proactive as a law firm we're not just talking about formal formal trainings we're talking about conversations talking about you know regularly scheduled meetings where we can share with the superintendent and the staff what we're seeing in the education legal environment I mean this is all we do remember all we do is education law our firm but even more than sharing what we're seeing is listening listening to you listening to the staff about what's going on what issues are percolating what trends they're seeing what questions they have to have an opportunity for a regularly scheduled meeting or phone call or video Call Whatever It Is provides us an opportunity to give you proactive legal advice and it's all included in the monthly retainer so there's no
164concern about oh gosh it's another meeting it's another phone call it's going to cost us a fortune it's all included in the low monthly retainer foreign part of the job all right and that's why we have a Graphic up there of a phone you know a late night phone call are you around yes we're around we understand the nature of the jobs we understand the nature of the school boards and school districts emergencies happen you need advice you need direction and you can call us 24 7. you'll have my cell phone number you'll have all of our cell phone numbers all right contact us you know Terry will be your go-to for human resources issues employment law issues and for Title IX issues he's the preeminental Title IX lawyer I'll be your go-to for everything
165else contact us we're your first call we will be responsive we will take the call we will get back to you we will look into it right away I mentioned how we're responsive when it comes to the receipt of due process petitions for EC cases and office for civil rights inquiries and investigations we get right on that those are high stakes important matters okay they deserve immediate attention uh we're not just saying it this is what we do there has been a rise in the number of EC cases EC due process petitions I think it's a it's a function of parents having observed more during the pandemic and asking more questions and maybe being a little bit more you know confrontational and and looking up and hey they have rights that's okay it could be
166a function of certain attorneys frankly who represent families and are drumming up business yeah that may or may not be all right but it's but it's the reality okay and we have handled you know many EC cases and OCR investigations and handle them quickly and successfully we always look to resolve these matters amicably in the best interest of the school board and the school district but in a way that respects the families and the students let me just talk about that for a second before I'll speak for myself before I represented school boards and school districts I represented Public School families okay I was the lawyer who was getting the phone call from a mother who just walked out of an IEP meeting crying crying because she didn't think she was respected crying because she
167didn't think she was hurt crying because the the school had you know six people at the meeting and she was one and she felt outgunned and and didn't feel good about it I got those phone calls I understand where EC parents are coming from you see parents have been through a lot oftentimes they're looking to to blame someone and the school district ends up being a convenient Target that's not right but I understand where they're coming from because I've had those calls they want to be heard what I've done with our school board clients has explained to them that it's a matter of communication it's a matter of you know interpersonal skills listen to the families sincerely with respect and treat them and treat them with dignity and you will find that they will appreciate
168it and they won't go to OCR and they won't file the due process petition they'll work with you so now on this side representing school boards and school districts as I do and as we do that in mind we represent the best interests of the school board and the school district the board is our client that's you know that's not debatable but we do it in a way that respects the students and the parents and let me say something outside of DC and or even within EC in the work that we do and the advice that we give you in the area of employment law let's say that that Terry would head up for you and in everything we do we also respect the Educators and the staff because they have rights we understand that
169and the way that we do our work we do it with respect and dignity all right numbers this is very important because we distinguish ourselves by providing you cost savings by providing you a great deal the bigger bang for the buck what we offer to you is a monthly retainer that per that includes all legal services except for litigation and investigation work which we charge on the hourly rate over the years your legal spend has gone up and continues to go up I received this information in a a public records request so I received it from your school district and was able to you know add up the illegal spend and what we saw in fiscal year 2021 were you know payments to outside law firms of over 264 thousand dollars and you had an
