NHCS Board of Education Regular Meeting | January 10, 2023

001welcome to the 2023 uh January 10th board meeting regular board meeting I'd like to welcome everyone here this evening and am excited that you are here to join us today we have a very full board meeting and we are excited to be able to move forward into that Ms Billy would you please call the roll good evening Pete wildebear present Pat Bradford I am here and Tracy Barnhart yeah Stephanie craybill Melissa Mason Hugh McManus present and Stephanie Walker here thank you very much at this point we will I will call for a motion to approve the agenda so moved Miss Mason do I hear a second second Miss Walker is there any discussion I would actually like to add one quick thing after our Friday uh Retreat which went I think very well I moved

002that we had a discussion of changing our agenda meeting to an open meeting followed by a closed session do I hear a second second Miss Bradford uh all in favor please oh is there any discussion I'm sorry if not all in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye all opposed that passes seven zero Mr crabill um Mrs graybill's here today the uh you called the District I'm sorry Mrs cradle um to the agenda okay um the discussion discussion board Norms discussed in five minutes and I'm thinking a new business is the best place um and my recommendation would be for action or next steps is to adopt the board doors so I didn't know um but I don't care where the equipment okay and I should have said for the other for my motion

003we should add that to new business is there a second to add board Norm's discussion for tonight second second okay this Barnhill um any discussion Ms Walker um these are board Norms they're they're not policy they're not rules they're just something that you just kind of want to go by and hopefully we all do okay I'm just making sure thank you okay um any further discussion if not uh all in favor please signify by saying aye aye all opposed again care is 7-0 any additionals Mr chairman it's perfect thank you I move that we place on the agenda for discussion policy 3620 extracurricular activities and student organizations under old business new item D for discussion hey uh is there any discussion and that was policy I'm sorry 36 20. 36 20 okay Ms Walker clarification

004because I'm trying to remember 3620 is the uh extracurricular activity okay that's the one we worked on before and who's eligible uh um okay so is there any specific thing that we're looking at because we this policy has come up for from in front of the board a couple times already probably three times in the last year I think we can discuss that at during that time if we want to I guess just before I I approved I just wanted to know that's all I didn't know what the reason was or does it matter do you want to my concerns are procedural oh procedural okay all right hey Miss crabill Mrs crabill yeah thank you now I um was being on the process um recommendations for steps where do you want us to put it

005underneath old business item d is that votable it is I guess my question is are we going to circumvent um is there intent to circumvent account the policy committee on this circumvent is not a word amusing no ma'am so with any no further discussion all in favor of adding policy 30 thank you 36 20 to our old business please signify by saying aye I all opposed no no so that passes five to two can I call for a hand raise absolutely I didn't hear everybody's voice okay would you uh roll call please Mr wildeborg aye Ms Bradford aye Miss Barnhart aye Miss crabill no Miss Mason aye Mr McManus hi and Miss Walker no again that carries carries five two Mr Germany Mr Bradford Mr chairman thank you I move to add a discussion of

006increasing academic accountability student reading proficiency to our agenda we could place it under new business new Item B is there a second I have a point is that going to be covered in the academic every week I don't know but I'd like to put it on the agenda do I hear a second Barnhart any discussion Mrs my discussion would be if it goes on I just don't think it's appropriate we're going to be talking about our board norms and one of them is not to surprise me to surprise each other and this is like the third time that we're doing that and I just don't think it's fair to fellow board members to keep throwing stuff on our agenda is already slated to go to 10 o'clock without any breaks and I just don't think

007we need to add one more thing especially if none of us are prepared Mr chair Miss Walker can I also add that we are going to talk about curriculum tonight because so we could ask questions in that unless an action is meant to be taken tonight um and also I tend to agree like I don't think we or the public who has a chance to look at whatever is going to be presented tonight and I don't think it's fair to the audience or to the public okay uh Ms Billy would you call the roll please Mr wildeborg aye Miss Bradford aye Miss Barnhart Miss crabill no Miss Mason Mr McManus no and Miss Walker no that fails four to three okay with that uh at this point I would entertain a motion to accept the

008um amended agenda so moved so second your second one second second all in favor please this is again the amended agenda please signify by saying aye aye all opposed that carries six to one at this point we have our invocation uh we're very pleased to have senior pastor Tom Hauser of global River Church providing the invocation so if you would please stand foreign first of all thank you for the invitation to come and pray for this what I consider a very important group of leaders organization for the wisdom and the strength to carry the responsibility that you shoulder with all the diverse agendas and the pressures that we see and now you face we need the power and the presence of the Lord to come and give us wisdom in these critical decisions the Prophet

009Jeremiah spoke in Jeremiah 33 3 said call to me and I'll answer you and I'll show you Great and Mighty things that you did not know so as we pray can we join together now in prayer our gracious Heavenly Father we call on you to do what only you can do you promise to do exceedingly and abundantly above all that we would ever ask or think if we would ask you so now we ask for the wisdom and the knowledge the discernment for these to execute their responsibilities may they be like the sons of issachar in first Chronicles 12 32 they not only knew what the season and the time was but they knew what to do in that season so we pray now father for the fear of the Lord which is the beginning

010of all wisdom and as they set policy and procedures may they remember the promise and the warning that comes out of Matthew 18 woe unto you who would lead any of these children astray I know that's not their heart so Lord I pray for the wisdom and discernment may they remember that we not are wrestling we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities of powers in darkness as such We Now call On You Lord of Heaven and Earth we bind all spiritual Darkness division anger rage violence murder racism hatred manipulation control all forms of Witchcraft curses against their families this institution our children the the places of where we meet father I pray now that IMM all immorality and perversion that they would be set free that our teachers administrators and District

011Personnel would be all protected we would see our children Prosper we ask that you'd release a Psalm 91 promise and covering over this area this region we lose your plan and your purposes so that we will see amazing results in education in success in programs that'll become a model of what happens when we honor and unify and join with you you tell us in Psalm 133 that you command a blessing when we come together in unity now we ask all this in the precious and powerful and mighty name of Jesus Christ my Lord amen amen thank you Pastor this time we will have the presentation the colors that is done will be done this evening by the Ashley High School njrotc Color Guard unit foreign [Music] the national anthem this evening will be sung by

012the New Hanover County Elementary honors chorus under the direction of Sheila Hardison [Music] questions [Music] as far as [Music] [Applause] foreign at this time I've asked Mrs Mason to lead the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you you may be seated and I would ask Miss Hardison if she would please come forward and if you would introduce the wonderful singers this evening good evening again these are members of the students from the North Carolina elementary honors chorus that made it from New Hanover County this November by audition so they're going to introduce themselves their grade and the school that they attend I'm Sarah Dwyer fourth grade at connington elementary

013I'm Madison canelio in fourth grade from Anderson Elementary I'm Kira Finn Cannon fourth grade from Coddington Elementary I'm Eleanor probes fifth grade from Bellamy Elementary I'm McKenna Gordon fifth grade from Anderson Elementary take Quinlan fifth grade from Bellamy Elementary Daphne Morgan fifth grade from Bellamy Elementary fourth grade from Blair Elementary Mackenzie Kennedy from fifth grade from Ian Elementary Ellie Guerra fifth grade from Holly Tree Elementary Willow lashford in fifth grade from Anderson Elementary and we did have two other students who were not able to be with us this evening so we were very proud of them this year one more round of applause [Applause] and we would like to invite the Ashley High School NJ ROTC Color Guard if they're still here to come back and we'd love to have them introduce themselves I still

014hear their left I think they may have left at this point uh we will call on um or caress I'm looking here and it's not saying for our uh recognitions and for our January recognitions Mrs thank you um if we could have Mr rotibore and Dr fowles come down we have quite a few recognitions and plaques to hand out this evening thank you guys for coming in ladies for coming back if you would just introduce yourself thanks for being here thank you sir I'm Cadet Dallas Jr I'm Cadet Baldi uh senior I am Cadet cornelli sophomore Cadet Hicks sophomore I'm Cadet Marshall sophomore [Applause] last month we recognized two students selected to represent New Hanover County schools for the U.S presidential Scholars Program I am beyond thrilled to be able to bring one of those

015names back before you it is my great honor to recognize and introduce tansy Brown New Hanover High School senior foreign [Applause] Ed a North Carolina state finalist for the U.S presidential Scholars Program since 1964 the U.S presidential Scholars Program has recognized and honored over 8 000 outstanding High School seniors and encouraged High attainment among all students and we look forward and hope to see tansy's name among those 8 000 this year foreign [Applause] at this time we would like to celebrate the 15 teachers who successfully successfully achieved national board certification this is a great accomplishment and a testament to each of these individuals High Caliber and classroom practices they have achieved the highest recognition as a teacher though this honor is reflective of each individual here with us tonight who achieve their national boards we

016know that our students of New Hanover County Schools will be the true beneficiaries at this time will the following individuals please come up Kayla Thomas feel free to clap as they come look best [Applause] Whitney Moser [Applause] a Bertha [Applause] a lot of problems Amanda yourftatz [Applause] Lisa traflet [Applause] Hillary VanZant [Applause] Annette Jensen foreign [Applause] Caitlin bezella [Applause] Leslie Hobbs Sarah Price [Applause] Kelly Stewart [Applause] Roberta Robles [Applause] and Sarah Parson foreign [Applause] at this time as we do a group picture with board chair and Dr Faust can we give these teachers another round of applause [Applause] board chair board Vice chair and members of the board Dr Faust that concludes our recognitions for the evening what do you think this point uh we'd like to ask Dr Barnes to come forward and you

017will be introducing the district's most recent administrative appointments good evening everyone and good evening how do I get award we of course uh recognize and support and appreciate all of our new staff for this year I want to recognize one person specifically and that is Mr Stephen Buchanan who is going to be the principal at Freeman Elementary School and I did not see him anywhere in here you hear Mr Buchanan he should be running in in about five minutes Mr Buchanan most recently served as the principal of CF Pope Elementary School in Pender County and he's also served as a principal in all past Corner elementary school and he was a teacher here at Wrightsboro and Masonboro so thank you very much and we're glad that he's here thank you sir at this point we

018will turn it over to our superintendent to get the superintendent's report I'd like to take a moment to update the board on an important topic that I recently discussed in Wilmington Business Journal and that is ensuring that students we produce are meeting the demands of the workforce they enter here in New Hanover County our school district local Chamber of Commerce and business Community are working in collaborative collaboration with our educational institutions to prepare students for college career training and employment opportunities recently an update to the County's Economic Development report highlighted the need the need for a younger Workforce and an increase for focus on stem education I'm encouraged by these efforts and optimistic about the positive impact they will have on our students and the overall Community I'll continue to keep the board and the

019public informed about these important initiatives I would also like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to our dedicated school board members join this school board recognition month your commitment to our students and our staff is truly admirable and I'm grateful for you and for your work together we are dedicated to proving an excellent education for all students regardless of their background or location the political environment can be challenging at times and being a school board member may not always come with recognition but I want to personally thank each and every one of you on behalf of our school district and my team for your valuable contributions thank you and happy School Board mom thank you okay thank you thank you very much well thank you very much and I would like to Echo

020that and uh thank all our valued uh Board of Education members for all their hard work for the new folks and for the existing folks that have returned thank you very much I do want to mention uh as far as the board chairperson's report I do want to thank everyone we were one of the few districts in December to bring all of our board members new and old uh to our training as well as our superintendent I think we were the only group that had everyone in attendance and that was very very valuable training uh something some of it was just a reminder for some folks and some new stuff but it was very very valuable so I do want to thank everyone for taking two days out of their busy schedules for that I

021do want to thank our law enforcement yesterday with law enforcement appreciation day so I hope you will join me as we have several members here please join me in around of Applause for our law enforcement [Applause] I am going to mention our Retreat which was last Friday the board has seen each other for three days three business days in a row I think we're still getting along pretty well which is great but we did have a retreat that went about an hour longer than it was supposed to go but it was very very valuable a lot of good discussions going on we did try to get our 100-day um the ideas together we were unfortunately not able to put everything down on paper yet we did have some value a lot a lot of valuable

022things out of that though we do have much more to do uh we we talked about safety one of the things that came out of that meeting which was a definite a a very positive was we now have uh at each School an SRO in every school which is wonderful we have not had that before this year we do have an SRO at every single school which is wonderful we also had some discussions of additional safety measures to keep our students safe and we do have more to do the 100-day plan is not yet finished but it will be finished it's not something we're we're going to put on the back burner for very long we are going to continue to work on that so it might be a 90-day plan by the time we

023get it done or maybe even an 80-day plan but we will have a concrete plan very soon also I spent this weekend working on committee assignments I think they overall are as good as possible everyone had passionate discussions and had really some really great input on what committees they wanted to be on and I think we have some great uh we have some moving around but I think overall these committees are going to serve us very very well in the days and weeks to come so I do thank everyone for their flexibility in working on those yeah I see Mr McManus looking at me but we'll get past that but I do thank everyone for that and again I thank everyone for being here this evening that is my report at this point we will

024do the call to the audience one of the things we are going to change a little bit is to try to streamline that I've asked Miss Bradford to be calling the names and while she's doing that we can go ahead and have Folks up here ready to speak so I do want to remind everyone the board as a whole is working on as you heard norms and trying to work together I actually at this point before we get to that Dr Barnes would you like to come forward again and introduce the new principal because he just walked in thank you sir yes sir I would like to again introduce Mr Steve Buchanan he is coming to us from Fender County and will be the new principal at Freeman Elementary School sorry I swear I thought

025she said 5 30. so I apologize for being late but I'm glad to be here see some familiar faces from the past uh I want to thank Dr Foust and Dr Barnes and Dr Faison and Mr Worthington for recruiting me and encouraging me to come it was very hard to leave for I am a CF Pope in Pender County but I'm glad to be here and and looking forward to Bringing Freeman on the path of progress thank you sorry I was late [Music] Mr Buchanan uh welcome and uh I will see you soon and at this point again I'm sorry but uh I just saw him walk in but we will continue on with our call the audience and as I was saying um please work with us as we work with you thank you

026so much so good evening we're going to try and do this as streamline as possible we're not going to lecture you guys your adults we're adults we want to really honor your opinions we're here to listen to what you have to say we value your input tonight I'm going to ask you if there's more than one of you that signed up on the same topic to consider possibly changing that topic because tonight we are interested in hearing how you think these board meetings the the way the agenda of the board meeting goes how you what your input would be for that so if you want to contribute well we're deciding how we're going to change the way these board meetings look and feel every month tonight would be the night to tell us that now

027bear with me pronunciation of last names is not necessarily my very best skill I'm going to do my best please feel free to correct me if I get it wrong and I will practice until I get it right on the board is your name I'm not going to make you you know you know when you're due to come up just do your thing Stephen Michael Isles thank you for us once upon a time there was a little girl who was secluded and restrained and was afraid to go to school is an overwhelming place when you have sensory needs you see all day this little girl had to self-regulate as she would easily become over stimulated loud sounds bustling children echoey gyms every day she tried to understand rules and assignments doing her best that she

028would be considered a good little girl day after day week after week month after month year after year she worked hard to go to school some days it was just too scary and she could not go someday she would be secluded in restrained because she was too afraid to say goodbye to Mommy and Daddy on other days she would get overwhelmed once she got really frustrated and threw some books and the rest of the class had to leave she felt too ashamed to ever go to that classroom again her mom tried to work with the school so they would not be so scary but the principal told her that the little girl's needs were outside of their wheelhouse now this little girl is in a new school and she is excited to go to school

029every day she rarely gets frustrated or afraid but when she does her teacher helps her she also gets straight A's the little girl did not change she still has sensory needs and gets anxious her needs are exactly the same as they were before but now in her new environment the adults behave differently they understand she is not bad she was just afraid they do everything they can to help her feel safe the little girl was never the problem she just needed adults who would understand her and help her in the right ways this is a lesson for New Hanover County Schools don't seclude children change adult Behavior instead when that happens every child can go to school and feel safe just like this little girl thank you [Applause] and now I've seen her McLaurin Brown

030Oh I thought I had seen her okay Leslie Posey foreign good evening as is commonly recently discussed in the media we are increasingly asked to be aware of words or actions that may lead to people feeling excluded or uncomfortable I would like to address a situation that made me and many others extremely uncomfortable at Freddy's Retreat you began with an invocation in this case it was the Lord's Prayer led by an elected member of the board and the audience was invited to join I have no objection to Christian prayer as a practicing Episcopalian I say the Lord's Prayer regularly in church however there are many forms of faith in our community it is everyone's right that elected leaders not show preference to one religion over another in 2013 this issue came before the federal district

