001good afternoon welcome to the March 18th special Board of Education town hall meeting uh we are glad you were here before I begin I would like to share a few reminders please keep the aisles clear during our meeting to allow members of the school system and Sheriff's Department to move about also except for when honoring our flag on our opening prayer please remain seated during our meeting we are planning to have a very productive meeting and your help would be greatly appreciated so thank you very much for that um Miss Bowie would you call the roll please good evening Pete Baltimore present Pat Bradford I am here Jesse bornhart here Stephanie craybill Melissa Mason here Hugh McManus and Stephanie Walker just a couple other quick reminders uh please remain respectful and courteous to all in
002attendance during throughout the meeting refrain from using languages lewd or obscene shouting calling out or and or making disruptive noises during the board meeting is prohibited so thank you again for all that uh at this point we will have our invocation yeah this is Travis Newton please stand if you were reflective and I'm calling to give the prayer for the school board tonight Father in heaven we thank you for the love that you have for us and Lord I pray for your spirit to help all those who are here to make decisions concerning the children in their education Lord please teach us all as it says in Psalms 90 12 to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom knowing that each will one day leave this life and give
003an account to you for all of our Lives I pray for the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom that we would make righteous decisions in view of Our Father in Heaven who's watching us right now and Lord you said in Mark 10 14 to allow the children to come to you and Lord you said to not forbid them for the kingdom of God belongs to these and you also warned us now in Matthew 18 6 you warned us that whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in you to stumble it would be better for him to have a heavy meal stop Stone hunger around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea Lord knowing these things that we're going to give an account to you
004for how we lead these children and what we do with them and that you are indeed watching Lord I pray that your spirit would fall on this Council and they would do what's right in your sight knowing that every decision they make they will give an account before the god of Heaven and so we're having seen these things I pray for your help and your grace upon each one of them that you would give them your heart for your kids and that they would do what's right in your sight and we pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ amen amen if you would please remain standing face the flag and I will be leading the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic
005for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you you may be seated we have a very short agenda but a very important one I would call for a motion to approve the agenda so Movement by Miss Bradford second Miss Barnhart is there any discussion not all in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposed passes seven zero we will turn it over to our Master of Ceremonies say Mr Smith and we thank you for putting this all together for us Smith I'm the chief Communications officer for the district and so before we start I want to cover just a few housekeeping items and how tonight's going to run so we open questions to submit two weeks ago we received 556 from the public nearly 80 percent
006of those submitted identified as parents or Guardians 10 came from New Hanover County staff members and five percent from students from these submissions we identified recurring trends that include but certainly aren't limited to school safety Equity calendar access to books budget population growth bullying and transportation so the structure of tonight's evening is going to look very similar to previous Town Halls were you able to attend or watch them with one key difference at the Chairman's direction we're going to open tonight's meeting given board members the opportunity to identify individual questions or themes from those submitted online and then they'll have three minutes to respond we'll start with Miss Walker we'll move down to miss crabill and then go back so 14 questions or themes will be addressed after that segment we'll move to the audience
007q a which I'll moderate I'll come around with a microphone I'll work the room as systematically as I can from one side to the other other and come back and to allow as many attendance as possible to speak I'd ask at least to get going please refrain from two-part questions or multiple follow-ups just so everybody has the opportunity to speak board members as you share your chosen questions and answers please be mindful of the three minute time limit which we'll have over there and I imagine this segment will take approximately 45 minutes once we've concluded this portion we'll move on to the audience we'll take our last question at 6 50 p.m and with that let's go ahead and get started Miss Walker I'll turn it over to you to identify your question thank you
008um well we had quite a few questions on calendar so I'm kind of kind of mashing them together because I feel like they all pretty much follow the same theme which was why can't we start when we want to why do other counties are able to do it but we can't wire some defying law and we're not um these these were the themes that we got in a lot of our questions and they are very valid I know we had a very hard fought discussion on the calendar and with respect to our board we did make a decision so I just want to start there there are a lot of reasons and we're not the only ones in in the state that have an issue with the way the you know the calendar law and
009the constraints that we're under regarding that and a lot of the um you know the pros to to having flexibility are one aligning with the calendars for the dorm rolled students you know the the breaking and the testing before Christmas break and aligning Spring Breaks less you know and then there's revision that has to happen after a long break for testing so those are a lot of the things that we had to discuss and we're not the only District that has to deal with that saying that um I know that some of the questions kind of touched on why other districts are defying calendar law the truth of it is from what I gathered there are one two three there are four or five a handful of counties that are in defiant calendar law have
010not had repercussions over that yet we as a board did not want to defy calendar law even though there are no really strong reasons why they the law gives us that are penalties I mean so um we still didn't feel like as you know as elected people we wanted to defy the law so that is one um one of the reasons why we didn't do Hanover do that um the the pro the the other side of this discussion from our standpoint was that there was a belief that having two semesters that were uneven would not have been a good thing because we um we would lose instructional time so just to break down some of those kind of general questions about it so going forward really what we're trying to do and keeping mindful of
011my time what we were trying to do is figure out Solutions we didn't manage to work that out in time to have to pass a calendar but you know obviously we're going to have more discussions coming up later in the year with the next year and I personally would like to have a survey done that would probably you know as a personal encounter committee I would like to see that happen um but uh I actually in my research today in preparation for our meeting I did get to see a quote from Phil Berger from the legislature that basically we had our Representatives Here Local let me just back up that did support us having a change in calendar on the house side but I found out that the Senate does not want to take it
012up there's some direct quotes which I guess you guys can look up if you want to that basically gives his reasoning on that the only way they would look at it in the Senate is if they want to figure out how to punish districts that do defy calendar appreciate it talk to me later if you want to know more reset the clock Mr McManus go ahead please there were several statements questions about discipline let me say I don't know how many of you have likely looked at the policies the board fakes the policy decisions the superintendent translates those policies into the school systems of which this island is one so it's the superintendent's requirement to handle discipline in the schools we just made the policy and if you look at 4 300 which is the
013general student behavior and go to the board of ed look under policies and it says the reasons for managing student Behavior are to create an early environment where students can learn disruptive behavior which is before cannot and will not be tolerated the superintendent shall incorporate information from such policies into a code of student contact that notifies students of the behavior respected of them and so forth um there's a b c d and e under 4 300. I want to say d the consequences for violations particularly include suspension removal from school student conferences parole environment going to some type of counseling those are usually minor serious violation says that serious violations that threaten to substantially disrupt the educational environment may result in long-term suspension and serious violations to threaten the safety of students School Employees and
014school visitors e enforcement the superintendent is responsible for supervising the enforcement of the code of student contact conduct excuse me to ensure the school disciplinary procedures are uniformly and fairly applied throughout the school system um prohibited behaviors there are eight of them but the main one is the disruption or unorderly conduct of students whether it's a school anything that is school activity buses field trips Etc being on Campus bus stops um obviously the superintendent worked through the principles and so the principals are the at sight and or their designated to be as such a principles or Deans so if you have an issue with a disciplinary situation you would go through to me the hierarchy having been approached for myself go through the principle then go to the superintendent follow the chain of command but
015I want to make sure that you understood and that's 4301 the authority of school personnel and then I'll be doing bullying with my second round but the superintendent is an appeal agent after you've dealt with with the principal if you have other questions and other things to deal with all right thank you sir we yielded 23 minutes back Miss Mason go ahead please thank you seconds I'm sorry I was like that's a long time for Mr McManus to talk um 23 minutes the question that I chose uh was actually written in Spanish and so I had to go to Google Google Translate and of course Google translate we know is can be faulty um but what I understood from the Google translate question was why can't I have a meeting with the teachers at my
016son's school and so what that led me to be concerned about is what access do parents have to parents who are multilingual parents who don't speak English what access do they have to our resources that we have here so I did a lot of digging um what I found out is at this point in time we have 2037 students that are multilingual we have 37 teachers for those or that are also multilingual the multilingual teachers are allocated to schools based on both student enrollment numbers as well as teacher ratios and student need based on access testing we have also four full-time and two part-time family Liaisons what they do is they serve as a go-between obviously between the parents and the school a lot of parents come from families come from countries that are don't
017their schools don't look like ours and so they don't know how to get the services they need and so that liaison those Liaisons are a great support for them um I also asked how many translators or interpreters we have we have deaf students we have Spanish-speaking students we have a variety of other languages in our within our school community so how do we how do we address that and what I was told is that our family Liaisons at this point um they complete the Translating and or the interpretation and if the schools have additional staff they'll translate documents um if there are families that speak languages other than Spanish then we have to provide that translation through a third party and so I wanted to be able to share the the information for the parent