170in-house counsel so if you throw in that in-house council's salary and benefits your legal spend was probably over four hundred thousand dollars that year you switch to using an outside Law Firm only and your legal spend was still extremely high at over three hundred and twenty thousand dollars in fiscal year 2022. while fiscal year 2023 is not over we received the invoices for a little bit more than half of the year and at the rate that the invoices are going this current year that you're in you'd be projected to have a legal spend of over three hundred and seventy thousand dollars with us you will have a monthly retainer that will get you at let's say 270 000 and we estimate that with hourly billing of litigation that you have that might be another thirty
171thousand to get you out of three hundred thousand dollar a year legal spent if the litigation is a little bit more than we anticipate then that number might be a little bit higher you know somewhere in the very low 300 000 range well we're going to save you thousands of dollars maybe tens of thousands of dollars and we can do that again because we're a boutique firm we just don't have the high overhead it's just not the smart way to do things we do things in a smarter more efficient way that Returns the savings to you and in this day and age of you know of of cutting cutting back and being careful it's just a smarter way for government agencies generally especially during this time so you might ask what's what's really included in
172that monthly retainer you know is it really all-inclusive say Jonathan you your office is in Charlotte you're gonna you're gonna charge us to to travel to our board meetings no no we're not it's included we're not going to charge you we're not going to charge you for travel time for any matter that's within the monthly retainer and everything that we do is included within that low monthly retainer other than litigation or government investigation matter like an OCR investigation everything's included all the phone calls all the emails about every issue with board members with the superintendent with the staff we'll handle a lot of meetings on the phone we'll have video calls sometimes you'll want us to come here in person and we'll come obviously for board meetings and the like I'll be here every time
173and again no extra charge for travel it's all included we could do that that's what distinguishes US that concludes our presentation we welcome any questions that you have to me thank you for coming um I had a question you are the lead counsel for Cabarrus yes County Schools yeah we have we have two two lawyers actually me and a local uh lawyer who's there in Concord um I did notice that they were taking bids or did you plan on rebidding or is that a different service you provide yeah we have bid and we hope to be selected did you were you gonna do it at a separate time than tonight I noticed that they had one tonight right we hope to be selected and not and not other firms that's still still to be decided
174I had one more [Music] between between all of us oh goodness a whole lot you know speaking for myself um probably six years of special education experience Leah Terry Johnson come on up here 11 for me I might fall a little after if that's okay I mean we all are all done yeah thank you this table represents in addition to the board uh our sister superintendents and directors and they're are the ones that are going to be calling on a regular basis sometimes maybe more than once a day and maybe multiples per day do you think you can handle that and then it also at 2 A.M in the morning I know we can handle that okay and I tell you why I know because we do it we do it with a board attorney
175for Cabarrus County Schools eighth largest school district 35 000 students with a board attorney for Cleveland County Schools a top 25 size School District Terry's a go-to person for Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools for their you know most sensitive issues uh including their most sensitive litigation issues so I can tell you that we do have the capacity look at us look at look at the four of us here I mean um you don't need more than four lawyers to provide top-notch service to the school board and the school district this is this is a this is a team this is a dream team that you've got here and we've done it we've done it before and we would do it for you we have the capacity we have more than the capacity thank you I'm going to
176ask Miss barnhart's question and then my own so in regards to sports how do you interpret Townline law in regards to sports and would you be confident to defend a school system that supports biological separated Sports oh yeah Title IX and Title IX sports is a very important issue right now in evolving I'm going to ask Terry Wallace to step in and address that he's going to be our our lead on Title IX issues he's the preeminent Title IX lawyer in the state so the law Title IX given the specific issue is very fluid the fourth circuit has come down a certain way the department has passed them excuse me there's some proposed Title IX regulations that would prohibit a blanket policy of that nature and I know the house has passed in the Senate
177has similar bills that would that are in line with your with your question and so it's something that we're keeping our eye on um obviously you know one way of looking at it there's going to be an argument that a policy that blanket prohibits constitutes discrimination and so what the courts are going to be looking for is their irrational basis for this particular policy so it depends on the details who you're looking at the age of the students the sport anything particular about the situation I think the policy has to be tailored to the end goal it just can't be a blanket policy for no reason but like I said though the lowest fluid the fourth circuit is spoken our legislature is about to speak on it and there's some proposed regulations that are speaking