031court when three Rowan County residents sued the County commission for opening meetings with a Christian prayer given by a board member because the prayers were led by board members the plaintiffs felt compelled to stand they objected to the prayers particularly because the board's practice made them feel excluded and hindered their ability to be effective advocates for issues the judge compared specific practices in Rowan County to the just released Town of Greece versus Galloway Supreme Court decision and concluded the Rowan County board's practices were unconstitutional the judge held that when prayers are offered by board members who are all Christian the effect is an endorsement of religion and is more coercive on individuals attending the meeting this case is identified as Lund versus Roane County North Carolina therefore I am asking you as a public body

032to follow the Constitution and make the invocations at meetings inclusive or do as many state and local government organizations and do and Institute a moment of silence instead thank you [Applause] good evening tonight I'd like to address concerns expressed at Friday's board retreat about the call to the audience process there seems to be a concern about multiple people speaking on the same topic it's difficult to express urgency and provide evidence in two minutes it makes sense that people who believe similarly would coordinate to present as many facets and details as possible without repeating each other's information if you are truly listening to what is being said you'll realize the ask is the same but the details are different limiting speakers limits information more concerning is this I've attended board meetings for five years I've seen

033speakers use their time to talk about topics that have nothing to do with education or New Hanover County I've heard people disparage the president use their time to campaign speak about community events or advertise their websites or business none of this is actually actionable by the school board the key word there is actionable there are groups who speak monthly on actionable items these are Advocates who have spoken to parents Educators and staff and experts on issues that affect New Hanover County schools and that can be addressed and fixed these Advocates are not paid they've chosen to devote their free time to improving the educational environment for both students and employees yet the message I and I'm sure others are receiving in return is that our advocacy is not welcome why are we lumped in with

034people who just want two minutes of attention who haven't verified their statements with experts and who don't have actionable concerns that affect New Hanover County Schools is it because if you hear us you need to act I realize the board is busy and sometimes it must be frustrating to see the same people over and over again but surely you can see the difference who leaves right after they speak who stays who shows up at meetings where there is no call to the audience when you realize who stays for an entire six-hour meeting and who shows up despite not getting to talk you know those are the true Advocates please continue to allow all the people who have care to have their time don't become known as the board who silenced The public's voice thank you

035foreign [Applause] hello my board um so today I bring in front of you the life vac this right here we had a teacher named Trisha Toes that was given the heroes award last school year because she gave the Heimlich maneuver to a student and I brought this forward to the board uh trying to get this place in all of our school cafeterias it goes on your mouth and it actually is basically a plunger and it saves people's lives the gist of it is that I brought it in front of the board I got a first and second and magically it never made it on with the last chair it was crabill that's you um so I'm hoping maybe since we already have a first and second from February of 2022 we can get this put

036back on the reason that this came back up is because I told y'all that it would eventually cost people lives we had a special needs student pass away down in Florida because she had cerebral palsy you can't give someone with cerebral palsy heimlich maneuver and again like I said I'm a big man I was big in middle school high school if missed hose would have been my teacher and I would have been choking I'd probably be dead so I had already priced this out we get a 20 discount for twenty four hundred dollars we can get 43 of these units for thirty five hundred dollars we can have one of these and every single one of our special needs classrooms where they eat their lunches and we can have one in every single cafeteria I

037don't think that's much to ask especially since people legitimately it's one of the top reasons for children dying uh another thing we've we're having some Growing Pains I know I bust your chops when you do something wrong you did something right I appreciate you calling the port of order at that meeting yesterday unfortunately the point of order was breezed over it wasn't handled properly and then another thing that was not handled properly was that we had an amendment on top of an amendment that was considered hostile or unfriendly per Roberts rule 12th 12th edition I believe is what we're on that's not how that's supposed to work it wasn't supposed to go that way and when you're talking about changing people's lives you know and their lives are in the balance we should be getting

038this correct we need a registered parliamentarian and we need to discuss getting rid of the attorney group not no offense sir called audience please leave the general at the beginning and please look to do individual agenda items I appreciate y'all's time thank you [Applause] and we send our Consultants to her family please convey that to us for her loss Jessica Cannon good evening thanks so much for this chance to speak my name is Jessica Cannon and I just have a quick three things I want to share first of all I have brought hard copies of the petition that we emailed to all the board members last week this petition is from community members with over 280 signatures we have asked that the board go ahead and continue to support and protect policies that support and

039protect all of our students in particular our lgbtq plus students and our minority students uh in the past few years it seems like social emotional learning diversity equity and inclusion and lgbtq plus affirming policies have all been for some reason controversial we know that there is a robust body of research that shows that these three policy initiatives are extremely helpful for students increasing their performance their test scores their well-being so as part of our petition which I'm going to share all these copies with you tonight I'm also providing a list of the resource the research that backs up all these policies it's it's a short compilation there's a ton of research out there but I want to make sure as a matter of convenience that you have access to this information and then the last

040thing you all talk to your board retreat a lot about making sure the public was involved and I commend you for that you also talked a lot about making sure that this board was less acrimonious moving forward which I also also think is wonderful so thank you for that and thank you so much for your community service and your service to our students good night thank you Miss Ken [Applause] Denise you're now you know you know good evening I'm Denise yunon president of New Hampshire County SEPTA this is a quote from the United States Developmental Disabilities Act disability is a natural part of the human experience that does not diminish the right of individuals with disabilities to enjoy the opportunity to live independently enjoy self-determination make choices contribute to society and experience full integration and

041inclusion in the economic political social cultural and educational mainstream of American society there have always been children and adults with disabilities like ethnicity gender or race the presence of a disability is one of many natural characteristics of Being Human the real problems facing people with disabilities are attitudes and actions reflected in Social and educational policies and practices that continue to focus on fixing people with disabilities or punishing people for their disability by denying them their basic human rights this happens especially with children who have unseen disabilities but they're not broken and they don't need to be fixed to many children with disabilities are segregated in self-contained special education classrooms children with disabilities are subjected to punitive discipline like seclusion restraint suspension and expulsion at grossly higher rates than their non-disabled peers this is documented illegal

042discrimination it is worse for black and brown disabled youth behaviors that occur as the result of a disability shouldn't be punished consequences and Punishment are two different things a healthy consequence for unacceptable Behavior can be a positive behavior intervention or making amends a consequence should never be harmful to a child please end cruel unusual and discriminatory punishment Above All Else let's work together to fix this system thank you thank you two together as the Board of Education you are here to set policy policy should be based on what's best for children it should not be based on the Staffing training or resources that are needed those are the responsibilities of the administration based on the data from this past August through October only three schools secluded students just three it sounds like you're very close

043to no longer needing the seclusion policy it wouldn't take a lot of Staffing training or resources to have those last three schools become ready to you to end their use of seclusion as a tool by the beginning of the 23-24 school year another reason you're very close to no longer needing the seclusion policy is because you already have school safety policy 1510 I hope you've had a chance to review it by adding the six words and risk of serious bodily harm to that policy you keep all of our students and staff safe the revised policy would limit seclusion to those rarest of circumstances involving the immediate threat to safety and risk of death it extreme physical pain disfigurement or impairment of the body the seclusion would last a few minutes until law enforcement arrived all

044children deserve to be treated with dignity and respect do what's best for children vote to end seclusion and use school safety policy 1510. thank you [Applause] good evening board members my name is Marcia Morgan and I'm here tonight to share concerns I have about a few statements made by candidates last fall regarding potential policy changes they are considering that can be perceived by students and the public as discriminatory towards minority and lgbtq plus students as a former educator I care deeply about the well-being of our students and have seen the devastation that prejudices of any kind can have on young minds as a retired army colonel I've seen the benefits of creating and maintaining a culture of respect and inclusivity of understanding our history and culture as essential elements for the success of any organization

045and as a former candidate for elected office I know our area's economy and demographics well I believe creating a fair and exclusive environment for all students is the right thing to do on its own merits it's also the smart move for our local economy as you know the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce recently launched a re branding effort for our area to help us put to help put us on the national map and what is being referred to as the talent War attracting Innovative forward-looking companies in the green energy and Tech sectors which are driven by young people who value inclusivity is crucial for Wilmington's future discriminatory educational policies would harm our County's reputation and hinder our ability to attract these companies and young professionals just as hb2 damaged our state's economy I urge the board

046to consider the potential harmful outcomes of any new policy that would be perceived a discriminatory please prioritize the well-being and success of all of our students regardless of race gender identity or sexual orientation thank you for your service to our students and to our community thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Miss Bradford asked an important question at Friday's board retreat she said how do we respect the people that we want that want to talk to us one way is to provide them with convenient opportunities to speak to you show respect for working parents with small children by changing the day of the week or the time of day your town meetings are held to allow parents to participate show Respect by holding the meetings in various schools around the county meet where the issues are

047show Respect by listening to concerns and taking timely actions to resolve issues and problems showing respect includes having dialogue with people with whom you may disagree next week love our children we'll be reaching out to each of you individually to meet over coffee so we can listen and learn about concerns with ending the practice of seclusion and using the school's safety policy instead the hope is these conversations will produce a better understanding and find solutions to issues as Miss Bradford said we are here for the children we have to do what's best for the children that is why we're here too we are advocating for the best policies for all children we look forward to meeting with you in the near future thank you thank you [Applause] good evening I have been at both your

048retreat on Friday and at the special meeting on Monday listening to you at both it appears you are having problems getting clear that as elected officials you have a different Power position in relation to the community that power brings responsibility you are the one who can be accused of coercive Behavior of others because of the power that you hold in relationship to the audience present to the parents to the people that are here if you lead prayer it can be coercive to ask people to stand and participate or assume that others share your Faith's prayers the best practice is to invite Faith leaders of all faiths and humanists to do the invocations this is one way to be sure that you do not end up with a court case about the separation of church and

049state you made the comment that you don't like being the case law at all your meetings that however was not the original reason I wanted to talk tonight I wanted to come to ask you to do an audit of all the resources in all your school buildings making sure that all teachers have what they need to teach the curriculum that you have chosen I live in the sending area for Freeman and I have learned of teachers lacking readers to go with curriculum manipulatives for Math and there's no laminator for the elementary school to make more permanent materials I used to live in the Ogden area and there was never a concern about a lack of materials We Are One School District [Applause] good evening my name is Melanie Cooper and I just want to congratulate

050everyone that made it to the board through the election process and I hope that you have considered what you have gotten into as far as looking out for our children because that's what it's all about being a brown person standing up here my understanding is that the greater percentage of issues that happen within New Hanover County when it comes to unnecessary discipline happens to students that look like me it's not anything new we've been fighting this thing called racism and separatism for many centuries but if you want to just zoom into it at least the last 50 years here with the New Hanover County Board of Education we've had to stand up for things that are done to us just because of our melanated complexion so I hope that you come in here in this

051new 2023 with new thoughts and not carrying on like the people who created this Division and separatism that exists within not only New Hanover County but just globally I just want to take everybody back on a little English lesson that s e is a prefix occurring in load words from Latin where it means apart we should not be exercising any type of action that secludes our children that separates them that has a prefix of the word apartheid so I would suggest that for 2023 that we end these seclusions continue with the policy 1510 and do the right moral thing and thank you for hearing me today thank you [Applause] good evening my name is Karen White my family moved to Wilmington about 10 years ago and both of my children went to New Hanover County

052middle and high schools and are now in North Carolina public universities we are huge Believers in the value of public schools but I am here to speak to you today because of things I've heard about your potential plans for the future of New Hanover County Schools back in the 1980s I worked as a teaching artist in public schools both in inner city and rural areas even way back then there was a good deal of research showing that reading increases empathy in children my personally witnessed how the Arts and literature can give kids especially kids who don't fit in all kinds of gifts success outside of the traditional classroom setting self-esteem tolerance and yes empathy right now we are living in a time of pretty intense tribalism a time when we need empathy more than ever

053when we need an understanding of History to avoid repeating mistakes of the past without empathy without perspective humans are vulnerable to manipulation liable to act from fear and Hate even to commit violence towards people who are different from them who don't fit into our tribe who practice a different religion who have different colored skin who live in a different part of town who don't fit into whatever box we have decided is the most important with this in mind I'd like to give you all a little assignment just a little assignment there's a classic short story that's been assigned in high school curriculum thank you very much thank you thank you [Music] [Applause] hello everyone happy New Year I'm Gail major following up on the grievance that I presented to you verbally I at the last

054meeting uh you should have all received it and hopefully had time to view it it's regarding the book research that we have made and presented it went we have a case File with the sheriff's office that is considered a blanket order so we will be adding it throughout the year not just on books but other things that we find concerning within the schools um I do have the USB on the research that we have I'd like to present to you Mr will Deboer uh that is a thousand pages of the research that we have done for two years and some of the books uh a lot of them are in the obscene or pornographic but they are in various stages uh the concern for the grievance came when we saw a lot of that uh

055that could refer to mental uh concerns so we have physical harm and we have mental harm so that's why this is so important um missions the mission statement that we presented at the top of the grievance will be going before legislation I would like to read it quickly uh let me read the research part in case I run out of time we are volunteers first of all and we strive to inform you and that's what we are doing we're inform you of the state laws and the federal laws we research and document both civil and criminal laws pertaining to certain literature that has been distributed to our schools over the years the various categories in pre-k to 12 the level the books that we have found this is evidence obscenity pornography pornography exploitation child abuse

056gender ideology slavery incest mental health anguish self-harm inflammatory racial and religious commentary illegal drugs and underage drinking that's to name a few I have a stack this high thank you please Jenna shimwell Jenna thank you get out of here my name is Jenna shimwell and I'm a nurse practitioner here in Wilmington as the daughter of a public school teacher and the proud graduate from public school I grew up seeing the true greatness that public school teachers can Inspire and experience the support that these teachers can provide support it's a fitting word it means to give assistance but it can also mean to hold up and to help bear the weight of something when it comes to our at-risk youth our lgbtq plus children are often in need of extra support which frequently comes from their

057teachers or their school counselors this may be the first or the only safe space a child has identified to discuss their gender feelings or concerns there have been proposed policy changes that would limit lgbtq plus clubs and books and worse policies to support to force public school officials to reveal or out these children I would urge the board to support them by keeping their confidentiality until they're ready to share and support them by continuing to create safe spaces for them to grow research has shown that support or policies of inclusion for our lgbtq plus youth lead to improved academic performances which will in turn allow classes to meet Benchmark standards for Education conversely research has clearly shown that lack of support and discriminatory practices lead to anxiety and depression as a nurse practitioner I have

058witnessed the lifelong negative impact the depression and anxiety can have especially when experienced at a young age I have always supported public education and now as a mom of a first grader at Pine Valley I vow to continue to support our Public School teachers so that they can support my son and every single child regardless of their sexual orientation or gender and I hope that the members of this board will do the same [Music] [Applause] Michael Sheridan darn he was going to talk oh I'm just going to talk about called audience Susanna Westman did you call me or oh okay I'm sorry it happens to me all the time it's okay uh good evening I am Dr Michael Sheridan and I will be reading part one of a two-part speech my friend um Merit blalick

059will be reading the second part later on the call to the audience is just one of the ways that the public gets to speak directly to the Board of Education I'm really glad you discussed it at the board retreat on Friday however I am concerned about some misleading statements that were made about being unable to sign up the domination of one topic and the need for a greater range of topics first Miss Mason said that the call to the audience goes up and within five minutes it's full what data did she use to base this statement on my friend Mr Blaylock signed up at 10 o'clock this morning that means the sign up portal was open for at least 26 hours let's get the official data from the Communications office there must be a time

060stamp on when 30 people have signed up last month there were 25 speakers that means there were five open slots available for additional speakers that weren't filled the speakers represented also seven different organizations which in alphabetical order included blank canvas awareness fax 2.0 League of Women Voters love our children moms for Liberty the North New Hanover County Educational Justice and SEPTA a special education PTA so that's a pretty diverse group second Ms Bradford said that you generally hear maybe three topics during the hour-long call to the audience what data did she base her statement on let's go to the videotape in a little while Mr Blaylock will let you know what the videotape shows as he shares the many different topics that were addressed last month thank you thank you [Applause] good evening and thank