018who asked that question um but I'm not fluent I am fluent in ASL so I know that there's a deaf community so I wanted to share with them as well what resources we have for them um I'm going to be using what is called simultaneous communication so for any parent who is struggling with language barriers um there are three resources you can use you can reach out to your school principal to set up a meeting can I finish yeah please please finish um for that interpreter and make sure that you allow time for that to be set up you can contact the lead family liaison directly and she will assist you or you can utilize the information on the website that if you go to the main page um you can find it under communities
019or students and families so thank you Miss Mason Miss Bradford okay we had a number people who ask about so let me let me explain there's been a lot of inflaming language there's been a lot of Hysteria and not dissing the media but the media didn't help the situation so there's seven of us up here see seven of us the law says that we can't talk to each other as a group it's called the open meeting law so we can't get together and say Hey how do you feel about books how do you feel about books we just take input from you we get email but we can't talk to each other so miss Mason followed policy and asked to have a discussion on the agenda it was a discussion she wanted to know how
020every one of us felt about that issue it was never up for a vote she didn't ask to have it up for a vote so all of the rhetoric that was thrown at that was really not really needed we can calm this thing down right now the state is considering the general assembly in North Carolina in the house they're considering forming a policy there that would require us to have book review so we're going to wait on personally I'm going to wait and see what the state does before I say another word about it so hopefully that will put to rest some of the just panic over books for right now thank you do I get her extra time um first of all I do feel for everyone that has to be speaking two minutes
021because wow but there were a lot of questions about safety so uh I took that on it's a very very important topic I'm going to be discussing one aspect of it Mr McManus and others will be discussing other uh aspects I sat down and discussed this with Mr Silverstein who is our County Executive Director of safety the board as a whole seizes as an extremely important uh and we see that in our strategic plan it's one of the most important things so much so that we actually had an outside group come talk to us back in our pre in our retreat in January one question is raised a time and time again is why don't we have metal detectors at each school that's a great question sitting down with our executive director he shared that
022there are several reasons one is that it gives the wrong impression we don't want our schools to look like prisons the other uh some of the other concerns are that that at least one of our schools has over 60 exterior doors so if you have metal detector at one door someone you can get something in a Contraband or whatever else through any of the other doors gives a false sense of security additionally trying to get several thousand in some of our schools students through metal detectors would be a logistical concern you see that at airports and trying to do the same and not losing instructional time would be very difficult one thing that everyone can do and I would advise you to do is to become involved at your school there is a safety team
023at each school they meet monthly this team is made up as the SRO the administrators teachers and other faculty members including a counselor some counties actually have community on that others like ours does not actually have that but there are other other opportunities like the principles advisory committee which is at every school bring that safety concern to the principal assistant principal and then that Administration can work on that just some quickly some things we are doing in every school every exterior door is locked during school except for during the brief class changes every visitor has to be buzzed in through the buzz uh video buzzer system every school has an SRO not every county has that our county has at least one and several of our schools have multiple sros there's ongoing training by a
024safety team which meets monthly Mr Silverstein meets at least twice a year with this District safety team most schools have a vestibule situation where this the students are some of the visitors actually have to go through a vestibule to get to the main part of the building we have at least two lockdown drills each year some groups some schools have a thing called watch dogs or similar groups parents that walk around and are actually helping to keep the school safe so I ask your principal about that there are over 2 000 cameras in in our schools outside our schools on buses and finally there's been some disc discussion between board members and County Commissioners about the possibility of a bond in the near future and we could use some of those funds for increased safety
025at our schools sorry I'm over thank you thank you Mr chairman Ms Barnhart please so the first question that I picked is somebody submitted about where are we on the schedule for the Isaac bear building and why can't we get buses for the science olympiads so the easy part to the question is to say go to your principal and there's an allotment for funding when you're talking about extracurriculars and if there is no more funding left then he would reach out to the district level um the Isaac bear building is something when you look at all of our high schools and all of our schools in New Hanover County what is great about what we do is we have so many opportunities for students so the Isaac bear building currently our students are in a
026mobile that is housed by UNCW so this is really a CO collaboration partnership with them the first two years the ninth and 10th graders are New Hanover County enrolled and then the last two years they're actually getting college credit on UNCW campus so this is going to be a combination of a lot of different individuals New Hanover County Schools our County Commissioners state legislators because what we're looking at doing is having space on uncw's campus so I believe it was last year the general assembly had passed funding to do the drafts for the new building what that would do roughly the capacity um I don't know if the number is 260 or 240 how many students are being served at that school we would basically be able to double that capacity and how many students
027were actually being able to serve but with that as a high price tag so they're in the draft stages of that and I know Miss Walker and Mr McManus were in the ad hoc committee that discussed some of that I know there are still conversations happening about that because I had the opportunity as my principal for a day Shadow program to be at Isaac bear and he actually showed me what the drafts look like at this current time they're still receiving input they're still looking at a couple different designs to go along with the university look but then to be applicable to the high school demographic that we serve and what that looks like the big question is the money it's going to be roughly they said at the time 16 million dollars to build
028a building like this um and so where does it come from it comes from collaboration and they ask um I know in policy this morning we were discussing potentially for us to have a legislative agenda so I see that that being something that we would discuss and ultimately have to go to a vote before the board so I'm not saying um that that's happened yet but being able to move forward we need to be able to utilize the resources we have so we'd be reaching out to our County Commissioners that might mean a bond that might mean an initial ask that might mean going to the general assembly to talk about the financing for this so where we're at right now is we have the funding for the drafts and the drafts are in progress
029and they're working on the relationship of what that needs to look like and how that needs to be designed but that's where we are all right thank you Miss Barnhart Miss cradle double whammy you have two questions okay well first of all the um it seems like we all have a little bit of a common theme on the communication and how to get answers so um mine is going to be you know piggybacking off of that we had about five people not about we did we have 556 questions so picking one or two to answer is really kind of hard um so what many of us do is we post them all together in sort of a category my category was that of communication and many parents um submitted yeah I don't know how to
030find things out so I just wanted to kind of go through that again that the um the district and the schools communicate with with families in many different ways they at elementary primarily you know hard copy backpack players automated and individual personal calls emails the website bulletin boards at key locations where parents come in to pick up their students they also um they have you know family nights and different you know information nights of the district and the school hosts and so I would encourage you all to make sure you go to those especially if you're interested in things like the curriculum and specific curriculums that you're looking at and there is a hierarchy of leadership that we as the board also follow and several people have already mentioned that is that you go to
031your teacher first you know to get information or perhaps maybe your Council or social worker or family a family liaison if that the issue that you're trying to get resolved fits better with that person then you would go to your principal and then after that you would go to the principal's boss who um there are three Lauren catalanidis is over the elementary schools Penny Presley is over secondary schools and Jared Morganton is over our priority schools and then they can get your um your your questions disseminated to the right location in the school district um finally it would be the superintendent actually I shouldn't say finally um then the superintendent when folks email the Board of Education with their concerns and they haven't even gone to their their principal or their teacher um that's kind
032of a blind side you know no one really likes that you know when that kind of thing happened so it makes the makes the principal and the teacher's job really difficult but it also um it it there's no line of communication so we're going to do the same thing if we get your concern we're going to send it out um and then also too use your PTA groups your parents support groups one of the questions that came that I wanted to answer is why didn't why don't we have a special education piece the answer is we do and um Denise janone who is a regular at our meeting she comes to that but it is sanctioned by the North Carolina PTA and is a member of the PTA Council so we do have lots of
033different ways for you to get information from your peer group and from the school district all right thank you go ahead and reset that clock go ahead man I'll take a breath okay so um the the next the next topic that I chose um and I'm going to read two questions that are from Victor category one of them is is New Hanover County Schools currently using any form of CRT including the new one that starts with an S social something and then so that was kind of an interesting question and then in light of current increase in social emotional concerns about school-aged children how can the Boe cut the number of social workers counselors SEL staff at this point how do we address academic needs if students are struggling so I just wanted to start
034off with um for those of you don't know their CRT has two different um an acronyms one is critical race State um Theory and one of those is culturally responsive thinking the New River County schools and most K2 K-12 education systems don't teach critical race Theory um this is a college level cross-disciplinary philosophy that is taught in law schools the critical race theory is oh and then so the critical race theory is not a synonym for culturally responsive thinking the culturally responsive thinking is just a method of affirming students you know ethnic and racial backgrounds and it's intellectually vigorous for the students as they're learning but my point here is not to debate the CRTs it is rather to disconnect social emotional learning and equity and diversity inclusion from critical race theory that the school