178on it so something that we have to kind of keep our eye on find out what the board's goals are and make sure that those goals don't run foul with the law you want to work within the law and make sure that we're being fair to our students and our community at the same time great thank you well my question and I think you might as well stay there because he's probably going to be his area again uh examples of lawsuits that you have handled successfully pertaining to educational law so we just had a um I've had three Title IX lawsuits to Charlotte Mecklenburg School District One settled one that's gotten voluntarily is dismissed and another which I talked about earlier we just finished a jury trial in January with a successful verdict for the
179school district and I don't know if you're familiar with the doe versus Fairfax County case it's a case of the fourth circuit decided about two years ago in which they reversed a motion to dismiss where School District had gotten out of a title line case and there's some language in that case that judges are paying close attention to and so what we've seen at least in the jury instructions for the case that I just tried um lawyers are basically trying to have these Title IX Theory under two different theories delivered indifference and a pre-notic theory I mean if you've got students who have engaged in sexual misconduct you control a line showing that your failure to handle those student situations somehow Falls a situation a year or two down the line that's a separate theory
180that courts are now latching on to before in the fourth circuit the law was if you the school district gets notice of a claim they are liberally and liver to it and that somehow Calls Form to a student that was the theory now the theories have expanded and so in this in the case that I just got finished trying the jury was instructed on both of those theories and these theories are live in other circuits nice circuits sixth circuit this is the first time I've seen it in a fourth circuit case and so we felt like going in we had a hand sign behind our back because more evidence gets to come in we were able to navigate that and learn some lessons from it and there's a lot of lessons to be learned from
181that lawsuit as I said it's been going on for about four years and its own appeal now so I would consider that a a success for the school district thank you Terry so it's incredible litigator I want to go back to uh to a point uh from the prior question that you asked Terry about you know can we can we represent the the board that has a has a view like that the answer to the extent that Terry didn't didn't say it is yes of of course it is and right now as he said the law is fluid the law is evolving and so there are proposed regulations and there's you know proposed legislation in the state government and there are court cases and of course you have a board policy that goes into effect
182uh next school year regarding Middle School sports we we've been watching your board meetings and and learning what your what your priorities are and so we take our marching orders from you as far as policy goes and where you want to go and then we give you the best legal advice that we can telling you what the strengths of that legal position are the weaknesses of that legal position and then we let you decide you know where you want to go with it so absolutely we represent you every step of the way giving you advice if something goes to court we're there for you we're winners thank you Miss Mason [Applause] um mine is you you've already started to answer it um how much do you know about our district the the different things that
183have happened within our district and um how smoothly do you think you could transition into that into this situation yeah we're good yeah we know about your District like I said we've been uh watching your school board meetings um and so we know what the uh what the interesting issues are we know that that decision by the board regarding Middle School athletics and and uh and students who choose a team based on gender identity was a hotly contested and and discussed and debated issue and a new board policy goes into effect in the fall we're aware that very recently you have uh discussed and perhaps will take up again soon the idea of a of a book Review Committee that includes members of the community so we follow we follow what you do and and
184we are would be very excited to work with you to advise you you know to tell you some things that you maybe don't want to hear yeah to to let you know where where the law stands as far as how the courts are interpreting it to let you know where the law stands as far as where federal agencies are interpreting it to give you our advice right not just to say it's this and it's this you're on your own but to give you our advice of where you where you might want to go as far as a transition transitions are fortunately seamless the the law firms that practice in this area including your current uh Law Firm are professional and what we've done in the past is we have a phone call or two or
185three we go over the matters that are currently pending to talk about you know this is happening this this is either you know in litigation or you know might be a legit education or it's just an issue that we've been dealing with a whole lot we'll talk about the the history you know here are some things that have gone on in the recent past and how we've handled it and who the go-to people are and so we will take the time and we're confident that should you make a transition that's your current Law Firm would would be very professional in doing that thank you you're welcome first one I was a part of the group that looked at this first and there was a question about insurance and I can't remember exactly what it was