061you I am Suzanne wertman I am a registered nurse and a midwife and the proud mother of a New Hanover graduate go Wildcats I've cared for thousands of mothers and babies over the 17 years I've made Wilmington my home and because this board of education is dedicated to the success of each student in New Hanover County please take a pause and exercise due diligence before changing any current policies put in place to achieve the district's mission and vision during last Fall's election campaign candidates defended a plan to defund diversity equity and inclusion programs and staff altering the curriculum of the 1898 Massacre a ban on social emotional learning and reversing lgbtq plus affirming policies in schools in 25 years as a trauma-informed primary health care provider I've witnessed the health effects of the trauma caused

062by systemic racism and homophobia on individuals and the community there are serious negative consequences on physical and mental health and these result in substandard school and job performance adverse childhood experiences when not addressed can damage an individual for a lifetime the healing power of emotional regulation and Stress Management and learning how to connect to others can positively impact mental health learning ability decision making and eliminate disruptive classroom behaviors please carefully consider the harm these policy changes could bring know that Decades of research by trusted experts have shown that SEL and Dei efforts improve School environments student achievement and graduation rates confident connected students who feel safe and supported learn and develop strong character leading to lower rates of crime and unemployment trusted public servants you took an oath to ensure students best foundation for Life

063fostering strong young citizens will build a brighter future for our community thank you thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] happy New Year everyone happy New Year to the board new board members I am my name is Robert Bellamy I'm here in support of Love by children and um I had a I had a chance last year to meet most of the board members and and I see there's three new board members that I have not met yet and I am in the beginning Miss Bradford said you know we need to start something new maybe get to know each other and change some things and I think um oh you know just going I you know I had written something but it wasn't really what I needed to say because uh Peter had told me to write

064to talk about seclusions you know I mean I hear so many things that are happening with the board I'm just hoping that this year we can find a way to make you guys come together and I'm not going to say you don't use common sense but look at every situation differently and a lot better uh when you when you put these kids in seclusions these kids are totally frustrated just like right now I am frustrated but I'm going to try to control this kids can't control frustration because they're too young when I read about this six-year-old kid shooting a teacher it I it broke my heart six-year-old kid takes a gun to school and shoots a teacher I mean what goes on inside this kid's mind to make him do that you know but I

065understand when kids act to that point they need to be someplace else instead of in school but uh you have kids that are frustrated because um they see keep saying the same results over and over again nothing changes so they they get into a maybe an argument with the teacher and they get put in seclusions things like that should never happen uh you know I mean you know this is this is I wrote actually I wrote this poem here written by Deborah chips oh God I'm sorry [Applause] hello my name is Deanna Tyrrell and I'm here to discuss the importance of the evidence-based social emotional learning methodology adopted by New Hanover County Schools July 2021 and supported by SBE policy s-h-l-t-003 and State Senate bill 476. so what is social emotional learning or so I'll

066summarize New Hanover County Schools Susan Cole's description in a recent whqr article cell is about students engaging in learning environment setting goals and working together this is done through the Five Pillars self-awareness self-management social awareness relationship skills and responsible decision making the pillars help cultivate skills and environments that Advance Learning and Development so what are the benefits to our students and to our community one cell supports the well-being of our students we have conversations with our our teachers all the time we discuss school every day in my house with our student and we've heard the struggle students face like how to interact in a classroom or even how to collaborate with their peers this tool helps Educators facilitate the learning environment students must be mentally ready to learn cell supports this two sell improves academic

067achievement according to the metadata analysis that measured outcomes for 270 000 students cell participants increased academic performance by 11 percentile points that's amazing you know you as the board want academic achievement increase sell supports this three cell builds lifelong Future Ready skills I'm an HR professional with over 20 years of experience I can affirm that the cell pillars directly relate to skills hiring officials look for in qualified candidates think of interview questions building strengths identifying relationships soft skills are highly sought after as a parent and advocate for students mental health I ask for continued support of cell in the classroom thank you [Music] [Applause] thank you for sparing me you can uh can canamoto pennies yeah thank you hello School Board my name is Audrey panties and I'm a working parent and this is my

068first time speaking here I applaud the school board for embracing Equity diversity and inclusion or EDI programs in our schools and Advocate the support and funding for this important work as a Buddhist Asian female growing up in the 80s I didn't see myself on television in the media in my teachers or in leadership at school I never raised my hand like all of us for various reasons I felt frustrated invisible different and struggled to fit in now here in New Hanover County Equity diversity and inclusion programs aim to create a more inclusive and welcoming environment for all students regardless of their race ethnicity religion gender sexual orientation ability or socioeconomic status research has consistently shown that students who feel valued and supported in their school Community are more likely to thrive academically and emotionally it's

069Common Sense honestly EDI work was being done where I was growing up my mom brought food to my country of origin potluck in kindergarten but the potluck wasn't enough our New Hanover County School Board EDI committee has already accomplished a lot and laid groundwork that is more mindful comprehensive and inclusive at the committee's fantastic meeting last night the leadership provided by Malcolm Johnson was educational succinct inclusive and fostered the voices of parents teachers students and Community Advocates alike I'm grateful for the top down work the committee is doing to benefit my third grader and hope my kiddo grows up to contribute bottom-up like the high school high schoolers I saw at the meeting last night please continue to support EDI in our schools because students who feel valued and supported in their school Community are

070more likely to thrive academically and emotionally [Applause] good evening I want to bring to your attention the book stamped assigned to the AP language in comp class at Ashley High School this book contains Marxist ideology inaccurate reframing of history untruths and disrespect for our nation and the Bible teachers need to give students reading assignments with alternative viewpoints as per New Hanover County School guidelines policy 3210 so that contrasting viewpoints can be compared within the context of primary source-based history so students can critically think I have a couple examples on page 13 the authors present contrived fiction as a reinterpretation of Genesis 6 8 about Noah on the ark saying that because of the evil tyrannical and hypersexual ham who's Noah's son God would curse Ham's children to be dark and disgusting black and bad the

071authors state that the story is an example of curse theory that anchors and would justify slavery in America stamped also contains misinformation and disrespect of our founding fathers on page 42 it says Ben Franklin started the American philosophical Society in 1743 and it was basically a club for smart people thinkers philosophers and racists whiteness was what Franklin was bringing to America through his Club of ingenuous fools one of those walking contradictions was Thomas Jefferson now we can all acknowledge that no one is perfect and America does have unfortunate moments in history and they need to be studied and acknowledged but the founding fathers like Rush Franklin and Jefferson are very accomplished they started the American Bible Society they established universities served in Congress established abolitionist societies released their own slaves and risk their lives in

072sacred honor and Fortune so that we could live free in the United States selecting sources in our schools that respect the founders The Bible History multiple perspectives in the country live in would be proper as per 200 years of precedent in the USA thank you very much [Applause] Frank Carter that's not him Mr Carter going once okay Angela Caney foreign Schaefer's Tupac Reardon kakowski if those names don't mean anything to you you probably aren't qualified to occupy those seats protected on that dies which our kids are not what is the price of Integrity in a moral compass do tell because the actions of some of our school board and our cabinet have been unconscionable better question what is the price tag on expensive litigation to try to excuse the fact that this District protects pedophiles

073over children while denying Justice and inflicting trauma even a two million dollar price tag won't buy back their safety we work to encourage Community involvement and advocacy in our children's education while you send a strong message to deny that right Crable notes important upcoming business to justify Banning parents what's the business that you wish to silence Advocates from speaking out against cheetah man's ethics 360 reports to be filed when they're all marked result resolved without resolution and what good do the complaints do the victims of sexual assault and Miss Bradford just as that same parent for even reaching out to her even though you work for us deflection hoping that we'll be too distracted defending ourselves from your baseless accusation to stay focused on your negligence more deflection and waste on even more attorneys for

074insurance company instead of taking ownership from what this school system has allowed to happen and you feel threatened by Mom advocating for her child imagine being threatened in your safety actually being compromised by Predators insulting Mr McManus stated that his job is to observe and when the school board attorney tells me not to do something I'm not going to do it no matter what I think neither the board attorney or law enforcement is here to protect our children or Community they're here to protect the seven of you who I'm not sure why we elected if you're going to blindly follow yesterday we saw more passive aggressive retaliation for speaking truth attempt to silence all silence us all but I believe we'll always have a microphone with the media to reach the public and the answer

075to that question I asked you before none there is no price tag when it comes to selling our integrity or failing to protect children Stevens good evening my name is Eileen Stevens and I am an AIG council member and I'm here to ask for strengthened AIG Staffing at schools especially those elementary schools with fewer AIG students my son is a fifth grader at Masonboro and he was lucky enough to be identified as early as kindergarten when he was being pulled out at reading sessions out in the hallway and he also has the benefit of my having grown up in AIG which was called talented and gifted back in the 70s and 80s but I was driven by a very education minded Japanese mom kind of the prototypical tiger mom right so I had an advocate

076and now I can serve as an advocate for my son um I knew exactly the types of Concepts and questions to ask to make sure that he got the services that he needed but what about the others there are many many children across our district from all different types of backgrounds who are extremely bright and they deserve appropriate resources as well but some of their parents are working so hard and so long and quite possibly just have no idea what questions to be asking or how to advocate for their children and that's where I think the strengthened AIG Staffing comes in we need folks on the ground with their eyes peeled looking for these bright children advocating on their behalf and encouraging them to reach for their best and therefore that is why I'm asking

077for strengthened AIG Staffing at all schools especially those with fewer AIG students thank you very much Rolanda Hernandez good evening at Friday's board retreat miss Barnhart shared some concerns she had about communication between the between the public and the Board of Education she wants the board to get the full scope of what people's opinions are I share her concern a good place to start is by educating the public on what they should do if they have a concern about education in New Hanover County for example if a parent has a concern about what's happening in her child's class she should talk to the teacher first if they have a concern about an all school activity a program they should talk to the principal concerns about district-wide programs and practices can be addressed at the central

078board their assistant superintendents and other administrations who could answer those questions and finally if you have a concern about a school board policy reach out to the members of the Board of Education there are many ways to do that sign up to speak at the monthly meetings like today attend uh board excuse me townhorn town hall meetings that are held three times a year and there's also an email address for all the board members may I suggest that answering all of those emails should be added to the board notes please communication is a two-way street and we look forward to your responses to our emails in the coming months thank you I'm reading part two of the earlier speech about last month's call to the audience 12 of the 25 speakers talked about multiple topics

079here are most of the topics that were covered by all of the speakers excessive Banning of an activist for a year Banning obscene books school calendar keeping books for critical thinking removing CRT CRT is not in our schools ending EDI keeping EDI ending ESL keeping ESL teaching true American history indoctrination of students lgbtq suicides the need for Parental parental rights and parental rights already exist using Robert's Rules of Order hiring a parliamentarian structural racism joyful reading instructions representation and teachers that look like students school choice condition of the school facilities using school safety policy 1510 ending seclusion Justice for sexual assault victims special education graduation graduation rights following State education statutes student Behavior student effort honoring student voice termination of the superintendent's contract teacher planning time working conditions for teachers and the value of the

080high school diploma I agree with Mr McManus when he said give this process a chance and see how it rolls I'm not sure it's broken using data we see that the call to the audience is not broken My Hope Is that before board members make public statements or decide on how they are going to vote input thank you thank you very much thank you very much NC case NC case I didn't think so Tiffany Salter greetings um the call to the audience is the voice of the public and needs to remain available and open I'm a Public School parent I've worked in our schools as an educator and as a mental health therapist I'm well versed in many school matters student staff well-being and in mental health I'm also aware of what is happening across

081our nation as groups who wish to dismantle our Public Schools work to mislead the public with harmful Scare Tactics public schools are critical to the health of our democracy and often they are a safe haven for many children do not fall victim to the misinformation Public School curriculum is available to us all CRT is not taught in our Public Schools teaching facts about U.S history is necessary and yes sometimes it's uncomfortable but that's okay it takes courage to say the hard things out loud it takes courage to trust that healing and connection can come from learning about our painful past but Banning books and muzzling teachers not the answers we must respect our teachers and Librarians they are the experts in their fields Bell hook said most children are amazing critical thinkers before we silence

082them according to the National Alliance on Mental Health suicide is the second leading cause of death among youth aged 15 to 24 in the U.S the rate is higher among lgbtq youth one protective factor is connectedness social emotional learning or SEL is a valuable tool in the development of empathy and connection in states that have laws supporting the lgbtq plus Community there's a decrease in suicide rates for that population I believe that providing confidentiality for these students can literally save lives we must protect our students we must protect School staff protect public schools and shine a light on the misinformation being spread lastly if you want to see a change in our schools pay the staff we have pay them more hire more staff to support them public education is our community's most valuable asset

083so invest in it thank you [Applause] foreign was founded in March 2021 our mission is to educate the public and school districts in North Carolina about practices that facilitate learning and to advocate for changes in policies that will improve the quality of life for children and their families our first project was to end out of school suspensions for four five six and seven-year-olds we use data from the school district to show that many of our youngest Learners were being kicked out of school for minor offenses such as disrespect and insubordination we knew we had to meet and listen to people in the community we started with the individual members of the Board of Education including four of you you advised us to meet with the superintendent Miss Barnum school principals and Educators you encouraged us

084to keep showing up at board meetings and to keep advocating for children we followed your advice and after 13 months a meeting with Community leaders educating the public and growing our membership we successfully ended a policy that was harmful to our children in addition to advocating for meeting with Community leaders we have educating the public and growing our membership we successively ended a policy in addition to advocating for children we have spoken at board meetings about providing education providing Educators with a livable wage training and resources full Staffing and more planning time we will continue to monitor monitor suspension data work to end other policies that harm our children and advocate for our Educators and parents we look forward to working with you to improve the quality of our schools for children and our families

085thank you everything [Applause] thank you to all our speakers this evening we a very very great job and I do appreciate you trying to mind the the two minutes as much as possible so thank you for working with us on that uh at this point I would hope I would entertain a motion to go into closed session I make a motion to enter in a closed session per uh pursuant to North Carolina General statute 143-318.11 a136 to consider personal matters and to maintain the confidentiality of personal records under North Carolina General statute 2015 scene Fest 319 through 321 to prevent the disclosure of student education records and person personality identifiable information rendered confidential under the family education Rights Act and privacy of 21 USC one two three two G okay second that uh all in

086favor of going into closed session hi hi all opposed we are in closed session my time is 6 30. all right foreign thank you foreign right now foreign because gonna go with that thank you good news foreign thank you test one two years engineering so if I ever had to get up there [Music] um foreign [Music] thank you Adventures foreign albums [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign easiest technology foreign thank you reasons why are you happy please okay I want it foreign thank you come on hello foreign thank you over here assuming it's approved foreign thank you that's way way for everybody else at that time yes [Music] all right board members if I could get you back please all right we're back in Open Session uh welcome back we will continue uh with our

087next bit of information which which is actually information uh starting with the audit presentation oh I'm sorry yes I did I thank you Miss Graybill approval of the minutes uh I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes as presented Mr crabill okay um policies we voted on like a b e f g and we pulled all four right and then we talked about them but um our minutes ago I don't believe that maybe you guys correct me our minutes don't reflects that we ever voted on those other fours just say that um Mr Voldemort called for the vote so I don't know if I couldn't actually take her here because it was for all of them or or one of them or I don't know if we just wanted to tighten that up probably

088a good idea one of me or succinct with what we say foreign okay did you hear a second to um okay go ahead all in favor please signify by saying aye online opposed they are approved as amended thank you for that I'm just getting ahead of myself here today at this point we will continue with our audit presentation we asked Miss Sutton to come forward with that please you have at your desk a copy of our annual comprehensive financial report and then clipped on the inside is our audit letter you have there as well um this information has also been posted on our website and it includes our audit report and so now I'm going to turn it over to Adam support from Anderson Smith and wike who's going to give our audit presentation good

089evening board members superintendent again my name is Adamson Park I'm a partner with Anderson Smith wake we are your new independent Auditors this is our first year conducting the audit of New Hanover County schools and I'm here tonight to just kind of briefly go over some of the items found within the report talk about some key numbers and point out some of the important letters within the statements an audit is a verification of your numbers but this presentation will go over that process and a little bit of an analysis of your numbers just looking at what went up what went down what to look forward to our firm does over 70 of the 115 School District audits in the state I personally work with 20 other 28 20 school districts so again the analysis just

090comes in comparing the information we've got gathered here versus other districts that we go through as Ms Sutton explained this is this report in front of you is a comprehensive financial statement there is 70 Pages or so in here that are the audit report that back in November was submitted to the local government commission as per the contract between the board the auditor and the local government commission that 70 page audit report was submitted reviewed and approved by that local government commission the three-page letter that's clipped to the inside just lets you know that that audit went as planned we had no difficulties applying accounting and auditing standards there were no disagreements with Management on how to apply standards the timing of the audit went well we were able to submit it before the December