035district teaches social emotional development nothing about social emotional development is is about race specifically it's about acceptance of differences not demeaning or being critical of any of those differences New Hanover County School seeks educational equity which is essentially ensuring that each student all students have what they need to develop to their full potential regardless of where they live their socioeconomic status and any of the other protected topics that we want to make sure that all students have full access to reach their full academic and social potential so and there's even a Senate bill in North Carolina that's attempting to address some of the cost implications of making sure that students get what they need to succeed both SEL and Equity initiatives are interwoven into the fabric of what we do every day because the student
036maintaining students positive outcomes and maintaining a healthy culture and climate for all of our students and staff is Paramount so here are the three things three topics I want you to take away so safe positive engaging environments skills for lifelong access authentic Partnerships communication and collaboration that is what social emotional learning is all about and isn't that what we want for all of our students as I wrap up I wanted to say that fair and consistent does not mean the same thing as Equitable and although both are necessary in achieving healthy cultural climate the consistency is not always necessarily equate to fairness students and staff have to be treated situationally to make sure that the positive outcomes are achieved thank you miss crabill work back down the line as far more back to you please
037okay I'm going to read this question out loud he says or she says I'm a custodian I don't mean to be disrespectful but the school system is terrible to non-teachers why do teachers get all the credit I I thought I don't open and clean the school the next morning teachers can't come to the building teach the kids at the same time so why do teachers get extra money and bonuses and I'm here longer than them I'm not asking for more money but we should all get the same bonus and he's and it said terrible school system I swear and I stopped at this question because I value every single individual that works on our school system our custodian staff our secretaries our nurses our guidance counselors our social workers our teachers our Tas everyone unfortunately
038we have seen a decline in enrollment and that means funding is cut with that being said we are not staying quiet there's a lot of funding sources that education has access to through our state through grants through local endowment and that those applications have not been open yet for the endowment fund but I know that they're going to be on it as soon as they do and we are seeking to secure funding so that we can reallocate to treat all of our employees fairly and with that being said I know that sometimes money allocations there are certain criteria that they have to be spent on so there might be a grant that we receive that has to go towards a specific cause whether that's technology devices or whether that's bonuses for specific categories like classified
039staff or unclassified staff and I'm going to try to not get teary-eyed but I remember Mr wilderberg and I had initial conversations with Deb Hayes about potentially having an allotment bucket that we would have more flexibility to give bonuses to a class rather than saying teachers but having classified staff and non-classified staff but given the flexibility that we can show appreciation and value monetarily to all individuals so hopefully we can continue to pick back up those kind of conversations but with that being said that this takes a lot of time and a lot of change to do I think we've kind of set the groundwork and footwork on a lot of potential changes um that I want to end my time with saying I value our individuals that are in school every single day working
040with our kids for our kids for our students to give them the best quality staff and those custodians when I was in the classroom they would be the first and the last ones out and always make my day every conversation I have with them so thank you for what you do thank you Miss Barnhart Mr World War back to you I don't know if I can follow that oh my goodness very very true um my second topic is year-round schools we have two great year-round schools Coddington Eaton most studies actually show that year-round education is preferable for most students and the calendar is uh preferable and in case you don't know you know after students when students and staff start becoming tired it gives them a break it gives them a chance to refresh instead
041of having a long summer break where students can actually face regression or falling back a little bit it has an opportunity to remediate and to possibly accelerate some students the intercession after nine weeks gives students an opportunity to catch up before they get too far behind which is also a positive it also gives students they're doing well an opportunity to accelerate if they want to come in during that intercession they can accelerate and even get further ahead which is great it gives staff an opportunity we're talking about money gives staff an opportunity a lot of times to earn some extra salary if they work during the intercession which is that three-week period again so there's a lot a lot a lot of good things about year-round education but there are some questions that we would
042have to face one is where would you where would you what middle school would you take over with the year round so that's a question it would have to be answered and then students at that school if they did not want to be in year round they would have to be relocated somewhere else and I'm sure that a lot of those people probably wouldn't want to leave their their middle school you know year round school I was thinking back and year-round school is not something that we have not tried at the middle school level here in New Hanover County before back uh many many years ago we actually had at Noble Middle School a school within a school we had two different tracks going on at Noble Middle School there was a year-round track and
043the uh what we call the normal schedule or the regular schedule there were some concerns there were some problems one was the specialist teachers because they had to work at both schools both tracks so they didn't really didn't get any time off so your art your music your PE teacher as well as support staff as we just mentioned administrators counselors cafeteria workers custodians and bus drivers also had to work many many extra hours another question comes up is extracurricular extracurriculars Athletics clubs a woody year-round school have year-round Middle School have those if they do then those those folks would have to come in during their intercession their time off their vacation and you know to try out to participate uh to practice Transportation we're talking about some long bus rides because say it was centrally
044located you'd have people coming all the way from Carolina beach or Castle Hayne to there in a former District we met as principals we all had a great we all thought it was a great idea we really really did um we went back to our schools we talked to our ptas our ptos our parents and there wasn't at least in that school district there wasn't a lot of positive uh response but to summarize I think there's a lot of value in looking at year-round school and expanding it to Middle School level so I think we should keep the conversation up and please continue to talk to us about it thank you sir appreciate that Miss Bradford okay we're going to talk about money so many of you wrote us and said why are you cutting
045positions so I'm going to make a real simple economic lesson 20 40 50 we have fifty dollars in our budget to eat on every week you with me all right so we go along and we're we do fine most weeks we have a dollar left over everything's good and then we have a really generous relative and he says I'm going to give you 20 more dollars a week because I like you because you did this you did that whatever reason now you got seventy dollars right we're fat we're gonna have steak we're gonna go to Starbucks we're going to treat our friends we're going to buy a new outfit new pair of shoes and that rich Uncle Sam he gives us that extra 20. for a whole year and then he takes it back now
046we only have 50. are we happy no but what's happened in that year inflation cost of meat went up bacon six bucks a pound we don't have money anymore that's the position your school board is in as a position your school district is in we got 90 some million dollars from Uncle Sam and they spent it they spin it they made everything fat they got Starbucks no I'm kidding they didn't get Starbucks they made it fat they added positions now the money's gone and we have to live on our fifty dollars but our fifty dollars isn't fifty dollars anymore it's less it's a simple economics lesson as to where we are in the county now let me take on a second one Leandro you may or may not have heard of Leandro Leandro was a
047case where parents in 1994 some of you weren't born in 1994 they filed in court to argue that students in five low wealth counties in the state didn't have access to an adequate education awesome thing to do right in 1997 the North Carolina Supreme Court said students have the constitutional right for every student to have a sound basic education and it has been tied up in court ever since so Leandra has been in court 29 years if my math is Right 29 years we can't access that money the state legislature can't give us that money until it stopped being in the court system so for somebody to tell you get that Leandro money and start spending it they're misleading you we don't have access to Leandro money we won't until it stops being tied up
048in court thank you thank you Miss Bradford reset Miss Mason thank you please um a lot of the questions as Miss Bradford said previously were about the book review committee and my name came up a lot so I figured it'd probably be best to answer some of those questions since they were asked of me um I'm gonna try and do the best I can because there were so many I picked about four or five but there was concern about how the individuals selected to be on the committee are selected and I said first come first serve my justification is this way we're weeding out anybody cherry picking if it is a first come first serve there is limited opportunity for anybody who is running this committee or who is getting members um to go oh
049I want this friend and this friend if you are there in line you are there in line and though it's flawed right now I think that it's a start um for us and then the qualifications and things that are important again this is all ideas this is discussion um which is something I'm going to address in a minute too this is all discussion and so really for me the most important qualification is are they safe so we would need background checks and fingerprints of anybody who is working or serving on this committee um because we want it to be a safe um safe environment um I believe and I respect every individual in this room whether they want to believe me or not I do respect every individual in this room I respect their beliefs
050I respect their education and I believe that our community is very well educated and um is qualified to be able to serve on this on this particular committee and I think that it's so diverse that that we would all our students would all benefit from people who are invested in our kids um the status as I said before we're discussing it we're not setting it up yet because we don't have the structure of it we're waiting as Miss Bradford had mentioned on what the state is going to do um we don't know if they're going to require it or not but I do want to start the discussion that if they do require it we have some form of beginning structure already established and so right now we're just talking to each other getting feedback
051the last meeting was really all about discussion um and so we need to talk about policy we need to talk about procedures we need to talk about who's going to be on it um and and all of those things are details that we have to hash out and it's not going to happen overnight because we want to do it correctly and we want to do it well so thank you Miss Mason Mr McManus back to you I thought I had Mr Bradford you can be as a group but you can't have more than three equals four is a majority so if you can have two different two different meetings um and you've gotten you're invited all the forward and the audit to your house for steak and so if you'll give your address once again