186um but is can your insurance information can it be higher I guess is the the Layman's way of saying um I think there was a requirement that it'd be maybe in the two million dollar range and it your ears was either a typo or whatever is that a problem no you're fully insured and we have supplemented our uh application um we have professional liability insurance up to the one million dollar level which is what you requested and that is standard uh and we now have general liability insurance up to the two million dollar level which is what you requested and you requested to make sure that we have that general liability insurance before we would begin work for you of course we haven't yet been hired we hope to be but we have already secured
187uh that uh that insurance policy other other school boards haven't asked for a general liability insurance policy but we have we have secured that and we have submitted it uh so it's it's I think it's been submitted um um I spent last night looking at your qualifications and um I must say I'm impressed and I added up the numbers that you had up there you have 89 years among the four of you of experienced in education and all that's fairly impressive for a boutique Law Firm um how would you answer the question that you are I mean we some law firms have been 100 years in existence yours has been what uh since 2018 I can't remember right but how would you answer the question that you're the new kid on the Block keeping in
188mind that you were at the U.S Department of Education you were at the U.S Department of Justice civil rights you were at the U.S House of Representatives as a council to the Judiciary Committee you are U.S federal prosecutor in Charlotte um general counsel for strategic Education Inc partner in McGuire Woods for five years partner at Denton's for a year and a half um how would you answer that question about being the new kid on the block your firm we love being the new kid on the Block as a as a firm because we are offering school boards an alternative we are offering school boards a different and smarter way to have legal representation we are Flex possible we can we don't go through a bureaucratic approval process we are not pressured to have a certain
189number of billable hours or or you know pressure to bring in more clients we don't have you know two dozen you know School Board clients that are distracting us we are focused we are selective with the school board clients uh that we that we work for and we give you the individualized attention so we Embrace being the new kid on the Block and having a a business model if you want to call it that differs from The Establishment law firms yet you're getting lawyers who have been around for a while and have as you very kindly described very unique and important experience at both the federal level and the state level something that you won't see at other other law firms so you get the the lawyers with terrific experience in government and with private
190law firms some of the big biggest private law firms and who represent big-time school districts and school boards right now and you get get them in a way that can deliver the individualized attention that we think the establishment law firms can't that's something that's special about us that differentiates us from others [Music] um thank you for being here today and driving all the way from Charlotte I have a couple questions um around experience I know that Miss Bradford read a lot of your experience but most of that has not been education law and I was reading in your um in your bios and it said that you decided to launch an education Law Firm because you saw a need for it and when I was looking online it looked like that only happened since 2019.
191so I'm a little concerned about the length of experience but I'm in education law but what I'm getting to with the question on that is so is is Vogel law are you a merger company because I know that Mr Wallace has his own Law Firm the sinks have their own Law Firm you have your own Law Firm managing all different kinds of other areas like you know Mr Mr Wallace manages um you know personal liability claims and you know injury and fraud and um that to me is not educational related so I'm wondering how you're going to be able to have all of you guys having your own individual law companies firms representing other people in your other Specialties and still be able to dedicate the time to us yeah thank you for the question
192we have many years of education law experience speaking for myself it goes back 20 years I was the second highest ranking lawyer at the United States Department of Education I was the department of education's Deputy general counsel in the Civil Rights division of the U.S Department of Justice I was counseling the lawyers and I was working with the lawyers of the educational opportunities section in private practice I was representing education clients before representing school districts I was representing a public school families and and you heard my colleagues have years and years Jonathan sink and Terry Wallace worked in the legal department of Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools for many years and Terry now represents Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools now that he's outside of of the legal department and uh and Jonathan sink you heard was the general counsel