0911st deadline again just an overall summary letting you know that the audit win is planned the again the report in front of you includes that audit report plus about 30 pages of statistical data towards the back that's unaudited that gives a 10-year analysis of information about the county and about the school system about your buildings about your demographics the number of teachers just again 30 pages worth of data that is unaudited but is Incorporated in this comprehensive report so what I like to go over is actually our audit report and after you flip through the first few pages then Roman numerals you get to page number one actual number one this is the again really the the start of our audit report page one is the audit opinion letter so again we're hired to form

092an opinion uh about the verification of these numbers the first page the first paragraph is the audit opinion paragraph and it basically states that in our opinion the financial statements presented here are fairly stated and they accurately reflect the fund balance and the net position of the school system as of June 30 2022 it's what's called an unmodified clean opinion foreign again we commented on neck position and fund balance and you might ask what is the difference between those two and a lot of these statements center around disclosing your net position in fact the first two exhibits are about your net position your net position includes the hundreds of millions of dollars of value in your buildings as well as liabilities for hundreds of millions of dollars for your portion of the state pension plan

093your portion of the retirement health benefit plan so anytime you're reading through these statements it's key to note whether you're reading especially in the mdna or even in the back statistical sections whether you're looking at net position or fund balance I believe fund balance far more important than that position in fact Your Child Nutrition fund has a three hundred thousand dollar net position because of the retirement liability but yet has six million dollars in the bank so there's a disconnect effect between net position and fund balance but across the country every governmental entity reports net position it's so that you can compare the school systems in North Carolina to the school systems in Illinois to California it's a nationwide standard but again I think net fund balance is more important than that position that is

094what management has to appropriate in next year's budget it's really what management uses to um really just manage the finances of the school system so if you turn to page 14 again it's exhibit three it's not the first two exhibits but this gives you uh your fund balance for each of your governmental funds it's essentially a balance sheet assets and liabilities the first column on page 14 exhibit three shows that your general fund has 18.3 million dollars of fund balance that's a decrease of eight million dollars from the prior year of that 18 million dollars of fund balance you have eight hundred thousand dollars associated with inventory inventory is cash that's already been spent yes you have value in light bulbs and plumbing and supplies but you no longer have cash available to appropriate so

095that fund balance is considered non-spendable so you have eight hundred and twenty one thousand dollars of inventory so you really when you're looking at your available fund balance you should really take that non-spendable out of the equation you also have a million dollars of prepaids the timing of when you have to pay vendors sometimes requires you to pay an invoice before you start receiving services so you have a million dollars of dollars spent but will benefit the 2022-2023 fiscal year you prepaid for a service that you will get in uh the next year again it's not dollars in the bank because you've already written that check it's also a non-spendable fund balance but you will receive that benefit in the 2022-2023 year you also have 1.8 million dollars of restricted fund balance for State Statute

096stabilization for State Statute this is to cover your receivables and your encumbrances you have open POS at the end of the year for goods and services you plan on buying you have to appropriate fund balance to cover those North Carolina laws are written to prevent you from spending money you don't have just like non-spendable fund balance if you have open POS that fund balance is restricted because it goes to cover those open POS so you can't appropriate for additional expenditures with those same funds that are going to kind of be set aside to pay those open POS you also have eight million dollars assigned for subsequent years expenditures that is uh assigned for next year's budget as of the date of these financial statements you plan on spending eight million dollars according to your budget

097in the 2022-2023 year whether that comes through fruition or not that's a different story but you have assigned eight million dollars of fund balance towards that usage leaving you with 6.6 million dollars of unassigned fund balance to me the two numbers that 6.6 and the 18 are two of the most important numbers in the financial statements your total fund balance and then what is unassigned available for appropriating past June 30 2023 you also have another local fund the other restricted fund this is fund eight ten years ago those funds were combined those were your local sources uh but again 10 years ago certain state federal and other sources of revenue were peeled off and created an other special Revenue fund that fund has 9.3 million dollars of fund balance available of that 9.3 2.8 million

098is restricted for uh actual state and federal programs like Medicaid NC Pre-K basically funds that you have to spend those dollars on those programs the other 5.9 million is um assigned for subsequent years expenditures but that's just because it's within the special Revenue fund you can only have one unassigned fund balance that can only be in the general fund so when I'm looking at any District and looking at what you have really available locally I like to look at the unassigned fund balance in the general column and the simply assigned in that other special Revenue which is 5.9 million so again those combined give you about 12 and a half million dollars of fund balance available locally foreign you also have 951 000 of fund balance and capital outlay that uh Capital outlay usually doesn't

099carry fund balance this year your Capital outlay balance sheet is unique and that you receive four million dollars for uh Capital Improvements to athletic facilities but you have not spent it yet so it's sitting in cash and Investments as well as sitting or as well as sitting as deferred revenue a liability because it's Revenue that you have not spent yet so you haven't earned it yet mm-hmm and then you also have 2.2 million dollars of fund balance at the individual School level those are the individual School accounts again this is the balance sheet for your governmental funds uh if there's any questions on any of these balances I'm happy to answer them I think the key takeaways here are again the fund balance numbers in those two local funds the fact that your general fund

100used eight million dollars and your other restricted Revenue it actually went up 3.9 million dollars and that was mostly in unrestricted sources your federal grants fund uh you received a lot of Education stabilization funds coveted money you were able to charge indirect cost on those funds there is a cost to manage those funds the overhead um the um DPI increased the rate of indirect costs you're able to charge of those funds and so you were able to collect 4.5 million dollars of indirect cost Revenue in that fund resulting in an increase of 3.9 million in that fund so combined really between those two local sources you used 4.1 million dollars of fund balance if you turn to page 16 exhibit four this is the income statement for those exact funds that I just went over

101this shows you the revenues and expenses that came to those changes in fund balance that I talked about along with the balance sheet so you can see that that First Column your general fund towards the bottom the net change and fund balance 7.9 million other restricted Revenue increased 3.9 your Capital outlay fund used Ford 106 000 in fund balance and your individual School funds increased 196 thousand dollars in fund balance what's important to note here the revenue sources you can see that the state public school fund provides almost 180 million dollars of your Revenue compared to 94 million dollars in local you also received 49.2 million dollars in federal grants funds this year when I look back at 2019 that number was 15 million dollars you received 31 million dollars of Education stabilization funds this

102year those coveted dollars those coveted dollars they're not intended to supplant local dollars but there is some benefits gained obviously by having 30 million dollars of federal funds to spend I think one of the challenges for every District going forward is will be how to wean yourself off of those federal dollars and take them back up under local foreign the other special Revenue fund again that uh the revenue Source at the bottom the other the 7.3 it includes that 4.5 million dollars of indirect cost Revenue and again to me those are the two most important exhibits for your governmental funds within these statements you also have one business type fund page 22 so business type fund is different than a governmental fund it is developed and accounted for as a business uh it is in

103the business of selling an item or a service that service is school nutrition it sells food but because it's a business type fund those pension liabilities are recorded directly here on the balance sheet so fund balance and net position are one in the same for this fund and so instead of looking at the fact that there's 326 000 of net position slash fund balance in this fund I really look at cash as the key indicator of Financial Health and the change of cash as a indicator of how well the fund did this year so if you look at the top of exhibit seven page 22 6.5 million dollars of cash and cash equivalents on hand as of June 30 2022 that's an increase of 3.1 million dollars from last year we are seeing these Statewide

104every every District adding cash to Child Nutrition because the kids all went back to school full time every kid ate for free and the reimbursement rate for those meals was higher than average so when you look at your federal reimbursements this year they totaled 13.8 million whereas in 2019 there were 9.2 million so that replenishment that receipts those receipts of those Federal reimbursements against Statewide helped Child Nutrition funds recoup money used over the previous two years of the pandemic and really give a nice cushion going forward because the challenges going forward kids are not all eating for free now the supply chain is causing increases in cost of goods sold as well as challenges with salaries so being able to add 3.1 million dollars give yourself 6.5 million as a cushion obviously capitalizing on those

105High reimbursement rates in the current year as a very positive uh aspect of these statements all right page 23 is the income statement for that fund you can see your food sales were nine hundred and four thousand in 2019 that was 2.5 million so while you received more Federal reimbursements you're not able to sell food because again all students eating for free and then your three uh your 13.8 million dollars of federal reimbursements are in the middle of the page and again that compares to 9.2 million from 2019. foreign nutrition fund um again I think a very positive outlook here for the 2022 year anticipating not being able to add another three million dollars in 2023. so members we have any questions probably were Child Nutrition in fact typically the department where this cash on

106hand comes from solely or do we have other things that of the the cash in the Child Nutrition fund is from food sales or that Federal reimbursement yeah there's no other Revenue sources other than uh some interest um and maybe the sell of some kitchen equipment if you ever redo uh um Miss Walker Child Nutrition is separate budget all together it is it's a separate fund uh if if you know fund numbers it's fund five it is a business type fund with its own budget but it is different in the uh different than the governmental funds because it has additional assets and liabilities directly in the general ledger that the governmental funds don't have so on top of a budget for your governmental funds Finance also has to again track all the value of your

107assets uh that we have to calculate your portion of the liability again that state liability associated with pension and health care benefits those get added to these statements there but they're not a part of your basic general ledger but they are on this one five Child Nutrition that's that's held separate and it's held separate because Child Nutrition is a Federal grant because of that Federal reimbursement there's a lot of rules that are very particular about making sure any money received from food stays in food any other questions if not I have a few more things to point out um page 52 this is just to kind of give you some context after those main exhibits there's 30 pages of footnotes that go over all of your accounting policies all the data related to your roll

108forward and fixed assets detail on your receivables on your payables on your debt there are 10 pages of data regarding those pension and post-employment benefits and page 52 is a schedule showing those benefits so while you don't have to worry about the liability which is again hundreds of million dollars when you're looking at the pension plan and the post-employment health care you don't have to worry about the actual liability that's a state liability what you have to worry about is the amount paid for every dollar of covered salary page 52 gives you an example or gives you some context this year for every dollar of covered payroll you had to spend 16.38 cents towards pension plus another eight cents towards uh Health Care basically almost a third of every dollar you have a retirement expense

109that goes to the state to cover these uh pension and post employment benefits and you can see that this year on 183 million dollars of covered payroll your required contribution just for the pension piece that the retirement rate is nearly 27 it's made up of a couple pieces the biggest one being pension and then the second biggest one being health benefit but you can just see comparison wise for the pension piece you had to send 30.1 million dollars to the state and when you look at 2014 that number was 11.6 million so again those are covered salaries if they're state employees the state covers that but any a locally funded employee any job that's a fifty thousand dollar salary quickly becomes an eighty thousand dollar expense because of all of the benefits uh whether it's

110pension Health Care it again a challenge going forward for districts that have such high local funding page 57 is a budget versus actual comparison of your general fund I just point this one out in case you again you want to kind of look at the general fund a little bit more detail it has budget versus actual no budget violations nothing unusual here just a little bit more detail and after that you have 30 pages of statistical data a lot of it is 10-year grass there's also again data about the county about just overall statistics for the school system but if you turn to page 98 we're almost there it's the last part of our audit our audit is actually twofold the first one being Financial which we win over the financial statements the second one

111is compliance so while page one had an opinion letter for the financial statements page 98 starts three more letters they're both again opinion letters one is over internal controls one is over compliance with State rules or state compliance for State programs and the other is over Federal compliance for the federal programs that we audit as major these are all three clean unmodified opinions as well we needed no deficiencies and internal controls we noted no exceptions or question cost or state or federal dollars spent inappropriately in the programs again that we audited for compliance we're required to audit at least 20 percent of your federal dollars every year in every major federal program has to be audited once every three years however your coveted dollars are considered high risk and have to be audited every year

112so this year for federal programs we audited your EC cluster and your two covid-19 dollars the biggest one being the education stabilization funds that totaled like I said 31 million dollars you also receive covet dollars through the state public school fund for some year-end bonuses paid in December of 2021 that was considered a federal program and then your EC fund it received some coveted dollars enough to trigger it could be a high risk therefore being required to be audited so those programs all were audited for compliance and we noted again no deficiencies or question costs where are those three uh so the the letters are on page okay 98 and then page 106. okay it gives you uh this shows that the the names of the federal programs that's where I found that list and

113that EC cluster it's a cluster of several programs all under uh exceptional children um then there's the covid-19 education stabilization funds and the covid-19 state fiscal recovery funds those three programs essentially were your major federal programs this year and on page is your state programs the state public school fund it has to be audited every year it is hundreds of millions or 170 million dollars of funds it gets audited for for compliance every year and then your CTE State months of employment and your CTE program support funds those were your major State programs again those have to be audited once every three years as well and after that your scheduled Awards one last number to point out on 110 in the middle of the page this shows you that 30 million nine hundred and seven

114thousand dollars of Education stabilization funds there's it's made up of about 10 programs here uh all again covid-19 funds all set to expire in 2023 2024 uh whether they'll be reallocated some other way or not left to be seen but again one of the challenges going forward is figuring out how to not need 30 million dollars of code funds all in all a very good report I think uh in summary you had quite a bit of fun balance um available to be used you used eight million dollars of it if you use eight million dollars of it again I would hope to not see another eight million dollars the year after that for your size for the fact that you are so heavily locally funded uh a little bit of cushion uh in fund balance

115is always a good thing especially with the unknown with these coveted funds and the fact that some of the spending of fund balance and some of the spending on these uh with these coveted funds those are going to be annually recurring expenditures there's a higher cost to education through technology and uh programs that just is not going to go away and so um you know again I think those are the challenges that we noted for you going forward but you definitely have had a healthy fund balances still have enough recovery for the the next few years I see the usage of fund balance is almost like trying to steer a freighter or a aircraft carrier it just you don't go from using eight million dollars in one year to break it even the next doesn't

116turn around like that it takes a little bit of time to reevaluate those recurring expenditures versus non-recurring but again all in all a great report and I appreciate the opportunity to have a school system as a client and appreciate all of Ashley's hard work in preparing for us it was not easy anytime switching Auditors isn't easy but while doing it while utilizing a new software definitely has its challenges and so we appreciate all the hard work and look forward to doing doing it again in a couple months do we have any questions yes Miss Walker thank you Mr chair I have one question you were referring to the fund balance and you you're hoping we don't go too far down on that do you have an opinion or a recommendation on how we we should

117keep it um no I I don't like to give out numbers in fact it was uh in this this year there was a blog post that came out from uh maybe the local government commission talking about what is commonly thought of as the recommended amount seven percent for 20 years seven percent has been thrown out as a recommended fund balance amount that is more for counties and cities that have actual taxing Authority um it is different for school systems uh across the state you are different than Union County Schools or Johnson County Schools um and it it's based on that that allocation or that percentage of local funds versus State funds versus federal funds uh being heavily locally funded you need more fund balance percentage-wise than a district that has higher Federal revenues simply for

118the fact that there will be unfunded State mandates that you have to cover locally your chain every time the retirement rate changes it costs you millions of dollars out of your local fund because you have so many employees funded out of or paid for out of local so it really um it I can't give a number but I always like to look at it in context of how many years you have left to do the same thing you did last year so eight million dollars you did it this year you can do it again next year and you can do it for one more but after that you're you know should we have a natural disaster sorry I was just making a comment should we have something like a natural disaster it probably would hurt

119that's right no uh that's that is a major concern and something to think about uh we do the audit for Duplin County Schools when Florence hit they were at risk of not being able to dry out their schools because they didn't have enough cash and that the BPI helped and fronted money but definitely dollars on hand for an emergency when Servpro you know needs to spend millions of dollars drying out flooded schools you have to have access to cash immediately so um again being being Coastal being locally funded um your fund balance needs I think are a little higher than um Inland other counties thank you Dr Fest I was just going to say the the eight million eight million what you were stating is if that would continue that would drain it all the

120way and so we're also with the 754 positions at a local we're having to the if there's a state increase we have to supply the um the difference yeah um with with the with the local dollars yep and so we never want to be called where we can't make payroll that's right uh there is the bright point of the indirect cost Revenue over in fund eight really helped many you know you didn't really use eight million of local you have some other funds available uh but uh it's my understanding the districts that are adding fund balance for indirect cost the plan is to use those indirect costs to fund those State those Federal programs those coveted programs those coveted expenditures after the kova dollars expired and I think that's a part of why DPI let