052there were inviting civil education environment for all students the board recognizes the bullying orange and behavior distract from the safe environment and maybe even more seriousness so our policies and prohibit bullying and harassment it is or federal population 230.50 based on race car um you can't take out a wallet if someone is now that throws you into the social media and that leads me into social media examples of behavior for harassing and voting spreading rumors derogatory of new Communists name column foot bands putting things in the kid's lives into statements in front of other people social media is the most destructive thing that we have in fully we need to add social bullying specifically because I've been a high school principal more than I am and I'm telling you I've been it is the absolute
053worst thing that could happen to a child they're withdrawal they're great to go down you know isolated people continue to say things particularly post them there are ways to stop it there are ways to stop legal ways to stop that it has to be addressed it creates a hostile environment for us to uh substantially this is our policy by substantially interfering with or impairing of students educational performance opportunities or benefits friends other students anyone can report it and I would say again report that go through the chain of command counselors don't always share they're bound not to share a lot if the student says that I would suggest that you as a parent or someone you go directly to the principal that's where you want to share it thank you very much sir Miss Walker
054bring us home for this part please thank you um my next category was population growth um there were some themes here overcrowding few what about future development about you know the growth of our County overall um there were very specific questions about Porter's Neck Elementary most of our high schools and some of our middle schools will add that some of our schools are under enrolled just for y'all's information um I will I'll read a specific question which pretty much encompasses most of what was asked with all the building in New Hanover County where the Commissioners have approved our radio overcrowded schools cannot possibly accommodate the influx of children moving in what plan do you have to address the overcrowding at every school does the Board of Ed discuss the overcrowding and need for new schools
055with the County Commissioners so yes and we have an update on that and we actually did talk about this at our last meeting but I will say that um we have had preliminary discussions as our chair mentioned about a potential Bond it is entirely up to them whether they put it on the ballot and uh like I said they they know because we've had conversations about what's going on especially in pockets of our community um they are essential to this conversation and so they have actually approved for us to do a let me get the correct wording here of future utilization study demographic utilization study which is basically going to take a look those are the first steps to doing a potential Bond because we need to know where the growth is happening in our
056County we need to know what pockets are growing more than others and if we're going to need new new um new buildings they're going to have to help us with that because we are not a money making entity we don't create and a lot of the money for building has to come from our County and it's specifically what this utilization study will do it will will look at population estimate forecasts for 20 you know from years past 2020 2025 and 2030 by age sex and uh total population for 22 Elementary eight middle school and four High Schools attendance in our in our district um enrollment forecasts by grade for the years 23 24 to 20 32 2033 inclusive for the all the schools that I just mentioned and they'll do an executive summary that will
057describe the methodology assumptions used calculations of the forecast Etc including under um under County populations which that was one of the questions I had we just had a census done um you know obviously it's every 10 years and some of our population is under counted so that was important so what basically once we get that study I'm they're going to present to us and to you guys and we're going to see where where we need to potentially utilize our space better if we have under enrollment we're going to have to really take a look at that because voters are not going to want to vote on a bond that if we're not using our space properly if we're not using all the okay so look out for that and just look on our April's agenda
058for all the information on the study all right thank you all we're going to move on to part two and not waste any time doing so just a few Logistics board members just please make sure your mics are on in response to these questions Anita let's get the actual question out from the audience members before we stop that start the timer and folks we have exactly one hour for this portion even with this relatively modest audience not every single person is going to get the opportunity to ask the question so I'm going to work the room left to right I'd ask this section right here if you have a question poised and ready to go I'm gonna start with you sir can you hold it while I read this circle thanks the short-term suspension policy
0594351 states that before a student receives an out of school suspension quote the student has the right to be present at an informal hearing but does not have the right to have a parent or other representative present okay so now think about a four five six or seven year old child at this hearing Who quote shall be informed of the charges and the basis for the accusations against him or her and may make statements in defense or mitigation of the charges the student Also may request that the principal hear from persons whom the student Claims can speak on his or her behalf if the student reasonably claims the need for additional time to present such persons the principal May postpone action for a reasonable time end quote I don't think it's reasonable to expect any
060four five six or seven year old child to do those things let alone even think about them would you consider having the policy committee review policy 4351 and revise it to allow a parent the right to be present and an informal hearing for their four five six or seven year old either in person over the phone or on a zoom call thank you okay so question is consider a revision to the policy let's go and start the clock anyone willing to understand where what you said takes place or other places but the question that you read bothers me if that is apparent any child a parent has a right to be involved from the beginning now if I'm asking you if you did something that's a different story but if you did it then I
061need to involve the parent so I don't know if that's something that a possibility would want to review or not I don't know again everything even the 556 the validity but the way you said it was that kids were called in and the parents are not involved uh yeah I would just say that first of all we don't suspend four-year-olds um at all and five six and seven year olds we've already adopted the policy that it's Last Resort and like I was speaking with Mr with same in line Mr McManus is we would never do that you know to a little kid but I think before it even comes to policy we should check with you know Julie Barnum and Dr Faust and all of those um school system people who are responsible for that
062before it should come to policy I mean we need to verify what that says I that is the first time I've ever heard it put in that regard and I just can't even imagine any principle sitting a little five-year-old down and you know doing that so that would be my suggestion that it's not time for policy for that Miss Mason um I actually just looked up exactly what you read and I do see it right there and it is definitely concerning um even if a child isn't for five or six I think a parent should be present parents should know what's going on with their kids and I think uh I I don't think it's a terrible idea to to look at it in policy any additional comments Miss Bradford I'd be willing based on
063looking at that I don't want I don't want a four five six or seven year old not to have the right to have a parent there you know and if I could add you know being a ex-elementary principal you know you may have a situation where you you can't reach somebody but at least make that phone call you know I got Johnny or Susie or whoever it may be in my office we're talking about this that the other thing um you know I'm gonna put you on speakerphone so you can at least be part of that conversation so you're it's the heartstrings of the four or five and six year old but at any level when you're talking about a child who is clearly expressing issues that's going on we need to involve the family
064unit and so sometimes that's a parent or Guardian um and it's gonna or sometimes that looks like a child advocate and so we need to be cognizant of who those adults are in those kids lives and so I wrote it down on my paper so as I make policies so thanks for bringing that up all right thank you all let's reset the clock I'm gonna move to this general area in the middle here I'm gonna come back and see good evening I have real simple question really as a board member are you seeking to understand or to be understood and I asked this in part because our county is very divided and many of you think you were elected to represent those who voted for you but in fact your job is to represent all
065of us parents and kids in this County and if you're seeking to understand that means you should be listening open to listening to all voices who speak especially the call to audience as reported by WHUR 40 percent of speakers last time spoke about not Banning books were against the book review committee and about 30 percent wanted to ban or challenge books but more than half of you noted that you wanted to create this book Review Committee effectively assigning a group chance to kind of review books report back all of that such and I'm just curious because again are you just kind of listening to those that you want to listen to are you actually listening to parents who are raising this concern especially if it's 40 percent good portion of our population saying please don't
066do this but yet the majority of the board says let's do this all right Scrabble kick us off I just wanted to say um I am in this seeking to understand category and um I was hanging some artwork up at the Community Arts Center um last week and um some students were having some classes down underneath and um one came up with a parent and was talking about the mom introduced her and introduced me as a school board member and um so she said the little fifth grader so you're going to be like Banning books and she said we read a book in battle of the books you know North Carolina approved called ban this book and where they actually read it and and discussed it and had to review the facts so I was
067so impressed with this little fifth grader actually having an opinion and a thought on that that I went out and bought the book you know and read it so I am ready for book Banning you know material to come up if people want to do do that but I seeking to understand you know fifth graders students have have a voice any other comments welcome just I feel like that's a yes and question that you just asked is there's both they're being able to understand and have an open dialogue with people that you disagree with or you have commonalities and I feel like our job is to first we all have things in common if you start talking about something we do have a common Center Point and there's going to be differences of opinions of
068things but we do have a common Center Point and what we have to do is being able to see where we agree and then be able to expand and hear both sides of the argument because there there is a lot of gray questions that come up to say what is this what is that and so as far as curriculum and content one of the things that I have been grateful that we have taken steps for in New Hanover County is the accessibility to a curriculum website and being able to share what is being taught where it's being taught the consistency across the board not this board but the consistency across the district so that any first grader is being taught the same content is having access to the same content those sorts of things and