193department of public education so Public Instruction so we have many years of educational experience it's not just three or four years since since I launched a Vogel Law Firm Vogel Law Firm has a boutique Law Firm is different you're right that the sink has its own law firm and Wallace has its own Law Firm so what we are is not a merger law firm as you called it we are a real genuine Law Firm all right and whether you're a law firm has attorneys who are you know getting a W-2 at tax time or getting a 1099 at tax time doesn't doesn't matter I worked for one of the biggest law firms in the country maybe the second biggest law firm in North Carolina called McGuire Woods McGuire Woods had attorneys who were employees W-2s
194had employees who were contract lawyers at tax time got 1099s they're all attorneys of McGuire woods and these are all attorneys a Vogel law firm and these are all attorneys who are committed to representing the school board and the school district we have lots of capacity lots of time and we would greatly welcome the opportunity ability of second question um I do so if there's actually two um so I was hoping to invoke the pat Bradford Rule and and get into questions instead of one but um the first question was um in um back to miss Walker's question the the Cabarrus um School Board is looking at a new attorney tonight and so I was curious as most of the time you're not looking for new attorneys unless you are seeking something that you're missing
195so I was wondering if you could speak to that on on their agenda tonight you know you guys aren't on it only the other two companies so um could you speak to that a little bit Yeah well we've done a wonderful job representing Cabarrus and we are confident that Cabarrus won't choose one of those other law firms and we hope we still hope to be chosen to continue to represent Cabarrus we've had nothing but success representing Cabarrus County Board of Education and it's been a phenomenal experience now you know they're considering other law firms you're considering other law firms that's fine that's a public process I'm part of the RFP and you know and the board will ultimately decide but we still remain confident and optimistic that we will be cabarrus's Law Firm going forward
196okay um so that that what that one question was so I'm looking at an article here where um you Mr Vogel had weighed in with Charlotte Mecklenburg about their controversial student survey on gender identity um but you you were representing kimberis at the time or you're but weighing in on Charlotte Mecklenburg and tell me about that a little bit I don't think I was representing Cabarrus no I don't know I was just asking were you represented because it said that you were just you were um on TV talking about that that was not representing Cabarrus at the time okay but could you talk about that situation a little bit can I talk about that situation I think as I recall several years ago Charlotte Mecklenburg put out a survey that went to fifth graders among
197others asking them about their gender asking if they had a gender identity and a sexual orientation and giving them six choices pansexual asexual and various things for 10 year old fifth graders and there was an uproar in the community about whether that was an appropriate thing to do especially without giving notice to the parents for an opportunity for their 10 year olds to opt out of that that was an issue and it was a controversial ultimately the superintendent the then superintendent of Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools admitted that it was wrong it was a horrible decision he said so and he assigned his uh I think Human Resources office to look into who was responsible for that decision okay thank you Bradford um one thing that this School administration does is different departments all have a burning
198issue at exactly the same time um as many as six different oh my gosh my house is on fire at the same time how could the four of you handle six different crisis on the very same day yeah we do it we do it all the time we get the multiple phone calls all the time how do we do it we would uh intake and we would decide who should do it who's best equipped to handle it and um and we will you know work very hard and we will work late hours when we have to and we will drop other things that we're working on that aren't urgent to handle your three four five six urgent matters that you're calling us about in a single day we have the capacity to do it and
199we've done it before for our school board clients okay and did did I hear you say you have been watching our board meetings yeah yeah I watch your board meetings I uh I I tune in if not live then I watch it afterwards and uh to see how you interact and to see the issues that you're grappling with and to get a feel I I watch other school board meetings of other of other counties to kind of get a feel for the issues that are happening across the state and different school boards we don't scare you no they're fun they're interesting it's important these are important issues you're debating important issues as our other school boards and sometimes you know you have wide agreement and sometimes you don't but that's democracy and democracy sometimes is