121you uh let districts charge a higher rate and even go backwards and charge rate from old uh prior year expenditures all in to help you use up those federal dollars and also to provide a cushion for the fact that when those funds expire there are going to be continued costs any additional questions if not thank you very much for the presentation and for all your hard work all right thank you I will carry on with uh Miss Sutton again yes you have in your handouts I believe a copy of our budget calendar and this is also available on our website as well I wasn't gonna go through and list everything that's included on the calendar but I did want to point out a couple of things there so as you know this is a living

122document and we will adjust it as we need to add meetings or if there's any other adjustments to dates or things that need to be made we'll update the calendar as you can see we've already started the budget process we actually started in December in January the 19th is when the divisions will submit their budget requests to the finance area and the on February 14th Capitol outlay recommendations will be submitted to finance then on this February the 17th we will um release preliminary position allocations and meet with the principals the week of the 20th then on February 23rd is when we will be having our Capital outlay committee meeting and then on April 4th our goal is to bring a budget back to the board for informational purposes and have you guys have an opportunity

123to review and ask questions and then on May 2nd is when we would come back to the board and actually ask for approval of that budget so we could take that and submit it to the county as a county request okay are there any questions about the calendar questions about the count so on April 4th is when we will present a recommendation to the board and you won't be asked to approve anything at that time you'll be able to have conversations and ask questions and if need be we can supply additional information to you after that meeting and then you would be asked to approve on May 2nd and we have as you I didn't read that out but we have a board word work session scheduled for March 14th and that's when you would

124be reviewing the information that has been submitted and we would be having more in-depth conversations the hope is after that meeting when we present to the board you've already had opportunities to look at that and that would be a final chance to ask questions so the March 14th though is smaller groups of us the April 4th is all of us together actually the smaller groups would be before I think we're starting those next week if I remember correctly so that this would be a board work session the whole board together Miss Walker absolutely [Music] so we know that that's a great question we have a special board finance committee of made up of three board members so whenever that committee was created we talked about and and maybe the board can give me some clarification

125that we didn't want it to be um around the budget that we wanted to bring those conversations to the board as a whole and that the finance committee would be just those conversations would be budget I mean Finance updates not necessarily budget items but if we want to actually have that be a budget brain buddy like a budget committee budget information to that group first before we bring it to this group I'm more than happy to do that if that's what we decide describe it yeah I just wanted to read what we uh proved for the finance committee was improves communication and transparency and financial reporting budget development and budget reporting provides input and feedback to the superintendent and staff so um I had the same question is that at what point I mean I

126think the attempt was for three of us to be on a committee to learn more about what's going on and then to work with our our fellow board members to make sure that all of the questions were answered and for us to Lobby together um and have Ashley as our leader as our subject matter expert that's but it's a finance it's it's a standing committee so that means that um one of us you know well coming up one of us will be assigned to share that committee and then actually through our substance so that's what it says so I just did what again clarify so what happened last year we tried to do that it said bring it back to the whole board so that's why she didn't work in those dates of that because

127we were doing the final he was in the the um the committee last year for finance we didn't have one last year right but it was then that we were trying to get one of the boat was we can go back and watch those videos where it said bring it back to the board because the board needed to make the final decision all right so that's why we were um it wasn't worked into there but she can go back and work in those it's not a problem to do it but we were just following on what we had done in the past that's it yeah and the the intent of this committee was not to usurp the whole board's decision making it was to help at least three of us understand more in depth what's

128going on so that we can help explain behind the scenes so we're not all you know lining up at Ashley's door or at Dr faustor to on the way to ask permission to go to Ashley's door you know to talk about this so that's what the um finance committee was all about not to be the budget developers because we definitely voted that now um so yeah so maybe we just need to have a committee all that out well and do that before maybe before presenting the whole board maybe kind of like have that run through with them and then hey I still have a question here and then he brings it a whole board we could add that at least one with that one date maybe two days and we can certainly add those committee

129meetings to this account any questions any other questions I'm sorry okay thank you any other questions thank you very much what's this out next we are excited to have our Miss Faison uh Mr Kilpatrick and Mr Lake hockey okay uh join us uh as we highlight some instructional actions and initiatives be utilized in our schools both at Bellamy and Sunset Park I am going to invite the gentleman come up and have a seat and they will do the second part but on Friday I share with you our learning loss and of course we've had learning loss alike across the state and across our nation but I also share with you our instructional framework and some of the things that we're doing and I think I want to show it to you I want to show

130you our teachers and students in action so those of you in the audience you get ready too you're going to see why we are so proud of serving New Hanover County Schools so we're going to start with this video it's only about six minutes but it will engage you because you are seeing teachers and students in action [Music] so last year I did use I can statements and I immediately that's how I started my lesson was by showing that I can't statement telling the kids who were going to be or they were going to be doing by the end of the period this year I transitioned into doing a different time period where actually we've done with our fluency we move into and I introduced my lesson to letting them know exactly at the right

131of the learning part that this is what they're going to do for the rest of the day and that by the end of the period this is what they should be able to do I can multiply two tell me what the word multiplication means so at the end of each lesson I spent about 10 minutes with the exit ticket um and each child shows me individually their exit ticket if they're able to show it to me correctly then they walk to the board and they signed their initials on it saying that yes I can do this lesson I have completed my target learning Target for the day I think it gives them accountability for themselves that they're learning I think that it has created a motivation like I've had some kids that will come back

132the next morning like I did not sound but here I did this last night can I please sign off and I'm like absolutely for sure so it's motivating them and they let us say their name anything up there you know it's also a way for me to know whose names it's up there so I can you know go back and make sure that by the end of the week or remember the topic we have everybody's name up there but it's definitely become a motivator for them I think that they have responsibility for their own learning and they sign off [Music] foreign how many of you have seen pickleball courts or played pickleball Jaden was already bragging about how he has his own paddles and he's professional so we'll see so most of you know what

133it is so it's a we are going to be demonstrating specific rules of pickleball so you're understanding we are going to be practicing all our different various locomotive mover movements okay so what's a Loca motor movement foreign so our learning Target today is I can identify the elements of plot and literature you should have opened up to your graphic organizer that we took notes on previously and we are going to do our review game on our bloket the last thing we have is your correct versus incorrect paper if you will each take one and write your name on top and we're going to keep tally as we play our blue kit on plot foreign the caramel and the nougat what do you think this represents which is the lithosphere look back at the background information

134for that definition which would be the asthenosphere which would be the upper mantle right and down your page pull it apart about half an inch so kind of like this not completely apart but half an inch so you kind of see the inside start to squeeze out about that far go ahead and do that this represents a Divergent of moving apart boundary this is our divergent boundary so why don't we just I'm going to call some of you out or volunteers so we can go out on the board and I have the types of business ownership it says four but you know they're more than those so who wants to try this first and just put a Target you know like imagine where you feel at this point in time as far as the business

135ownership so learning targets have helped me because it lets me know like where I need to focus on like in class like if um teachers talking about something I can just go oh that's on the learning Target and so I know that I need to focus a lot of my energy into that specifically and maybe like not less on the other things but I know like the main thing of like what I'm supposed to be learning the teacher without learning targets usually like I don't comprehend as much as I should or like understand what is going to be on the test if they don't have a learning Target because learning Target basically sums up what we're supposed to be learning about but the teacher with the whitler you know our kids I've always been able

136to like do really well in the test and everything because I know exactly what we're supposed to be learning about it is helpful to see how deep do I need to go into this based on so if you look you know the white back there is I don't get this at all what are these words and then the yellow is I got this I could teach the class so if I have a lot on the outer edges I know got to go a little bit deeper if I have a lot on the inside then maybe we can move through it a little bit quicker so it helps kind of pace the day point zero negative one is zero negative one on this graph yes yes right here so when I heard learning Target that was

137what popped into my head was a physical Target um and how the center of the target is the bullseye and obviously if the students are aiming um for the center then then that's that's showing us that they have met their target right um if they're on the outside of the learning Target and that's showing me that they maybe don't understand the material I have them when they come in the class they move their magnet where they are when they read the learning targets upon entering class and then when they leave class then they have an opportunity to move their magnet and that kind of gives me some feedback on did they understand the material or do they feel more comfortable in the material now than they did when they entered class I think that when

138we had the discussion about it this year when Miss Wooten was talking to us about it the discussion was about making it meaningful and getting the students involved really I think we were posting learning targets it was for us to make sure that we were staying on target as a teacher but we wanted to make sure that the students were being involved as well so by making it interactive for them you know we'll have them read the learning Target when they come in the room in the morning then they'll finish the lesson for the day and then they move their target again at the end so just invest them in the process I think so it's not just something that's written on the board just for the sake of doing it but we're actually getting

139the students involved in the process as well foreign targets going well in their schools and just pick some days and Chase kind of went out with the team and they did some video and so I want to thank Josh and and Chase for that because um it comes to life and I just want to share that with you so that is one aspect of our instructional framework as you know we are lifting up three aspects we're lifting a learning targets student engagement and um making learning visible and we hope to definitely bring that back with you as well but that was the teachers and the students I have two of our what do I say rock stars when we rock stars tonight you are rock stars two of our um fabulous principles here and if

140you will um I think I actually these two principles we had several principles in our district who exceeded growth I'm sorry I have it right here who exceeded growth and it's not working who exceeded growth but I found it important to hear from these two principals because their schools are on total different ends of the spectrum and they both did this remember we talked about the the growth and we talked about we want to be in the blue you're looking at gentlemen who are regular in the blue and I'm not going to steal their Thunder but I asked them to just come and share what it takes because the one thing that I want to make sure we all know is how hard our teachers principal students and parents are working we have learning laws

141but we are addressing it so I'm going to turn it over to Mr lohaki and Mr Kilpatrick how you doing my name is Diego Lee hockey I'm the principal at Sunset Park Elementary School this is my uh sixth year there as a Sunset Park shark and 14th year overall as a principal sometimes it feels like a hundred but most days 14 is still a lot um question to answer as far as like how are we able to well actually not that hard to answer because you saw in the videos the teachers I mean to me it's the teachers are the ones that are doing that heavy lifting they're in front of the front of those students every day they're the ones that should get the credit you know I'm I'm here speaking but you know

142if it wasn't so late I would have had some of my teachers come and maybe have them you know at least here but um so what we do at Sunset Park and what I've done you know throughout my career is focus on that academic growth every student can grow and that that goes from the you know the most struggling exceptional education student to the highest academically and intellectually gifted whatever you want to label them you know they all deserve to grow academically and so if you put a focus on that that every kid can grow and um that's what I do in order to make that happen focusing on Reading Writing and math and doing that there's only so much we can control we can't control the home life we can't control the trauma that

143they've been through they're currently going through but what we can't control or at least have some illusion of control is between 7 15 and 230 and that's the school hours at Sunset Park they're allowed in the building at 7 15. sometimes they well we have double runs on buses but you know so sometimes three o'clock they stay till but anyway between the the academic because it's from 7 50 to to 2 30. and so that's the time that I try to focus but all our energy is what we can do there you know not overburden the teachers with a lot of after school meetings before school meetings different things of that nature just focus on the academics during that time and how I do that is I'm sure you're aware that you know evos is

144what we're measured on as as a as a school and what teachers are measuring on whether you agree with it or not that's the measure that is used to measure the effectiveness of a teacher and so I make sure I go over that every year you know how how we did on our evos how we can improve and I also have individual evos meetings every year going over you know digging into that data to let them know some of their strengths some of their weaknesses how we can grow each individual kid so it does do a great job of breaking it down to the individual kid and how they did so they could each grow regardless of where they started um you know I like to focus on what we can do not what we

145can't do like some of the things that you may think are barriers what are barriers or you know one of the highest free and release free and release reduced lunch count schools in the county we have the highest um El you know English language Learners multi-language Learners in the county we have the highest of that we're one of the highest percentage of um we are the highest percentage of newcomers and and you know recently we've got a lot of students from out of the country and so that's a challenge because they don't speak English they didn't weren't exactly you know during they didn't get much of an education in their home country but they're here now and and I feel like if they're walking in Sunset Park Stores they're going to be able to grow

146we're going to do what we can regardless of where they start it's where they end up and a good teacher is going to be able to grow them every time and we also have very high homeless population so I'm trying to say is all this trauma and all these different things those are just factors we don't dwell on that because a lot of times you'll see people saying oh they can't do this because of that or we should not push them that hard because of this but you have to get through that because every kid deserves the best education they can get regardless of what the circumstances are or what happened before they got there while they were you know with us and so of course data drives instruction everybody knows that I feel like

147you do have to allow teachers to have some autonomy you know the teacher makes the program not the other way around I mean every three years we'll get a new program some people will like it some people won't but the bottom line is the teachers are the ones that are delivering that content and they're they're taking their skills that they've learned and their experiences and helping kids grow academically and um of course North Carolina we're we're based on our testing is based on standards so we make sure that we address the standards rather than you know the program sometimes don't address the standards so it's again teachers work very hard to dig into those standards to to make sure that they're being addressed so the kids can grow academically um we utilize support staff to

148ensure academic focus and you know a lot of times we hear what we don't have what people aren't happy about but bottom line is New Hanover County Schools is very resource rich in my opinion I've worked for other school counties and you know it's harder to do that because if you don't have the counselors you don't have the the support staff then the teachers end up doing it which takes away from instruction so we're very fortunate at Sunset Park to have a school counselor we have two actually we have a school social work or mental health worker we have an mtss coach intervention as to you know look that's the learning lab I call it and that's where the kids get their regular instruction and then whatever whatever they're lacking then they can go to

149the learning Lab at appropriate time to to make up those deficits so they can catch up you know in to their peers or where they're supposed to be instructional coach I also hire certified tutors with my title one money so they're able to work with small groups for the kids that need it and of course I have um three multi-language learner teachers because I have such over 50 of my population is Hispanic so New Hampshire County is resource rich and I'm very fortunate for that because all those positions are needed to help those kids grow and you see that it's working so in the end it's all about high quality teachers building professional and caring relationships focusing on core academics and our motto at Sunset Park is every child every chance every day and so

150that's what we we try to do you know there's not a lot of time to waste especially with the learning loss with kovid you know we were already behind a lot of my our students in some schools and so that just put us further behind but that means we have to work that much harder to catch them up and I feel like we're doing that [Music] sorry I talk really fast I don't know how to change this thing but all right well if you could see it there would be a um a chart that shows okay there it is um the only reason I put this up there is that you know according to the Mob the school performance grade model in North Carolina 80 of your school grade is proficiency is 20 is growth

151so a lot of people want to focus on that 80 but I like to focus on that 20 because like I said that means every kid counts it doesn't matter if the kid doesn't pass the EOG then that's that to me that doesn't Define that child one three hour test a couple couple times a year is not going to say whether or not that kid's gonna be successful in the future I mean it's an indicator but the bottom line is wherever they're at academically they can grow and so we get that 20 model and if we wouldn't have exceeded growth every one of those years we would have been considered a feeling school a priority school I probably wouldn't be standing up here right now so it's the hard work of those teachers that were

152able to grow those kids more than what the state predicted them to grow so like I said again the credit goes to the teachers I just have one more one more slide um so I wish I this is the most recent picture I had so no offense to Dr Faust or myself but we should have been in the back and the teachers should have been in the front you know because they're the ones that are that allowed us to get that sign have it for the last five years you know because they just work so hard every day so again I'm standing up here talking but the teachers and the support staff teacher assistants my assistant principal I mean they're just phenomenal people and they they work so hard so I encourage the new board

153members if you haven't been out to the schools yet you know go out there and see because you'll see for yourself that's a very challenging job but they just you know it's rewarding and it's making a difference so all right thank you let's see if I can make ah here we go um it's a privilege to come and speak to you tonight my name is Bert Kilpatrick I've been the Principal of Bellamy since 2015. I started my career in New Hanover County schools in 1999 I was I've been a math teacher at Hoggard and a math teacher at Murray an assistant principal at Williston middle assistant principal at Pine Valley I worked at Sea Rec and I've been at Bellamy since then so I've done about everything except prenatal maybe I don't know I feel

154like I've covered just about the whole area but I want to talk about a few things in particular and I listed them up here and the first was our high quality staff with experience so throw out a few stats and I did this last year when we had our um I think we had our work uh like recruitment day and I started getting some stats and we have 45 certified staff members that have an average of 19 and a half years in the field of education for those certified staff members our three three through five grade teachers have been at Bellamy for over 12 and a half years around 12 and a half years and they have an average of 22 and a little over 22 years in the field of education so we will