069so when I try to make my decisions I'm taking an input but looking at the process are we doing things consistently across the district are there hiccups why are there hiccups why are there differences and when you take the emotional aspect of we all have differences opinion out of it and you look through the lens of a process it makes it easier to be able to help other people understand myself included so go ahead oh I only got a few seconds I just want to speak to the larger discussion about our constituents and I know we are this is an elected position but that the point is very well taken that you know when we we switch from campaign mode to actually governing mode we get and as a third third year just give me
070a couple more I swear I'll be hurt all right um uh when you switch that over to that you're going to get a lot of feedback from people and especially if there are topics that are very very hot or or of the moment and for me and for some of us it was the covet in the masking and keeping kids in school or not and we do we take a lot up here I mean we probably more than any governing body I know of um especially during call to audience we take a lot and it's hard um but I the point is taken that you know we do have to listen to as many as we can and what we try and do is do the best we can when we're up here at least
071I'm going to speak for myself when I say that I try and learn as much as I can and I try and listen to as many people and that at the end of the day my vote is my voice and the majority rules so four is the magic number so your point is they're all thinking about being understood so thank you all right thank you all let's move to this section right here anything anything ready right here moving over this way I just I was just right there right here hi there um I just have a question about accountability as it relates to policy and it actually ties in a little bit about the book Review Committee discussion and that is we have policy 3210 which standardizes and creates objectives for books to be chosen
072supplementary materials to be chosen in the schools so we already have a process for that and that responsibility is delegated as I understand it from you all to the mtac committee the media technology advisory committee which is at each high school or each school and my question is um how are we doing to monitor those committees how often do those committee members rotate out what type of uh kind of uh objective accountability and perspective do we have between schools to enforce the objectives and maybe as a possibility in the future can we tie in the book Review Committee as you're trying to create it to what's already in existence as an accountability measure and I'm just curious how you all also are checking in on on those committees thank you I would just say this
073is that that's not our job to do that monitoring that is Dr Faust and his staff um to do that so um with them not being here and I don't know the answer to that but I do know the answer that is not what the board of education does is to monitor that kind of thing that's not in our in our scope Miss Walker I will just add that I'm looking at the policy right now and I know about our processes for this particular discussion and I feel like it is very parent-centric and I believe that's where it should begin I did have a discussion with the librarian recently that had been through a process and the parent was not like in a book that her kid read and they did they they dealt with
074it then the librarian Mark The Marked his record and you know he's not going to check that book out anymore I really think it should begin there I feel like my opinion and I'll just say it is my opinion that you know I think a small group should not be making a decision for all the 50 plus thousand parents we have in this District my concern and I've seen this happen where there's a school um maybe a high school that says this this book is concerning to us um but there's no dialogue between that high school and other schools so I definitely hear Miss Walker's Point that maybe one person one group shouldn't have the I'll have the ultimate say and say well you can ban it for everybody else or or you can't have
075that book anywhere else but there should be some kind of dialogue at least that this you know this book has been concerning at the high school level because that book also could be at the middle school level and you know that's again concerning any additional comments on this one all right let's move to this okay you're ready five years I participated on a committee such as this and it always constituted a librarian from the lower school and The Librarian from the upper school they're critical and several more teachers rep one representative of if you just have people first show up you're going to get a particular group that you know is really Zealot about it and so that's all I'm trying to suggest moderate moderate moderate and get representation from a couple teachers Librarians and
076then your parents thank you any thoughts or comments on that statement um I said before and as I assassin so my suggestion was just that a suggestion um if we want to add more I think that that's something as a board that we can work together and we can we can figure it out um I in conversation I do believe that there does need to be more teacher representation more media specialist representation but I do not want to limit the amount of parent and Community participation either so Ms Bradford I want to reiterate that there are seven of us four of us can't talk together so if I want to know in an open board meeting how Ms Walker feels about something the only way I'm going to find out for real is to talk
077to her in an open board meeting I call her up she might tell me one thing but she may change her mind by the time we get to the board meeting so the only way we know what the other one's thinking okay or we might meet out back because he's making that face at me and I might say I'm not ready to talk about that in an open board meeting I'm not ready to move forward on a book review committee and I'm not and but when we got here you know I per I have issues with specifically sexually vulgar books for our younger students I have issues with that and and the person asked earlier do we want to be understood or I want to understand why in the world any one of you out
078there would want a sexually vulgar book in our schools for the kids I want to know why so you can see me after you can see me after and tell me what that answer is but we we had a discussion y'all we had a discussion we're not going to have a big bonfire here and start throwing books in it just calm this thing down just calm it right down it's a long drawn out process this ship doesn't turn all that quickly so it's a long drive now pause this we're going to talk about it over months we're going to come up with something and then we'll vote on it and it may or may not go so just everyone just calm down please 52 seconds Miss uh no I was just going to say that
079um oh I'm sorry um no I just want to highlight a takeaway though being transparent is something that we are all passionate about and I think Miss Bradford just echoed that so being able to have a discussion yes there was differences opinion and I'm grateful for that because in order to grow we have to be able to have open dialogue and difference of opinions so um if there's one nugget on pull from that it is the open transparency and at serving as a newcomer on this board I'm grateful that we can have open dialogue even sometimes contentious all right any Mr McManus bring us home on this one I'm not say anything um what bothers me is that I hear because of the last election the book Banning was at the top of the list
080before we even got a board what I hear from other people is this could be a trojan horse to start reviews for everything that goes on curriculum classroom instruction different committees and groups Etc I think that's the fear that's being created and once you get a leggy and then everything will be dealt with in that same manner and that's not we don't deal with that that we have staff members we have to trust we make policy they enforce it I promise you I will never I I'm the same every time when I talk to you private or in public just just say that all right hello hello um we are coming up on the four year anniversary of when Michael Kelly pled guilty to sexually assaulting dozens of children in New Hanover County Schools um
081with that we have a new board and there are a lot of things that the victims requested be changed and one of those uh ideas that were being bounced around is a policy change that I have been pushing for months now and that is with teachers as you all already know if a teacher is accused of inappropriate relations with the child and it leads to a termination or resignation as part of the investigation if the uh the administrative staff opts to not send that to the state I would like board oversight over that particular thing go into closed session take a vote on it and again this does not have to affect the Appellate process it can be done after the appeals process is satisfied so my question to the board is not even just
082about this specific policy but when you're going to have problems working on these issues as it is because your attorney is again working for Liberty Mutual the insurance company as it was that was a slap in the face to the victims but now you're put in an interesting position where if people from the community like myself brings forward ideas who are you supposed to ask for legal advice because you cannot ask Darrington Smith because they they their duty is to a different entity you cannot ask Mr sharpless because he's just involved with the insurance process so please can y'all please elaborate and let me know why it's almost like we're dragging feet on making some of these changes because again this policy change that we're bringing forward it doesn't take a lot of time doesn't
083like take a lot of money and realistically Dr Foust said that he is going to be sending all things that could potentially you know have accreditations removed he was going to be sending them all to the state so realistically the policy shouldn't be used that much so why are we kicking it down the road instead of enacting it thank you oh um I'll jump in I mean I know you and I have had conversations about this so there's a few things they're redoing the licensure in removal licensed around the state level and so I have brought up concerns just like we've talked about prior because I really feel um the consequences and the justifications on a state level can use some oversight and some changes as we're looking at that and so what you're talking
084about is a process that we're not allowed to discuss closed session but we get that Intel when there is a review and then we get what happens and so that is indeed happening and so like I've said with you I'm monitoring some of the things at the state level and as the update to do it all at one time but it's it's not that that's not happening at least since I've been sworn in so I just want to give some Assurance there but I know that that's what I'm personally gaining insight for the collective whole so to not just continuously review policies but to one at a time well I was just going to touch on another part that you ask you know what you know why why are we staying with Arrington we are
085going to actually in the next couple weeks actually hear from multiple uh attorney firms and the board will vote on which attorney firm to take uh in the coming year so um you know it's not like we have blinders on and we're just saying with one attorney firmware looking at all the and all the aspects you may have brought up or you may you brought up will be looked at also Mr McManus I'll address Chris my 22 pound turkey lemon beard last week I'll send you a picture my understanding from several attorneys and my background in education dealing with staff and issues I don't think this has changed lately a person's Personnel Arena is absolutely there's a state you cannot discuss at you cannot you better not tell your wife I mean you just don't
086discuss it if a teacher for whatever reason elects to resign when they're called in about some situation you still can't talk about it they can we can't if they are convicted later then we can but my understanding presently is no matter how much it burns inside of you it has it has to be a conviction and then if it's 10 years later technically a school could report it as someone several wrote into some of the questions but until they're convicted you can't discuss Personnel issues you just can't sometimes we want to we really want to any final comment on that Miss Bradford 16 seconds um Jeff Hart about the attorney we are going to do that within like the next week we're going to hear from attorney firms and you know if if we make