200a little ugly but it's better than the alternative so discuss things debate things agree disagree vote and monitor and move on and discuss it and vote again later if you need to expensive you said you worked with a few different schools how many districts do you currently work with really right Cabarrus County Schools Cleveland County Schools Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools okay thank you thank you Mr McManus um I did have a couple more if you don't mind sir I I guess I wanted to ask you a little bit about um how many years experience do you have with the bonds and forfeitures and how much have you recovered before your car very good um so it during my time with Cleveland County Schools I have exclusively handled the bond forfeitures in that district and um yeah
201we get our notices and respond appropriately for an exact number I'd probably have to go check with our finance director but I can say that it has covered our salary four times um and what we've been able to recover I'd love to see that number if you wouldn't mind chapter one follow-up to that Cleveland County what is what is the student population in Cleveland County fourteen thousand students about 2 000 staff yes ma'am I understand our over 25 000 students 3 000 staff so a bit bigger but um not out of the same ballpark any additional questions I think the ferris County Schools is about 35 000 students and I'm not mistaken Charlotte Mecklenberg might be over a hundred 140 000 students second biggest to uh only wake account I'm Council what do you do
202with Charlotte um thank you because the size of organizations they form a litigation that's right Mr vocal you said I think it was on your LinkedIn profile um as a U.S federal prosecutor in Charlotte it was an interesting thing that you said you said you got a guilty verdict in every case that you took to trial can you speak to that yeah I want every case that I took to trial and received advocated for and received sentences for those Federal Criminal defendants sentences that were that were tough that were firm but that were Fair as a federal prosecutor one wields a lot of power a federal criminal case and many state criminal cases begin in presenting a case to a grand jury people in a private room and you tell them why this was a
203crime there's a lower standard and then the grand jury issues the indictment so the duty to even come to the grand jury and talk to them about a particular matter and seek an indictment is a pretty big deal it's pretty powerful because you're about to change someone's life or some business's life forever when a case comes to trial the job of the prosecutor is to prove the case Beyond A Reasonable Doubt and I successfully did that in every case it took to trial and then the next step is is sentencing the sentencing phase while some prosecutors think that the job is to put someone away for as much time as possible and to and to gloat about it that was never my approach it never would be my Approach you want a sentence that is
204firm but fair [Applause] I liked when you when one of the questions that you answered that you um Mr Wallace had said well of course we're going to work within the law whether we agree you know with that or not we're going to take that so I was just wondering in the school districts that you all are counseling um where do they stand with the calendar law the calendar so let me say that as I think I noted the decisions the policy decisions are left to you the board what we have done with our other school boards and I think Cabarrus is doing an early start and Cleveland County is doing an early start which are contrary to letter of the law Charlotte Mecklenburg is not doing an early start so what we will do
205and what we have done is provide you thorough confidential legal advice what the law says and what the strengths and weaknesses are of the position that you as board members are advocating what we think you should do and then we turn it over to you to make the final decision that's what we've done with the boards that we represent and that's what we would do for you we're not going to make your decisions for you but we're going to work very hard to give you the best legal advice and give you our recommendation thank you you're welcome thank you any other questions if now we want to thank you very much for coming in today and again we'll be deciding that a very important decision next week so thank you very much for your time
206thank you very much um we are way behind so I apologize for that I do want to entertain a motion to move into closed session pursuing to uh ncgs 143-1811 a136 and each consider personal matters and maintain confidentiality personal records and to prevent disclosure of Student Records registered rendered confidence on the family educational act and Privacy Act of 20 USC one two three two G and prevent premature disclosure of scholarship award event disclosure of student educational records and personal identities identifiable information rendered confidential under the family educational acts and Privacy Act 20 us c one two three two G formula plans alleged emergency response to school safety and consult with boards returning preserve fraternity client privilege including the cases captions John Doe 1 through 14 versus a New Hanover County school board at all 19
207CBS 2745 and Jane Girls one two versus New Hanover County Board of Education Ed Hall 20 CBS one 395 and Joe Jane Doe three versus New Hanover County school board at all 21 CVS 4707 Consolidated matters we have a motion from Miss Bradford for your second second oh God oh thank you we're back in Open Session I would entertain a motion to adjourn second Olympic discussion you're none all in favor so you can talk about saying hi hi anyone opposed passes you are you good in the scripted awesome oh yeah okay that passes six zero thank you for your time today have a great rest of your day again last night don't you said