155lose teachers to retirement we'll lose teachers to moving to you know they they move to other parts of the state or the country or something like that and we're able to hire folks who come to Wilmington because everybody wants to come here and we we hire folks who have 10 15 years experience from wherever they've been whether it be this state or another state we find that we're able to attract those types of teachers to our end of the of the county we're data driven like like everyone says our teachers make adjustments to small groups and intervention based on the results of the classroom and District tests what we try to do usually with me and my coach and my AP is we look at the data and kind of compile it for them and

156put it in something that they can look at and they can use because you know I mean I'm really I really like making spreadsheets I think it's kind of a joke around the county is I make spreadsheets but I wanted to be useful to people not just something that says look I was able to type numbers in a box or something so we get these uh this information to the teachers um we use our PLC time to listen to teachers needs provide instructional coach support brainstorm ideas just see anything we can do during those times to best support the students in our school um we talked a little bit about teacher autonomy so Diego and I talked about what we're going to talk before we got here and we both shared a few ideas and

157we tried to keep it a little bit separate but we do all do pretty much some of the same types of things but we make it work at our respective schools and that's what we all do in the county you know we all have a different school we all have different staff we all have different demographics we have different areas we have different needs and we have to make it work at our respective schools so uh I don't know someone showed somebody my uh my little uh spiel about this and and we said that's that's pretty much the nail on the head with us at Bellamy is uh you know we take the curriculum materials and standards and we make adjustments and refinements that come from from years of experience expertise and the mindset that

158we ourselves can improve so that we can deliver instruction that will consistently grow the students so we want to keep getting better so that we can help the students getting better if they're coming to us say they they were in the 12th percentile in some tests last year and we can get them to the 22nd this year or the 25th we feel like we've done a good thing they may not pass it this year they may not pass it the next year but you know we get them for the first three years they start taking tests and hopefully they can be proficient as you know deemed by the state but we always think they can grow we think they can improve we use our specials or our electives is what we call them our art

159music PE media Specialists to support classroom instruction they complement what we're doing in the building recently I was watching an art class and they were talking about Native American hieroglyphs and they were making something that complemented by second grade was doing with learning about different tribes throughout the country and the geography and and our art teacher is phenomenal and our specialist teachers are from phenomenal with complementing what the staff is doing and I think that's what they see every day and you know if you're a second grader and you're learning about it in English or you're learning about it in social studies then you're also seeing in some of these other courses we can't say enough about our assistant principles when I wrote this it sounds like I have two or more I don't I

160have one uh Diego has one we're lucky to have our assistant principals um their instructional focused assistant principles that can provide resources ideas and support for teachers in all areas I'm very lucky mine I worked with her when I was an assistant principal at Pine Valley and she was wanted to go into uh to the administration and I was lucky enough to be able to hire her a few years later and I knew what her work was at Pine Valley and she complements our instructional coach so we have we try to cover all the areas of K5 because we feel like we kind of have two little schools we got a little K2 school then we got a little three five School sometimes and that's the way it goes we do try to also minimize

161after school obligations not just for our staff but for our students we know their work we work we try to work them hard it's almost like a practice like if you think about a sport practice we try to work hard while we're there and then that way when they get out of school they can go do dance and they can go do karate and do all the other things that that everybody likes to do and we like to give our staff the time that they can and a lot of them are doing planning and they're doing grading after school anyway we try to minimize those things because we want 100 of the time between like we said between 750 and 225 to be engaged in high quality instruction we feel like if we can just

162hit that time that we have control over and then we can make that difference we always have a growth mindset our exceptional children our ESL this year we have a dhh deaf and hard of hearing teacher on our staff because we've um we have a student that's has uh has some special needs in that area but we want to meet both the academic and behavior needs our EC ESL staff collaborate with the general education teachers and we try to do what we can which is help our students that receive EC services to be in the classroom as much as possible as absolutely much as possible because we think that's where they're getting more like we want to be just involved in the instruction involved with their peers involved with everything that's going on as much

163as possible um I don't know if I have another slide in there or not okay so this is ours you can just see um yes we have exceeded uh every year it looks like uh so we that's I mean that's the that's the goal right to to to exceed every every time you can and our teachers take pride in it I mean they look at what their individual classes do and they come to me I had a teacher um one time come to me and she like as soon as it wasn't as high as she wanted to be and she was literally already planning for the next year you know when this is like in June or whenever about how things are going to be different and how she wants to make a different change

164for for next year based on what happened like you know like we said last week we're based on Judge when you look at growth you're looking at three five you're looking at three or four tests three tests us for us that take place over about three days and that's what shows up on us on a report card the North Carolina report card is basically three days of what is shown but the work that we do and our staffs do I mean we're working every single day we just get judged kind of on those three days but we're working every single day and putting in that work um but yeah I mean that's what we're going for we're a consistently a b School some years we exceed a little more than others but that's what our

165staff wants to do one thing that we do at our school that I did not mention my presentation that maybe is I don't know if it's Unique or not but for my three through five teachers I allow them if they want as part of my autonomous nature is if they want to be departmentalized they can so I'll have third grade teachers that do math and science and then their partner will do the the ELA and the social studies and I allow if they feel like that's going to meet the needs of the students then that's what we do but we've been doing it in our I mean there's some years we had I had eight third grade teachers one year you know I had four doing one thing and four doing the other thing and

166they collaborate with each other and of course they collaborate with their teammates but uh you know I allow those teachers to do what they think that is their uh you know their strength and we try to go with that and we feel like if we can let them do what's their strength then this is the kind of results that we'll get from that so um I think that's it yep but anyways it was a privilege to talk to you so thank you so much before I open it up to questions I just want to highlight a couple of threads I hope you heard teacher support autonomy it's about my teachers I'm supporting my teachers as I think Mr lehockey said or maybe both of the gentleman said they don't teach a class right it's about

167the Educators so I I want to highlight that and the next thing I want to highlight is just again they both focused on growth and they're dealing with totally different populations the challenges are totally different you have a school where you have teachers when they leave this because they're retiring and then you have a school that there is it's more of a challenge to get people there but there's still I think they kept saying when they're there from 7 50 to 2 30 or 7 50 to 225 we've got to do that there are no excuses so I just want to highlight those pieces before I open up the questions for the genuine or comments board members we have any questions Bradford I just like to congratulate you and thank you um very heartwarming very

168heartwarming congratulations it's amazing achievement thank you and I'd like to Echo that educational leaders is what we have in front of us and we just need to uh clone you you too but uh we do appreciate all your hard work and and please do share with your school we appreciate the schools that we appreciate all their hard work and uh you will see me real soon so I'm sorry yeah yeah it's always a pleasure to come by your places you know because your specials really are cross-curricular and it's really cool to see when you walk in things on the wall but one of the things that I was to come back to your slides that you did with your four year growth time you put on there um consistently above that blue line and in

169some cases so um thank you thank you very much Miss Walker people very much having comedy but three that approach is a lot more important than um [Music] I mean like I say he might be on different ends of the spectrum of course Mr McManus I appreciate both of being here I think that the obviously you deserve recruited for everything what strikes you what both said in some shape normal passion but you realize that your staff is to keep well I learned as you've stated we're always good as who we work with you for the recognized anyone else yep again congratulations each time we will have been asked for a five-minute restroom break so we will take a five minute restroom break please be back no later than 8 24. okay oh my God foreign

170all right thank you very much Jesus foreign thank you yeah yeah foreign thank you foreign all right if we can come back at this time thank you very much for that quick break we will continue with uh the uh division updates uh and that will be Mr Smith will be leading us off and they're going to do it from over there because several different divisions will be sharing so we'll turn it over to you Mr Smith thank you all right thank you Mr chairman good evening board members Dr Faust and guests so as the title slide alludes to we're going to take just a few minutes this evening approximately two and a half per person to provide updates from our respective divisions much of what you'll hear is directly tied to the district strategic plan

171although we also want this to serve as a bit of a level set new board beginning of a new year and we've had a lot change in the past year and we're excited to share some of that progress so Mr chairman I'll defer to your preference but do suggest we hold questions and comments until the end and we can address them collectively we will do that thank you uh next slide please Anita so last week at your retreat I mentioned bringing numbers and data around our Community Partnerships and volunteer involvement so that's where I'll start so this school year we've we've been incredibly fortunate we'll put it that way exceptional level of support from our community and to date we've received over seventy thousand dollars in donations and that's from various organizations businesses including Financial

172contributions to school supplies books and other resources additionally we raised twelve thousand eight hundred dollars in donations through our United Way campaign and kind of a fun fact we had a four thousand dollar donation from the film crew of the Samurai term pretty which is a Netflix documentary and that went straight to Porter's Neck Elementary School in addition to donations we've also seen an absolutely impressive level of volunteer support we have over 1 700 people that have completed their volunteer training this year and have clocked thirty seven thousand volunteer hours so just to provide some sense of how that translate at a rate of 15 an hour that's equivalent to just over 550 thousand dollars in volunteer time that's been contributed since the beginning of our school year so we want to thank those incredible

173volunteers for that commitment and dedication to our students public records is my absolute favorite thing to talk about in the world um but it's a challenge common to many school districts and the backlog that can happen there so just to provide some perspective in May of last year we had nearly 300 open public records requests and to manage that large volume we made some changes the board made some changes we implemented a software solution but if you fast forward to this evening we have five open public records requests and we're able to maintain that number have been able to fingers crossed at a number consistently below about 10. I can't overstate our commitment to transparency in the website and what we do in public records and adherence to law and I invite anyone the public

174or whomever to inspect those to look at those there's over 300 documents those are contracts those are emails everything is available for all to see and it's sortable by request or keyword date Etc that brings me to website improvements we have added a dedicated section on the site similarly to prrs where folks can inspect the entire curriculum and we will welcome that we added a section dedicated to just Esser funds what the allowable uses are down to the exact dollar amounts Dr Faust mentioned earlier the necessity for CTE in the local Force local Workforce and we worked with our CTE education department created more than a dozen videos for students and families to explore those various Pathways and most recently at the request of the chairman actually we created a page repository for all current

175District mousse that's also sortable and we'll be adding contracts to that soon and finally as part of our efforts to attract top talent to the district attract and retain we worked incredibly closely with HR to implement targeted marketing efforts that focused on promoting our district I think it's fair to say that we were successful collectively we started the school year with only six student teacher facing vacancies which is a testament to the strength of that collaboration both between divisions and with our school leaders this credit of course goes to our incredible HR department still I think it's fair to say we've kind of are on to a winning formula to get after teacher shortage which is plaguing the nation so we but we we have good reason to be optimistic and so with that I'll

176turn it over to Eddie for operations thank you when when durations comes to mind service support excellence so excellent okay okay not yet but that's our goal we're getting there that's all that's our goal so but the other thing that our goal is and our Focus within operations in the various departments with operations is to recognize that operations are our work directly affects instructions so quality operations equal quality instruction and what do I mean by that here are some of the focuses for the upcoming year or in our current year bus driver Recruitment and Retention this is the single biggest thing that impacts our efficiency and our own time routing and transportation we've made that a priority we appreciate your support with bonuses it is making a difference we've implemented a mentoring program within our

177transportation department we're bringing bus Aids on and we're working with them one-on-one to get their CDLs and move them from that Aid position to a driver position we've actually hired more bus drivers this year than we have in any previous year um on Tom route on time and efficient routes we know if we're not on time students Miss instruction direct correlation so we've got to get our buses on time and I admitted I earned it we didn't we didn't do we didn't get off to a great start but today you aside from traffic or a mechanical issue our buses are getting to school on time and that that's really our priority we are working as we hire new drivers to reduce some of the double runs and increase our efficiency even more you heard in

178the audit presentation that our revenue is down in Child Nutrition we recognize that you know we're not we don't have free meals anymore and so we are working on modifying and improving our menus to increase participation why because if students are hungry they're not learning so another direct correlation between operations and instruction uh safe healthy well-maintained buildings if students don't feel safe they're worried about that they're not listening to the teacher they're not learning if they're not healthy they're not in school they're not learning so again we've focused our attention on providing those safe making our safety improvements making our buildings healthy and well maintained and then classrooms that enhance instruction um another direct correlation we know that we can provide Furniture in classrooms that not only meets the teachers needs but meets those individual

179students needs they'll focus more they'll pay attention more we want flexibility we want good Acoustics we want good lighting and we want daylighting there are countless studies that show daylighting increases student attendance increases teacher attendance and it also increases teacher retention at a school so a lot of the things that we do that you might not think about when you first walk into that classroom have a direct correlation to instruction and so those are the things that our department is focused on this year and will be continued to focus on in the coming year thank you all the work that HR does can fall into one of three domains and that's obtain train and retain we want to obtain the best high quality applicants train them to be highly effective and retain those that are

180good for students in high performing so in the first one when you look at obtain a couple of brief examples one last year and you can see the picture up there we had a career fair at Ashley High School in all in April that brought in over 200 applicants in addition we did a student intern job fair last spring we have over 150 student teachers who come work with us every year a few in the fall with the bolt coming in the spring many of your interns come from UNCW but we also take them from UNC Pembroke UNC Charlotte Western Carolina from all across the state last year interns had a whole day of support where they interviewed with principals got resume advice got interview tips and then we went ahead and early contracted with

181those that were high performing the principals wanted to see in their buildings the next year now recruiting has become a year-round process we do dozens of recruiting events at colleges across the state all year long luckily we provide a comprehensive benefit package reasonable class sizes we have great teachers especially new teacher development and we have one of the highest teacher salary structures in the state so and Josh mentioned this earlier but all those led to the lowest vacancy rate that we've had in years at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year so in regards to training our efforts in this area are designed to sustain and develop our teachers to be highly effective this includes supporting the curriculum training the new teacher development program and trainings to improve the quality of our leadership specifically this

182year we're working on observation calibration and Improvement in the last year we also spread this to our classified leaders as well to support the development of all leaders in the district not just those that are in the schools our new teacher development program helps our new teachers build the foundation for their whole teaching career and approximately 85 percent of our beginning teachers last year returned this year to school and that's one of the ways we affect our retention rate is by helping build the efficacy of our new teachers we have a strong national board certified program here it's a nationally we're not renowned program to help teachers build their competency and we have over 325 nationally board certified teachers here in New Hanover County and we have 47 who are currently actively pursuing their national

183board certification our tagline is start here grow here and we're not hiring people for the current school year we're hiring them for their career and we want to build them a 30-year plan to work with in regards to retention I think it's important to remember that our most valuable educational resource is our staff and we've got numerous ways we've worked to increase that retention rate of our employees we develop several different recognition programs you can see up there as long as as well as working with the county to increase the supplement and increase the salary for all of our employees both classified and certified one special recognition we received last year was our inclusion as the honorary tribute group for the Azalea Festival and we also in this effort we also work to hold our

184employees accountable for policy and supportive standard of Excellence for all of our students and stakeholders been very busy with many projects that I'm going to share a few of the projects with you our first one and our biggest one is the one-to-one implementation all staff and students at the nine high schools have been issued laptops as well as central office staff for a total of around 9 000 devices that have been put out in the last two years as part of the one-to-one plan all classrooms will also receive a new line board for projecting similar to the board that's in in the room that you guys do closed session in we are also with this project working with CTE and we've created actually a student help desk at seven of the high schools where students

185provide the first level of troubleshooting and repair for other students in her earned High School Credit so we're very proud of of that project and we've worked with CTE in this process teachers are also being provided training to leverage the one-to-one devices to support student learning by developing balanced instruction that promotes student creation collaboration communication and critical thinking technology is a division of service much like operations this summer we have created service level agreements and we have shared those with administrators and teachers our goal is to increase the service levels and response time unit for the district we want to make sure we are fixing these machines as quickly as we can so that way it's downtime it's reduced the downtime for instruction protecting staff and student data is very important to us we have

186installed Microsoft Defender Advanced that protection on all devices also with human error being the cause of the majority of data breaches we have provided training for staff and students using a product that the state has provided called No before and then Neptune navigate and we'll continue this training every year last summer we held the first nhcs concode summer camp for Rising middle school students the camp was held on Cape Fear Community College campus and students participated in multiple activities where they learned the Apple Swift programming language we are going to continue that summer camp again this summer great job well there's so much student voices possibly has been successfully submitted um last night um the student voice had an opportunity and of the movement which is develop procedures policy and that's one of the biggest