087a change from Farrington you know we do and that's that we need that all the time for you good good evening board so I have just a few uh questions it's kind of a big one so racial heat in this country and even in our county is at an all-time high right now and I have a third grader right now and he came home with homework and he had multiple questions talking about racial Division and he had multiple like he's had an assignment come home now that talks about racism I want to know if that if you all think that that is appropriate for a third grader to come home with racism as part of a topic in third grade that shouldn't be in their vocabulary children need to be children and I know you
088all feel that way everybody in this room cares about their children I care about their children you are setting them up for so many bad hurdles you're making people feel like they are going to be shamed or guilted for being born the way that they're born or feeling that they are less than something else by teaching this at such a young age we need to make a change we could be the change for this state if we actually stand up and say that this is not acceptable at this age we can we can introduce it in another level like this is not appropriate I I want someone please to address that all right thank you Miss crabill yes so the um I forgot to mention this part in in my initial discussion when I was
089talking about critical race Theory um in that is that um I'm hoping that you've had this discussion that you're having with us with your child's teacher and with your child's principal to look at the curriculum and the standards some of what they're teaching is straight from the DPI standard course of study that so those conversations need to have need to be had and if you have a problem with what you've heard there is a official way to oppose that you can look at policy 32 3200 and 3210 and you can ask for a review so um I would encourage you to do that Miss Barnard I'll add to that in the summer of 2021 I believe is when they updated the history standards and what they did is they they updated it to me inquiry-based
090learning um and what that allows for is interpretive teaching of history is essentially what happened I'm just telling I'm telling you the timeline and these things this concern and we some of us were not on the board at the time but I remember listening to the curriculum committee and the concern came from how are we going to present unbiased quality teaching for our students that's consistent across this District that came from our curriculum committee because they understood what inquiry-based learning is and the different avenues that teachers can go with it depending on what narrative they want to push if they want to so the concern I I hear you and so what we have done as a district and what I'm going to encourage us to continue to do is have access to a curriculum
091website of what is being taught what should be taught so if and when will when you pick up a folder and there's a concern about an issue you look to see is this what's supposed to be in the classroom if the answer is no that's a that's a different concern for administrative level so we have to look at and Miss crabill is right we have to look at the standards that to be taught to look at that but the the way the North Carolina Constitution is so that the governor appoints basically everybody in DPI to make the curriculum and content changes so we are at a semi semi um The Graces of what we have to teach and so the goal to be as transparent and consistent of what the expectation is coming into this
092office that's what I'm going to but do I personally like it no I do not final comments Ms Bradford okay I believe that how to think not what to think and I am concerned but you you're you're doing well anyone who has a concern about what their child comes home and tells them they learned in school you follow the procedures that we've set out here today for you you take it up the chain of command you can also copy us on that email so that we can follow up back behind but on a case-by-case basis we have to go after every single one of these things every time it happens that's how we make change all right over here um hi in what ways are you working with the County Commissioners to help secure funds
093to ensure that our students have the support staff help to help address their mental health needs and their social needs outside of the Esser funds cut so what are you doing to work with the County Commission to kind of help fill those gaps um Mr waterworth well um we have been having repeated meetings with the County Commissioners um and having discussions on the budget as a whole that's part of the budget is trying to figure you know fill in some of those holes that the loss of Esser funds have brought about so uh we we and we can we are going to continue those conversations because you know the state uh allotment to State funding is the state funding that's not something we can change uh Federal funding is pretty much the same way but
094the local funding is where we can actually go and say hey we need more money for this that and as I mentioned before you know we've even talked about a bond and of course a bond wouldn't necessarily help in that area but I mean so we are trying to do everything we possibly can we also had a group that went up to the legislation and talked with senators and you know House of Representative members to again look for additional funding for just a variety of areas for our our students and our staff um follow what the County Commission is doing in their budgets they have budget meetings same as we do now's the perfect time okay you can watch those budget meetings and you can see what they're thinking what they're saying and they're saying
095we're not going to give you any more money than the allocation per student is 34 34 334 okay we we have a capital budget which is different for infrastructure and so on but for per student that money we're not going to get any more and and I joke with the County Commissioners because there's this misunderstanding out there the community and this might make you laugh but you can quote me on this they don't have a tree in the backyard down at the County Commission where they pick money to give to the school board they don't have that mythical tree they're going to allocate the same as what they gave us last year or less so we have to learn to live within our means or we have to find grants we have to go like
096we went to Raleigh we took the superintendent with us and we we ask for Stuff the superintendent made at least five different presentations we met with seven different senators and representatives but that's how we get the extra but the county commission's probably not going to give us any more money watch their meetings and learn for yourself don't trust me on that watch it yourself and make your deduction from what you hear because that's what I have deduced for the last three years running all right Miss craigville final thought so um to that point is we don't have to ask the County Commissioners for money specifically for everything that we want to do I do want to let you know that we the County Commission funds Port City United which is providing mental health specialists in
097our schools to help us with those kind of things they also fund Coastal Horizons nonprofit who is one of our primary partners with basically through the shack the school health advisory Council they um they they fund a lot of more School nurses and mental health workers in our school system so we don't have to always say give us you know ten thousand dollar or a million dollars because they're already funding other agencies and organizations that we partner very very successfully with all right moving on this is very interesting I fought for the budget all last year perfect backup who I'm about to say first of all you asked the Commissioners you just don't give up okay and there is 1.5 billion dollars it was prompts to our school setting in a bank right now if
098you want to deny it the Commissioners know it four to five vote they can get it 300 Millions is available right now but you never give up Leandro by the way Leandro in 2004 I mean seven it was also decided again it's the state legislature that's not giving that money that is available I was working in schools when they were giving it every year and stopped again in 2008 when the Republicans took over they stopped giving that money you need to be able to talk to your legislators and get them to release it not keep going to court to stop it right so here's the question which one of you up there are willing to ask the Commissioners for that 1.5 million dollars that is was promised to our schools because you really need to
099care about the schools first and all this other stuff is a bunch of red herrings in my opinion because our schools are imploding thank you thank you Mr McManus I don't have an answer for her right now because it'll get me in trouble if I answer it but I want to say the County Commissioners briefly they provide over 700 local positions local means they pay their salaries they pay their medical they have to contribute toward the retirement so when the state gives a raise to teachers we have to come up with the money which is part of our problem is we have over almost a thousand individuals we've got to dig for that two we have an explosion in this County it's become a destination the issue is from Monkey Junction South if you watch
100the woods slowly disappear every week you go by they're building like crazy all the way to the Inland to the beach if you go to Wilmington and you go to the penny county line to Hampstead same thing building building building you go north from Laney to the Clinton county line across the Northeast Cape Fear River great duck hunting place they're building like crazy those schools are busted at scenes Porter's Neck we've ordered four trailers very nice aluminum walkways but it's going to take us after next year to get them and so we're trying again where do we get that money because all that growth is popping up not in the city there's no way in the city to build on the outskirts and we don't have the money thank you Ms Barnard and so I'm
101I'm not going to hold up a sign to say 1.5 give it to me but the reality is we have lost students and our academics have declined so when you're coming to somebody who says you want more money and you're now at 30 percent of your low performing schools tell me what you're going to do with it that I mean that has the question so when people are making decisions to whether or not to give money there has to be a plan in place of how it's going to get fixed and so I have encouraged to say tell me what what does that look like so I can relay that because if people are going to give us money they're going to buy into a plan of support because when they hear how it's going
102to support students and getting money means that we are able to reallocate to kind of take advantage and make sure that we have those positions that we need to support our students and so what Dr Faust and the team has done has been able to present some of these ideas of how to support our low performing schools and how to make it to a point that they're successful because ultimately that's what we want we want our students to be successful and the people who are giving the money want our students to be successful so when they hear a plan attached rather than a dollar amount just ask for that helps sell them on it if that makes sense final thought quickly Miss Walker please yeah quickly I don't have much time left but I I
103don't disagree with you Michelle says I feel like legislative where it's at I feel like the county did say they have an allotment they're going to give us but the endowment is the question and I will say that with the community task force we're putting together they are invited to the conversation and I am hoping that we can really begin to decide how we can get get hold of some of that money thank you thank you Conley hey y'all um congrats 22 pounds that's pretty impressive Mr McManus for the Turkey um just to piggyback on the CRT question first of all critical race Theory an acronym um culturally relevant teaching anachronum it is wholesale untrue respectfully that critical race theory is not being pushed as an ideology and a pedagogy within the New Hanover County
104School System if you look at the mandated Equity training there is a book by Robin D'Angelo on the suggested reading list called White fragility she's right up there with ibram X kindy I am sick and tired as a New Hanover County taxpayer as the descendant of the founder of Isaac bear Early College stop putting lipstick on a pig you are indoctrinating our children with Marxist pedagogy he's absolutely correct additionally social emotional learning is based largely off of the ideology of Brazilian Marxist Paolo friary okay it's not about my feelings social emotional learning is actually a generative style of teaching where you have educator and learner transformative SEL appeared on the scene in 2019 interestingly enough that's the same time that the United Nations changed the word from gender to gender identity identity politics is the
105Mainframe of every school system in the country that is partnered with castle out of Chicago whose executives are members of Obama's former education cabinet so from this point forward yeah I do have a question and I'll ask it from this point forward I want to know why we are shellacking our children in identity politics and things that are not focused on academics like Reading Writing and arithmetic as Miss Bradford said I also appreciate Miss Bradford's clarification that this is a long conversation regarding the books because a lot of those books are coming from comprehensive sexuality education the printers the Publishers and the people who peddle them are part of social emotional learning that's coming down through this pedagogy so my challenge to you it's less of a question and more of a request is to
106please start being honest with yourselves and therefore with us about what is happening in our education system because our children are suffering I also don't appreciate the fact that the Wilmington School of the Arts which is a elementary school public charter has an anonymous snitch page Title IX the school has children so if it's for transgender protection I think they're a little young for that and if it's for sports there's no interscholastic sports team there so what's the point thank you was there a question Mr Smith I didn't hear a question any response in general the question is what I'm going to do about it can I can I start this please Walker I will just respectfully disagree I'm going to respectfully disagree but I will and I understand what's happening in our society as
107it's changing we had some we had covet happen and I think a lot of us had a had this change awareness that we kind of started to kind of think about and I don't have anything to do with the curriculum in the state I know we follow what we are you know supposed to be following and that is the DPI that is handling that but I'll tell you respectfully as I disagree I think conversations are being had that we've never really had before we're at a different place than we have ever been when it comes to discussion on race and um you know I I don't know I don't want to say too much because I'm I think I'm trying to be as respectful as possible but I will just say I respectfully disagree any
108other comments on this Miss Bradford the gentleman who pointed out what his child brought home that's the way you deal with this if my phone rings constantly with people saying guess what happened in school today with my child so you know I I stood in front of this body as a member of the Paul of the public one night and I said does it exist and I said if it if it exists we need to deal with it but if it doesn't exist we don't ah I messed that up I actual abuse thing everybody kept saying oh it's not happening it's not happening it's not happening it's not happening guess what it was happening so what if CRT is actually being taught what if they're telling little children in third grade that that they should
109hate somebody who's got a different skin color what if that's actually happening in our schools are you prepared to be responsible for that I'd like to uncover whether it's true or not and the only way to find out is for parents to talk to their children every night and then you just go ahead and report it up the chain and you report it to us and if we get overwhelmed with those kind of responses then we know there's something we need to investigate because we can't just assume that we know what's happening in the school unless parents and children get involved in telling us this is what happened in school today with my child one is you know you look at Brunswick County another County they actually put a policy in place addressing this so
110obviously they think there's a concern uh likewise there were two bills in front of the governor which he uh did not sign that talked about that so it is it is a positive you know a concern it definitely is a concern I would uh you know mirror what uh Miss Bradford said I think it is important to talk to the teacher talk to the administrator uh talk to the superintendent if need be let us know what's going on uh because we do need to know what's going on in schools that's why one of the reasons that I think all of us have been in schools a lot more because you you know we hear from parents we hear from community members but also we want to see what's going on by being in schools all
111right thank you thing that it's my turn Miss craval heard you talking about CRT and social emotional learning and how it's not really taught as part of the curriculum well let me tell you that I first learned about social emotional learning in 2005 when my oldest child had introduced his school introduced it to me it was meant to make sure that children had the resources at home to come home to come to school and be active Learners during their day to make sure that they had enough food that they had shelter at home and that they were safe at home but now we have this thing called transformative SEL from the castle website core features of transformative SEL Focus first on race and ethnicity and includes academic content that integrates issues of race that's from
112their website that's their definition not mine so the last board the last couple of years the school board voted to bring in a company called Harmony SEL okay Harmony SEL is provided to New Hanover County for free guess what folks nothing in this world is free so I did a little digging guess who funds Harmony SEL guess who provides that service not just in New Hanover County but all across the country you may have heard of Kaiser Permanente the largest provider of Youth transgender affirming care in the country so why would Kaiser pay for transformative SEL for free across the country well because transformative SEL has a goal for comprehensive sexual education which includes having young children learn all about themselves and explore their identities in every way this isn't some out there in The
113Ether thing this is happening here in New Hanover County and little teeny tiny bits with that third grader coming home asking question about racism it's happening every single day Melissa you ran your campaign on eliminating SEL from New Hanover County Josie you're the chair of the policy committee Pete you're sitting there as the chair of the board I am asking all of you eliminate structured SEL from our curriculum it's not a mandate there is no law in New Hanover County that is requiring it Catherine truwitt's operation Polaris suggests it it's merely a recommendation it's not required let's get rid of this once and for all for the good of all of our children senator any responses going once going twice moving on to here we go um in light of the bullying that Mr McManus
114talked of on the first part of the meeting and um in light of the policies that took away sports for Middle School trans students to play on the team of their gender identity where they can feel belonged and in light of the cuts that that Miss Bradford talked about that we are enduring because it's just it's gone away and we've had to cut positions for counseling for people who are being bullied and may not feel belonged in school what are you guys planning on doing to support marginalized and vulnerable students within New Hanover County Schools including trans kids and including kids that look like me that maybe SEO could teach these kids a little bit about people who don't look like them which is the point of social emotional learning what what are we going
115to do in light of the cuts and in light of bullying and not including thinking about people that are might be more marginalized than other students Mrs Barnard I will say I think mental health is a very individualized content for whoever we're dealing with and I remember after the shooting in Texas I had reached out I think I had reached out to Josh I was a candidate at the time and I said I want to know how we are sharing with our families how to get help because the question really and this is a broad question that a lot of people ask is what is the purpose of schools is because they have they have kind of encompassed a lot of roles some of it is crossover of Parental Rose too and not I'm not
116necessarily saying in a bad way but here we have where can we re-establish the distinction of what is what do schools have to do what can we do and then where is this how can we provide connectors and supports and so for me when I look at issues I believe that schools primary focus is academics I think that developmentally is always an under underlying thing that teachers support I know as a teacher I did but what we can do in the school system them is help to Showcase where in our community like Miss crabill has said that we have those outlets and those access for individuals so I don't think that there's people up here saying we do not want to help support one another it's a matter of whether or not the school system
117is going to be able to maintain all of the support network knowing that mental health is very individualized it is very encompassing and we have to be understanding that the primary goal is academics and so it's this is where the coin and I I say this you know I would love to hear from other people on the board we have three minutes talk about this this is a large encompassing topic and so I don't think it's a one-size-fits all but my best thing that I'm going to try to do is to help provide those connections so we do have access for our students and individuals but we have to help re-establish where the line is of how in-depth schools themselves elves get involved in it's credible so I I kind of liken um appreciate your
118thoughts on that because students who are hungry come to school it's a barrier to learning students who are experiencing adverse experiences at home come to school they can't learn they things are going on in their house every night they can't learn and because they can't focus so the social emotional learning techniques that teachers have are using is to try and bring and one of the comments you said before bring us to Center so that everybody has a chance to succeed in their day so it's it's not a brainwashing technique and it's it is just a calming technique you know like some of us do yoga or some of us do meditative thinking so I just wanted to put it on the same category as being hungry okay thank you all right hi y'all um I
119just want to go on record and say like as a mixed race person in America I definitely experienced racism in third grade so like whatever that's it's real whether you want to believe it or not um the question though comes from stemming off of being able to fund schools and having performance initiatives that can then you know you can go to someone and say give us this money um reading a report here saying that uh New Hanover County schools are very segregated percentage points and proficiency drops in schools that are majority black and not white things along those lines so I guess the question is what are you going to do to help solve segregation and make sure that everybody has an equitable education so you can raise that average up to get the money
120that you want let me jump off I'll be the first person to speak about that you know we're looking at some of the schools some of the lower performing schools um I'm going to jump I'm going to mention Freeman Freeman is a school that has been a low-performing school year after year after year um the first thing that that we have done or we haven't done but the school system has done necessarily is we've looked at the leadership uh we've got a great new principle there I know him personally uh he's turned other schools around uh and you know he can't do it all by himself definitely not as I said before I think we need a parent involvement we need everything we can to help that school and every other school we need to