187things right now um next we announcing your parent work group we have over 281 parents families apply to be a part of the EDI parent board group um that represented 33 um schools we are now adopting more of an open enrollment as we have new parents uh from school Squad um so that's another um this is aspect of the TDI that I'm working on the first position that we have right now is blue and gold medals for capitalism education initiative which is an initiative where North Carolina a t College of Education will be sponsoring 20 uh schools to spend a day in the college education program um this is an immersive experience for both students Pathways and opportunities in education and also create a network of Education stakeholders to support participants as they navigate academic

188and professional career the second initial we have um [Music] while providing an opportunity for their parents to learn how to support a child who is interested in health care this initiative will take place in on February 18th which is a Saturday at Wilson Middle School the next initial we have is a pilot initiative which is our new Hanover High School community re-engagement which is a pilot program that seeks to re-engage New Hanover High School in the surrounding communities and businesses in an effort to decrease student tardiness and keep our kids in school within the school day as of right now we are in partnership with One-Stop shop which is on the corner of 13th and Ann and in a rush convenience store which is on Princess Street behind New Hanover High School this initiative will

189encourage those small business to stop selling to our students after the time of 725 which will encourage them to be in class when the 825 which encourages me being class before the bell rings at 8 40. um so with this pilot program we're hoping to expand it to our other high schools as just a district-wide initiative to maximize the value of every academic minute thank you New Hanover County Schools was recognized this year for excellence in financial reporting we were recognized with governmental Finance Officers Association and we were also recognized by association of school business office International so and leading into that you heard earlier today from our external auditor that we received a clean opinion for our 2022 financial statements and compliance audit and just as he shared what that means is there were

190no audit findings and offered financial statements our compliance area or internal control areas over the past year we have implemented we've actually been part of a state pilot our school system was chosen to be part of this pilot and we've fully implemented the new state Erp system called munis over this past year we were the first school system in North Carolina to do that and we continue to align our budget with our strategic plan so those are the things we've been working on this past year all right and I'm going to finish this up uh you may be picking up on a theme and that would be academic integration if it's not increasing achievement we don't spend a whole lot of time focusing on it but within student Support Services I want to talk a

191little bit about how we are increasing access to instruction also removing barriers to instruction we focus specifically on building the learning culture through a collaborative and problem-solving model where human beings interact successfully with each other in student Support Services a couple of our accomplishments or Focus areas have been in implementing an online enrollment platform starting with enrollment with our parents coming into the school district having a supported enrollment process where their data is immediately dropped into our student information system is crucial crucial to accurate records and crucial to safety there is no Gap in time from that accurate student information being in PowerSchool we've also spent time digitizing our historic Student Records again being very customer focused making sure that our Student Records are accessible through digital means and not our historic records being in

192files in a closet somewhere we we really needed to bring ourselves into this age of Technology we've spent a lot of time focusing on a special education beginning teacher cohort we are much like our human resources Partners who does do such a fabulous job at recruiting and training our folks we want to make sure that within special education we spend a significant amount of time preparing them for that work that they'll be doing that is about implementing the general curriculum but also meeting very diverse student needs we've also in that area of special education use some of our Esser funds to build the curriculum dream team that we have really always wanted to create and DPI has identified us as a model and sent other school districts to see how we are making that work

193we are finding a lot of blue in that evos work so we'll be looking at how we can continue much of those efforts beyond that funding we also have a significant number of mou's as many of you seen through either being a part of the board or being watching through the board meetings we have a lot of involvement with our community agencies to address barriers to learning whether that be really diverse student needs students who have experienced trauma homelessness and so on all kinds of risk factors we've also been focusing a lot over the last year and a half or so on our graduated response model for discipline where in accordance with the Strategic plan we have a focus on safe and supportive School culture with an instructive response to behavior accountability for Behavior absolutely

194starts with an instructive approach to behavior we also in the world of student support that kind of runs all kinds of gamuts have been focusing on the Fidelity of reporting within our graduation rate we found a graduation rate increase even with fine-tuning our reporting parameters and ensuring the Fidelity in how that that calculation is created we have been reducing the different ways of handling different types of of situations from school to school by focusing on district-wide standard operating procedures those involve managing attendance processing and maintenance of Student Records our transcript auditing for four-year graduation plans student placement determinations that's not just with regard to enrollment but also with regard to any changes of school assignment our special education Staffing in how our schools each earn their special education staff based on the types of needs

195of students and the services that are required our discipline recommendations and then also fine-tuning our bullying investigations and determinations which can have impact also on the enrollment and school assignment and then focusing on audits for accountability to ensure that those standard operating procedures are providing us that return on investment and the impact thank you yes sir I'm sorry one thing I didn't forget to mention was through partnership with Dr uh Dr Cook director of federal programs um the EDI division has submitted the 2022-2023 North Carolina Department of Public Instruction Equity plan the purpose of this Equity plan is to address any disparities that result in low-income students and minority students being taught at higher rates than other students by beginning teachers or out of field teachers thank you great thank you and with that Mr

196chairman we'll happily take any questions the board may have we have any questions from the board Mr Bradford I believe that not being able to read is the worst possible discrimination there is so would it would would you guys be able to come up with a plan to increase our reading proficiency by 10 say by the end of the 23-24 school year after face we have a literacy plan and um that literacy plan I can't tell you the exact numbers of increase but I would think that would be on target with that um I would have to look at it but we have we're required by the state to have an Interventional literacy plan so we have that and it is online and we can definitely talk more about that and share that plan in

197individually or in our curriculum meeting because that is our goal is to is increase our reading proficiency or literacy thank you Mr McManus well let's go to staff that's around you and I'd like to continue to help do a lot of work and I know for some of you know but I just want to thank you for what you do not compliment people when we talk about that earlier too because you're the nuts of Boulders and if I was your superintendent I would take long moves for dinner but after this this was very impressive all together here we wanted to make sure I got my adjectives right before Mr Anderson that um that I appreciate the work that all of you guys are doing and what really struck me is because I had to read

198through the Strategic plan and you know um before our exercise this evening is that you guys are just following that you know just like we we all work together to create it and then we charge Dr Foust with you know getting it done and we're making progress towards that and to me that's you know that's all we can ask for we ask our principals to do their school Improvement plans and meet those goals we ask you to put the Strategic plan together with us and meet those goals and this is just an impressive array of the work that you guys are doing so thank you thank you thank you it's Walker yeah I just want to Echo what everyone else said you know um [Music] very long um so you know the person that's close

199to that being on the committee I see that I'm hearing all the things that you guys have presented is it's it's pretty impressive to see it all in one place and um I just want to Echo I want to thank each and every one of you for all your hard work I know it's not easy day in and day out so thank you for all you do and I'm just a Clapper so we're gonna foreign we'll carry on um thank you again we will carry on with the current state of discipline Mr McManus asked to put this on so I'll turn it over to Mr McManus well this will be brief ly I think just putting lyrics their expectations go on with this one that you thank all of the above the reaction to students

200so I think there are expectations of regulation and directiveness fourth principles I need them particularly low performing and as you know tonight he has he's got a full staff and philosophical success that played in the part of their school I think that all of these are keys been disciplined I'm gonna do it tonight because we got a lot of us stuff still coming but again I'll ask I'll make a motion hopefully to add this to the agenda now for discussion in the February meeting and we don't need your budget time so it's a good time to talk about it and support but I appreciate the time and if somebody I'm making motion that we add this to you but so we have a motion to add this to the February meeting we have a second

201is Mason all in favor please signify by saying I I all opposed no six six to one man six to one okay thank you we will carry on WE next come to our consensus items um we have a through H I believe something's missing here I would entertain a motion to approve all the consensus items unless we have someone that wants to pull one off okay we have a motion by Miss Walker to accept the consensus items the second by Miss Bradford uh any discussion if not all in favor please signify by saying aye aye all opposed carry on uh we move now to all business approval of the 2023-24 Traditional School calendar we have the 15 minutes all added to this hello again um so I am here in front of you to ask

202for approval of a calendar for the 23-24 school year I just want to let the audience know that we now have three calendars that you have present we have a b and the committee was polled and they agreed with sharing C so you also have calendar C and I will take any questions that you need to make that vote between okay so counter a is a good point calendar a is the traditional calendar it's the calendar that um is just the normal State calendar calendar we've used for years not the two years we were in covet calendar B is mainly the um uh calendar that defies law and gets us out in December and May calendar C does not defy law but it has the unbalanced semesters where you know you would have one group

203of students if if I have twins Paul and Paula Paul could get biology on the first semester and they would get 70 um I don't have the 74 days I think it is of instruction and then Paula would get about 89 days of instruction so you know the question was if Paula gets to be and Paul gets a how do we justify that but that was that that is the difference in the calendars the biggest difference with C is it does do what our community wants about the December and the May but what it doesn't do is it doesn't allow for balanced semesters [Music] calendar A and B because we asked for two options to select from I have been very vocal about not breaking the law with that being said I think it's hard

204due diligence to put forth what the community wants so I um sent you all a draft resolution and I'd like to make a motion for us to publicly adopt the resolution of support of local control for school calendar such that an event we go to the general assembly we can present this to our education committee I've already represented to different legislators but I like to make a motion to adopt that tonight and second can I would like to amend that um I think this is excellent I would definitely like to adopt it but I would ask would it not be better to have everyone signature on and I'm asking what's your thought what's going on all of us I I would be okay so Mr McManus but I'd like to at least get the members

205of accounting committee an opportunity to give input just leave this and have their input our meeting I don't know I didn't come from today and asked me please you know create the opportunity for them to have their input um as since we're in discussion the one that I was just clarifying I'm not really sure if the start date banned and such breath begins August 1st so if that is an adjustment then I'd love feedback in that Resort but most of the other things kind of was consensus and this was um just effectively from another County and just we adapted it to New Hanover so before presenting to you guys Walker um flexibility in their calendar where we don't have to make decisions um so the motion on the table is to you have everybody sign

206it well we have a motion a second do we have an amendment did anybody like to would you like to amend that and say yes ma'am um with the motion that I understand what we want to do but is that in place of adopting a calendar or is that so the acknowledgment that this is what our community wants so this is you know it's important we are doing this in addition and we've talked about this this is in in the in the general area of calendar since we've had that as a topic I think it is uh at this point yes ma'am well wouldn't we want to adopt a calendar first and then we do if we choose a then we would put this resolution in or even if we put in or even if

207we chose B right but I'm just thinking it makes more sense to Let's adopt our calendar and and then do the resolution I mean I don't know if it matters or not but I just don't want us to come away from not voting on a calendar tonight well let's go ahead and we have a motion in a second uh Miss Walker um I guess it's either calendar we pick in any regard it's not going to matter I think resolution is important regardless of which one we pick the rc3 are not exactly what everybody wants but we'll have to pick one of them and we'll start the center resolution but uh I do need to question Mr McManus have you are you making a Amendment do we send it back to calendar or are you just

208making that recommendation input how do I make it regardless of which calendar we end up with this tells that make the decisions in our state are laws that we're serious about wanting a balanced calendar that meets the needs of the students and the parents that's all it does and it's been adopted in another County it's not been opposed we just want to add our voice to the voice because the public may not realize we can't make Raleigh change this calendar law we've done our best at this point and it won't happen this year so we're stuck in a hard place but if we if we sign a resolution and of the 115 districts if they get maybe I don't know half of them maybe they'll start to listen to us we're in an uphill battle

209to change the calendar law we really are Mr chairman I apologize for interrupting if I could ask the board members to turn their mics on this is a mine's a heavily watched topic right now and folks are having trouble hearing thank you Ms Walker um to miss Bradford's point and I guess you know I kind of agreed with Mr McManus on the calendar Community but this is coming from the board so it probably doesn't necessarily not that the county is not important they are but this is something that we are resolving to do so perhaps you know if we approve it then we can send it with you know your addition of our names that would be nice question for um Mr Weber so um is there any um the all we really need is

210the school board chair signature right because he's the one that binds us into contracts and binds us into things does it matter if we all sign does it make it even more important it's at the board's discretion that this is not a contract it's a resolution whether the board chair signs on behalf of the board or each individual member signs I think that's at your discretion a quick procedural point is I understand it there's a motion and a second to adopt this resolution as proposed I heard Mr wildebear suggests that all board members sign um I don't believe you need to do a motion to amend for that the board could vote on Ms barnhart's motion with the understanding that each board member will sign Alex let's call the question do you want to retract

211your motion based on what he just said you did you made a motion to amend the emotion okay I will I will withdraw it that's fine uh at this point uh let's vote um all in favor of the resolution as provided here and sending that on please signify by saying aye aye all opposed past the 7-0 back to our original conversation which is the calendar we have a b we have in front of us a C2 um and I'm just going to say it because somebody's going to say it uh did you get a chance to look at D and and what is because I actually received a phone call from two principals today saying that why don't we take D because D answers everything so actually um I did and I had an opportunity

212to um really just get an understanding indeed I didn't have a time to look at D but slight point of order because the we presented the calendar committee and she and she's a representative as an encountered committee did not authorize her to speak on their behalf for calendar D so I'd be respectfully I think she's overstepping speaking on behalf of it but if we want to entertain the motion to make her speak on behalf of it uh but I think as it stands right now that's my understanding we charge her to do something the calendar committee to do something and they did it they provided us calendar a b and c and I don't really like the outcome of the suggestions of a A and C but in my opinion that's what I'm left voting

213on so for the public who is not aware calendar D I got an email this morning about it not from this committee from an outside source of a magical calendar that exists that's going to solve a lot of problems so um I'm frustrated getting that result and then putting this on our central office staff to give us a solution that they did not present to us I'd like if you're willing only if you're willing I would like to hear you know if the magical calendar D you know solves our problems because we certainly need problem solved at this point so I will say that I have not had time to look at the work days and all this but it is my general understanding that calendar D has 165 days whereas calendar the other calendars

214have 178 days and it increases the amount of instructional hours so it gets the hours there so I have been talking to our attorney Mr Weber and communicating with DPI basically um throughout the day for the latter part of the day to get some clarity on this instructional and recess and um I will let Mr Weber explain it because he explained it into a way to me that I truly understood it the difference and why recess is not part of this um and I just want to say I also I had reached out to DPI before to ask this question and I reached out again today and I've got the same results and that was if it is structured with lesson plans for recess but I'll let Mr Weber talk about where it comes when

215we have some confusion we see the language of recess does count because that is for a different point that is mainly attendance and dealing with counting students for money and I'll let him explain that this weather yeah yeah board members I'd be happy to um discuss the calendar law particularly as it relates to the definitions of instructional hour and instructional time I do want to give a caveat you know I have not studied calendar D in any type of detail my understanding is that in order for a calendar like this to work the district may need to count recess in grades K5 towards the calendar laws instructional hour requirements so um the information I'm going to share with you now is limited to that particular question you know whether K5 recess can count for purposes

216of the calendar law and and I'll start by just saying that um the calendar law does not define instructional time it does not define instructional hour it establishes a minimum number of days or hours for calendar law compliance there is a state board of education policy that defines instructional time as that time during which students are assigned to a teacher for the primary purpose of instruction the New Hanover County Schools board your policy 3300 includes that same definition that the and uses slightly different language but says that the instructional day includes only those hours a student is assigned to a teacher for the primary purpose of instruction um I understand they're at least on Friday during the Border treat there was some discussion about whether there is a state law that specifically authorizes or states

217that recess or grades K5 counts towards instructional time for purpose of again calendar law compliance I was not able to find a statute on point there is um legislation from 2021 that directed the State Board of Education to adopt a funding formula based on student FTE full-time equivalency and that's part of the general assemblies review of school district funding whether it's by ADM or on an FTE basis the State Board of Education you know took that direction and adopted a formula the formula is contained in What's called the ncdpi student attendance and student accounting manual that manual is something that the State Board of AD approves and they do approve every year the the formula itself which is again a funding formula includes a numerator a denominator and in its definitions it says that instructional

218minutes include recess for grades K5 can consistent with and then it cites to a statute um I think it helps to understand the background for that particular statement it's related to an FTE funding formula not necessarily to what types of activities count for purposes of calendar law compliance um if the board were to proceed with this option D I think there could be arguments to support including recess um in the you know calculation for instructional hours there may be arguments again against that I'd be happy to discuss what the potential legal implications might be enclosed but um but the bottom line is you know again I was not able to find a statute directly on point just a statement with regards to the State Board of education's FTE funding formula and and I think really