121raise you know the bar for each and every school but I think we need to look at the low performing schools we have a task force that we're going to have to look at those low performing schools and to do everything we can whether it be reaching out to legislators whether it be to our County Commissioners to get additional resources for those for those students that is to bring them on up there the biggest thing I think is that there's two different ways to look at a school you can look at growth or you can look at proficiency you know sitting down with Mr Buchanan you know he said you know it may be a couple years before we can bring the proficiency up but as long as we grow each student you know not
122a year even you know we need to grow the students especially that are behind a year and a half or two years every year uh and you know that's some of that could be funding you know getting the best of the best teachers there that want to be at that school or schools like that so we can bring uh so you know it's it's one of those situations we have to put all the the minds we can together and support each and every student part of that is having teachers that know the students you know I was very fortunate uh I took over a low performing school and I was able to bring that school in and I had nothing to do with it I'll be honest it was The Faculty because they worked their
123tails off and that's what we need to do is find folks that are willing to do that I think we have a lot of folks that will to do that with good leadership we were able to turn some of those schools around Ms Walker thank you um so I grew up here in New Hanover County and I I know with the history in this in this country and and in the state in this County we we um we had a court case called Brown versus Board of Education and the schools were integrated probably in early 70s right before I started to go to school and so I've never known anything different when I grew up here all our schools were typically integrated schools um you know based on the busing model but about 13 years
124ago that changed that was one of my motivations for running because I felt like what ended up happening with this new model which is they they deemed neighborhood schools model was that you know you go to the school that's closest to where you live and that has created a pocket of some of our schools that are very high poverty schools and unfortunately you know we don't really talk about it enough like we should um to our chairs point we we do have a task force that I'm hoping that we can do a lot for our high priority schools those are classified as RDS and F schools but they need a lot and they need Community Support so if anybody's out there listening and really wants to to be a part of our schools I really
125recommend that you guys get into the schools get your background checks first they get into the schools and really help us because this is what we need thank you foreign I wonder when we're talking about curriculum if there is anything built in that helps to teach the kids to improve their self-esteem because it seems that there have been topics this evening that have been mentioned that make them victims and I totally believe that I mean Bullying happens it's been happening I'm old and it was happening when I was a kid but your parents taught you to deal with it and your friends were taught to not tolerate it so when it happened it put itself out like a fire and it should be happening at an elementary level and it should carry through so that
126our graduates are good citizens and I guess I agree with Miss crabill when she said you know when you go to school hungry you don't think but you can go to school hungry for something but food and I think a lot of these kids are going to school and they're hungry for self-esteem they don't get it at home they're beaten down they don't get it from critical race Theory because they're not feeling whole so if we don't have something in the curriculum that teaches them to be strong and coping little people they won't be good citizens and you know we're talking about a lot of people moving in here well there's a lot of people like me that have moved here from Maryland because I don't want to be there anymore I don't have any
127kids overflowing into your schools but I was a social worker I was a casa Like Pat for a lot of years I bring a lot of quality stuff so what can we do as volunteers you just mentioned it too give us volunteer opportunities let us go into the court classrooms I mean we can I can pass a background check we'll put committees together and help you Miss crabill please so yeah that um all very good points and I wanted to first talk about the um what we are really trying to do in our school system is called the Whisk model the whole school whole childhood community so that we provide students what they need to be successful and not every kid needs the same thing to be successful and so some of them do need
128more self-esteem and that is where their counselor you know can either help them at school or they can refer them for for their family to other places our student support group assist department just moved to the building right over here Spencer building and our hearing room is also going to be used as a parent engagement room so parents can come in and talk with school people talk with some local resources and to get the services that they need and maybe even just use a computer so and we had talked about um briefly at the legislative committee Julie Barnum had brought up what about the community school model and so that is another one that we can pursue so there are a lot of different things that are out there that we are in the in
129in we are either doing now or we're looking to do but to your point about volunteering um Mr Smith's Department all hands on deck if you reach out to them Caleb price is the person that can get you hooked up with a school like if you are if you have a specialty interest we can hook you up with a school if there's a school near your house go introduce yourself to the principal and then um help help there where you can you can't you may or may not join their PTA or start a parent group for the parents that aren't able to you know form their own groups so we do have volunteer opportunities especially with people with expertise that you have so reach out to the Communications Department or to Local School Miss Walker
130so I think what you're talking about too also is there's and there's been some really good reporting on this recently about adverse childhood experiences a lot of that comes with high poverty in higher poverty um populations but also we've just been through covet and I think the whole world went through something with covid and I think we are still in the after effects of all of those terrible experiences that we had and you know and a lot of us have had to be resilient but you know sometimes it takes time for us to come back from that I definitely encourage anybody that's listening to that wants to get in the schools and volunteer to do so because we need we need as many people as we can I think and the community task force is
131meant to look at what we can do as a community businesses uh faith-based whatever it's going to take to bring our schools back up it's not just it's about academics for a lot of us it's not just about that to your point it's about you know each child and how they can learn and to miss crabill's point when you know when you come in hungry when you come in when you maybe clothes aren't necessarily clean or you know you have a lot of trauma at home is very hard to learn and that's where I think the community can really be helpful here I mean and I mean I wish if we had all the money in the world I wish we could have it but money doesn't do everything you know help human beings and
132Social Capital help as well thank you and ladies and gentlemen we're coming up on time this may be our last question depending on the length so you guys were describing SEL there to help the kids okay here's my question I've been following a lot of the policy or committee meetings not just policy and I'm hearing a lot about really wanting to um tone down the Public's voice during the regular school board meetings and one thing I keep hearing a lot is that people should be encouraged to um email communicate by email now I try I try not to email too often because I respect that people I'm just one person there's a whole bunch of other people and um but there have been a lot of times I've emailed in the past you know four
133or five years where I get maybe one reply from one person when I was teaching it was standard procedure to reply as quickly as possible but definitely not longer than 24 hours and um I've seen replies that have been sent to other people that have kind of said I'm not going to answer your email because I'm busy um so but so if you're going to encourage people to communicate more via email then what are you going to do on your side to let the person asking the question know that you read their email and what you're going to do about it Ms Bradford I don't think people understand the volume of what we get for example there were 500 in some questions that we had to read just for this do you know how long
134it takes to read them and comprehend them and think about those 500 questions so when we get 500 emails in a day some of you email two or three times a day it's a lot to respond to every one of those people I'm sorry um there's no point in engaging with the 99th person that's talking about the same thing and they're using the form email that somebody sent around for them to send out but the volume Mr McMahon has told me when I was running you're not prepared for what's going to happen it's an enormous quantity of email that we get do we read them all we hope so but do we respond to everyone it would take we'd have to Triple the time zones there's just not enough time in every day to respond
135to every single email that we get I'm sorry it's just a fact of life they're just not Mr McManus uh I guess my wife's probably looking to see what I say um and listen I try to respond to all of my emails I think some people will I've heard that that I do respond but if your email is threatening or if you're using profanity or you're being nasty in any shape form or fashion I don't respond now that's an exception to the rule doesn't happen a lot but I do try to respond and I spend hours a day but when I ran for the board I'm walking my talk when I was a principal visibility accessibility and listening even if I disagree with you or you disagree with me we still need to have that
136exchange and so I try to respond I don't know if any of you out there in that group I respond to but I try and it does it takes hours matter of fact I have lost time with my family but I made a commitment and I'm going to continue to do it but it takes time and it's not easy we meet all the time we're on the phone all the time you can't have more than three on the phone one time we can't have them beaten before then three because we're trying not to break state law or someone to stand up and say oh by the way before you meet him if there are four of you meeting I don't care what you're talking about you're breaking you're breaking basically the perception for people in
137the meeting so I understand and I did tell Mr I said you don't have a clue what you're getting into as far as the time element so I just have to share and I think most people try to respond but it is impossible it's very tough if you just don't take time away from what you are used to doing and I've challenged Peter who says he speaks at every meeting he's always the most professional individual I've ever dealt with he says saying for us I've met with him twice or three times off campus to listen to him we don't always agree um but we do talk and we do listen and I try to be honest with him and he tries to be honest with me that's all we can do we're not going to
138agree on every single thing no matter who we are or who we aren't so with that Mr chairman we've we've reached our allocated time I can turn it back over to you or remind the audience we have two more of these scheduled and this or a similar format this year and what that's our alternative review uh well once again I'd like to on behalf of the board thank everybody for being here today I think with some very very good dialogue uh some good questions we have some homework to do uh after this uh we will continue to reach out to you and try to get more questions answered uh for you um but with that we are at a time so I would entertain a motion to adjourn a move that we are doing we
139have the first second we have a second way out there okay thank you very much your first and second any discussion if not all in favor signify by saying aye aye aye opposed meeting is adjourned thank you again for coming this evening