219you know the most important consideration for you in making your decision tonight and for staff and implementing whatever decision you make is you know while instructional hour and instructional time is not defined in statute it you know it still has to be instructional that's the word that the statute uses so you know if a district were to include recess um I think it would make sense to build some sort of structure around what that looks like I don't know if that would mean uh lesson plans or what have you and I understand Dr Faison has gotten a little bit of guidance on that from DPI in terms of their position on it as well and and that's that's what it was shared with me that it was structured and it had lesson plans this is

220Walker I'll say um I appreciate Mr Weber's response there I know although the the state does give us the the right as school boards to set instructional hours in a day that is unique to North Carolina that that's you know so we that that's what I was saying about how it allows other districts to be able to try and make calendars work that don't necessarily meet what they want which is ending in December so we've got two calendars that were given to us um that either says break the law or does not you know really you know line up with what our community absolutely wants including a lot of members of the calendar committee including a lot of parents and obviously staff that want to send us calendars that try and address some of the

221issues such as the imbalance in in the semesters um which I think you know I was sent one I think we all were sent the second one as well um which is called the they all the difference is is they they just change the instructional hours in a day because the calendars we were given rely on the six hour day and do not include recess um and so when the information was sent to me regarding the account you know the accounting of how you add it all up it did say K-5 includes recess now structure or not that's you know that's I'm not saying it's either here nor there but it is definitely important because I think we were not including that in our instructional hours when we were given a and b and even

222the C1 um that that's not with the with the you know the attachment but um it is all on a six hour day does not include recess um so I want to reiterate we had an issue with our dual enrollment students who information given to us has been that most of them are taking their classes online it's just a misalignment of start dates of college and now and from more communication collaboration within the district next year is going to not be the good alignment year but moving forward it's my understanding and please correct me if I'm if I'm wrong that we've collaborated and we're collaborating with cfcc and UNCW such that there's better alignment for specifically for our dual enrollments we actually have a meeting schedule with cfcc we have not with UNCW we have

223very few students there but cfcc we do actually have a meeting schedule in February to address the issues that we've started to talk about and that was roughly 1100 students that were enrolled in that process if we're going to consider creating a structured recess meaning that teachers are submitting lesson plan plans for our K-5 students what we're saying to those teachers is now hey PS you're gonna get to do extra work if we prove this calendar because that didn't wasn't presented to us by our committee so I don't really know if we're allowed to even vote on approving a calendar that was not presented as to but um and I think the other question that comes into play by even having this discussion becomes what is the point of our calendar committee and all and

224I'm saying this in all seriousness if we are going to entertain an idea from an outside source that we charge them to do a job with are we saying that we as a board do not feel competent in our District's decision to put four Solutions and I I say this genuinely and I'd love to have that question answered it's better I just had a couple of questions um Mr Weber I don't understand when you say FTD funding formula four times enrollment I knew it was something real easy but I didn't understand what it meant okay and my other question is on this structured recess you look and see how many other districts are doing that and is it working for them I can only go by I reached out to DPI and um I think

225I know of one County that is that I've heard is doing that that that is all it's not a common practice I can I don't not from my counterparts it is not a common practice well my observation right now is probably all across the state there are School boards meeting this week stuck in the same dilemma we're in either that or well they're stuck in the same delivery Dilemma so I I think the we'll hear we'll hear the results when it's too late because you want us to adopt this because you need to get to work we get that and so we're just really in a hard spot I can tell you we just in my meetings I this the only place that I've heard the structure of recess was actually like I said I

226have heard that another County that borders us does this but I have not heard anybody can you say which county I've said it before I hate to say it from here because I you know I don't even know this is just it's really just what I've been sharing with me that someone have heard of it's Walker so we're getting in the Weeds on this recess whether it should be structured or not if you ask a lot of teachers you know it doesn't specifically Say in any statute or any manual that it has to be structured and I don't I mean I prefer to see things that are in policy or in writing that say what what they're supposed to say I I feel like the feedback I'm getting from teachers is you know if it's

227include if it's if it's in the law that they that it's counted that it should be counted as instructional hours and I think that's what we should be looking at I I'm not advocating that we we make them all submit lesson plans because I feel like they're already doing a lot of work and I just think for us we really need to um decide whether or not we're going to Adopt A or B if we're not then we need to look at a different calendars and we've presented with the Third um and we've been presented with a couple other ones and if you know if we're not ready to make a decision tonight perhaps we do need to send it back to calendar committee and I'm okay with doing that I just don't want to

228make a decision that we're gonna not we're going to regret and then we're also going to be you know we're gonna have a lot of community members very very upset with us because they have real stories to tell about you know you know when we don't want to say a thousand students doing online is is not a big deal I just feel like if we adopt a calendar that doesn't really address that you're going to have people not want to enroll in doing World classes and that's what we don't want either so I mean I think it shouldn't be this difficult I think that you know I know some other districts managed to do it and I think that we at some point need to decide if we're going to set for a six hour

229it's going to be harder if we do it for a little bit more and include recess then then we can make a calendar work I think I'd like to make sure motion that we adopt calendar a motion to adopt a calendar a for your second I'll second it Barnard seconds at um is there any further discussion on that yes so a couple points is um unstructured recess and Julie's probably might come into your realm but that is the time where students get to take a brain break they get to play they get to interact with their friends they're not having to you know be graded and the teachers aren't having to watch them in the perspective of how am I going to grade them so I that's one point point number two that I have

230heard from several High School teachers is that it you you know that if a student doesn't have any end of course tests that they don't have to come to school now we know that we have we can't tell our kids not to come to school but if they don't have any tests these these next couple weeks you know then they aren't coming to school and they are free to take classes and start their classes at Cape Fear Community College even especially if they're online and we have had an increase of enrollment with Cape Fear Community College classes over the course of years and even with the calendar being just like it is you know so we're not hindering them and there are options to do that for that and I just just think that we

231need to just adopt a calendar and move on and then we'll work with our with our legislative lighters on the our resolution and just get going and then hopefully next year will be better because we really do have to make a calendar I mean it's due by April but our staff has to start planning you know last month Miss Walker if a is adopted we're going to have a lot of angry folks and we don't sit up here I don't have kids in the district anymore that have to deal with ap that have to deal with dual enrollment I don't have that but there are a lot of people that do in the overwhelming amount of people really want to end by December and there are a lot of reasons why that is important it's

232not just the dual enroll kids it's ending in December you know and not requiring students to have to stress over the holidays and take their exams after Christmas is multiple things it's not just the dual enroll kids and they should not be we shouldn't forget about them a thousand two thousand whatever the number is they are all important and I feel like that the trend is to encourage it and if we discourage it with a calendar that's not friendly to them I don't care what's promised in meetings from Cape Fear or UNCW it it was promised last time and it's not happening and I've had feedback that students are it's it's the students that it where it really matters the ones that push themselves very very hard it is very stressful and we are talking

233about mental health and I just think you know adopting a is not going to it's not a solution in my opinion so Mr McManus I'm not sure I can totally agree that I'll of course I'll practice because I was a hospital possible but I think it's just the fact of ending the first semester and everything goes with ending the first half of the Year is as imported a key as anything not just the 11 1200 students the only kids at ucw Isaac mayor kids as I think that's well over the vast majority I don't want to just settle on something so we're not talking about anymore and we've all agreed to listen and I think we've all agreed to try to limit the number of days I don't have the I should have brought it

234I don't know why I thought I did the breakdown on a one of the number of difference in the semester I have the information for you 19 20 something days under a you have 89 and 86 calendar B you have 83 and 92. calendar C you have 78 and 97. in calendar D what those are them I don't I would have to get Jason and talk about the hours with the calendar D because we'd have to I appreciate the spawn hearts so I just feel like we need to involve the calendar committee and let them have another recommendation and then we can go from there they spent time they put in they made a decision we find out we just finished an ethics class if we're going to throw this motion to the floor we

235need to set up a very strict timeline for feedback from the committee because I think before we even got on before I even got on the board this was presented to you guys the old board to come for approval and it's been kicked down December it's January we're gone and I I understand it's not a big deal to you but part of doing our job is ensuring that they're going to be able to do their job successfully and the shorter time that comes into play the less likelihood they're going to be able to do their job with Fidelity of getting it into power system and lastly and I know I put this back to policy because I'd like to see some changes to it for 3 300. I'm going to read this because D would

236consider this um which we'd we'd have to get approval from our calendar committee whether or not they even want to let us to present it to us but School Personnel are encouraged to see creative means of reducing transitional time and scheduling non-instructional activities that is recess in our elementary school kids classroom so I'm going to stress the importance of that ensuring that we are not putting more of a burden by creating mandatory lesson plans for our teachers during recess I do not feel that is an appropriate solution to transition to put more work on our teachers so that we can end in December can I just add I just want to ask I just I would need Jason if we are going to send it back to calendar committee I would need Jason or the

237board to tell us what hours we're using because what I my research I can't use the hours the recess I would have to say I would Jason would have to the board would have to tell me what hours you want to use and we would I don't know I mean because like I said I when I look at this information when I reach out to DPI I've been told I can't count recess but I will do what the will with the um the board chair says and I know Jason says there might be a way we can but I just would need some goddess in that to take that back to the calendar Committee just want to make that clear I just can't go back with them and we don't know how many hours were

238counted I would need the board to help with this and I'll do it that way I just need you to make that decision if you're going to send it back to calendar everybody whatever we do I think we need in some shape form animal fashion to make sure the county community has input it was a big responsibility for them they spent a lot of time and I know it's a age of a situation I think that approved back there I can't talk to him but I guess refer to them or hear about the calendar I believe a lot of them this is the one thing that is we've all the first time I've been on the board that we've all agreed to support what our community is telling us this is an opportunity to prove

239that we listened I agree I just think I would just need to know what when I am standing in front of the calendar committee I would just need them to know how many hours we're dealing I totally agree with whatever you decide but I would need your guidance on the number of hours I the calendar Community can't change that I can't change that you guys would have to tell us that that's what I'm asking the one thing that I would share because I I was actually one of the principals that was had the structured recess and we actually you know it wasn't a hand in you know a lot of a lot of principles don't require weekly uh lesson plans they say you know have it you know I'll stop by your room I'll see

240what's going on there so I know there's a big concern about weekly lesson plans it also could be uh you know a departmental thing fourth grade this is our lesson plan we're going to do and I mean encouraging students to have a structure to recess I mean I remember I was out there a lot with recess sometimes students go and sit and that's okay but we do it is also supposed to be an active time for them so there's a lot of a lot of pieces to fit why don't we all have one more comment and then we can vote because we do have a motion on the floor I wanted to hear from Dr Fowler I just need if you're going to send it back and you're going to do recess you've got to

241change your policy 3300 states that the instructional day includes only those hours the student is assigned to a teacher for primary purposes of instruction breaks in instruction day for changing classes home run lunch pep rallies and similar non-instructional activities are not part of the instructional day and may not be counted towards the minimum instructional hours required so you'll have to change that before you can think to the committee so they won't violate your policy well and I would ask Ms crabill actually Shaq talks about the the recess being in instructional not instructional time but an active time that's part of the yeah does not about the using your um we have to have the mandatory hours in the day and the week for middle school elementary and middle school but it talks about also the

242social emotional health of students and unstructured recess play time is one of the things that is on that list but and also too to Dr Faust says um to Dr Faust point in in policy 3300 our policy also states that we will follow state law so you know by adopting a policy a calendar we're violating our policy and the state law and the the one last point that I wanted to make was that I don't know about any of you guys but I feel offended that I found out about this policy this letter D on social media so somebody is putting stuff out there and encouraging people to respond to it and to me if any of us had anything to do with that that's just irresponsible because I'm not I'm not saying any of

243us did but to have something like that on social media I mean we got bombarded starting at about maybe two o'clock in the afternoon when some of us are out doing things you know we're living Our Lives we're visiting schools we're we're just you know walking our dogs and we're not you know checking our emails so it's really too late you know to have something presented to us you you know if it's that important then folks need to come to the right channels and I don't think it's fair for us to unfair's not the right word I think it's up to our instruction into our professionals to decide the number of hours that we use and how we assign those because that's what you guys are trying to get and that's what your job is

244that's what we pay you for and we should be looking and observing um we've all heard we all agree that the calendar should be that we want students out before the holidays there's no there's no dissension on that what it is is we're caught in that dilemma of breaking the law and following our own rules so until we have we can't keep waiving our rules and we certainly can't break the law right thank you Ms Barnhart do you have anything else no I do not basket I'm not offended by calendar D I've been praying for a miracle that something would come up that would work I have hope that that one might work but I need more of your time into it and the calendar committee I absolutely do not want to make you guys

245wait and I'm in this really tough problem because I don't want to break the law but I want the kids to get out by Christmas so I agree with just about everything that's been set up here tonight and I'm still in this quandary so if there's any hope that calendar D could meet our needs I don't have a problem with structured recess well I have never taught in the public schools I have taught and I would not just send my kids out you know see you guys in 45 minutes or 30 minutes whatever I would structure it in some way and I would be involved in it so that part doesn't scare me so much um but I believe that the calendar is is one of the most important things that we can do and

246it affects every single one of those families because they have to plan for their children they have to plan their vacations they have to plan so it doesn't just affect you know our 1100 students in my opinion um it affects every student in the school and all of their parents and grandparents so I I I would I would be relieved greatly relieved if we did put this off but it's got to have a very short window to put it off with it with a finite time limit because I I recognize that your planning is so critical but the last thing I want to do is be sitting here in three months and have the Uproar that you had last calendar when they adopted quickly because of all these reasons and it turned out to be

247a fiasco a disaster we can't do the disaster two years in a row so I come at it from the perspective of um I teach some of these dual enrolled kids this is a big stress on them um this is important for them we want to keep them coming to these this is they take this opportunity and yes it might be online but there's still coursework I know because I create the coursework and it's not easy to have coursework that overlaps into a brand new semester I don't feel comfortable with the traditional because of that reason and I don't feel comfortable breaking the law so I'm kind of at an impasse I I would like to push it push it back Mr McManus well we'll be repetitive my solution is we've been Bond everybody but

248we can particularly the original committee for two years one year whatever it was a negative and then this year so I'll say we go back to the calendar committee who shows up shows up at least we gave the opportunity and that makes our decision to have input Walker so with all due respect back to some of my fellow board members that that think I don't care that is absolutely the opposite I actually care a whole lot and I want us to get it right because I feel like after what happened this past year the feedback we've gotten is clear to me what we really overwhelm we want to do and I think if we go back to economy and we start with the ending in December and we work from there however we can work

249it out I just I my goal it's not for me it's for the people that we represent and I just think it's super important we get it right and I'm not trying to stall it or make it longer but um we do have one one chance to do it right and I think that we should and so if everybody's in agreement I'm good with quickly going back to community and starting again but I can't vote for calendar AI or calendar B I don't want to break the law and I definitely want to listen to our community so we're stuck we're just got two choices we're really stuck right now and we haven't she said I need to I need to make sure that we have a viable solution and if we have and last point

250I'm going to make is we are approving the calendar nobody else we the buck starts here so if we're the ones approving the calendar and we have we have the chance to be a little flexible with instructional hours whatever that looks like then that's what we have to do well the role check sure I understand correctly and I did not share this point with the board that would be a little different than what D has for the hour excuse me um when we look at our schools our we have to go with the schools with the least amount of time which is our elementary schools our elementary schools um for the most part start at 7 50s at 2 30. we do have one who starts a little later and gets out a little later

251but we could tweak that time to make them start 7 50 to 2 30. that would give us 6 hours and 40 minutes we have to back out lunch I think we all realize that so I just want the board to know um it would be 6.2 we will be 6 hours and 20 minutes um I think the calendar that is floating has something different and um we have to go and Mr where you can correct me if I'm wrong but everything that I've researched and seen is we have to go with at least one to for the state to give them that if I'm wrong just please correct me um and and I'm sorry in terms of the least one as far as I can't say that we're going to school for seven hours

252because high school goes for seven hours and Elementary only goes for six hours six hours and 20 minutes I have to when I turn the calendar in I have to turn the calendar in by the school uh by the the school that has the least amount of hours to to get the um calendar approved and it's my understanding that that's how DPI interprets it um and how they would apply it if they were reviewing a school district compliance with the calendar law days and hours requirements you know the calendar law does give discretion to districts to establish a different instructional day whether it's elementary middle or high school but if they were to review the district's compliance they might look at elementary being the least amount of time and and the next thing that I

253was going to say before you pass because what I need from you guys is we can go back I have no problem going to calendar Community I want to get this right as well or get I would love to make everybody happy I need you to tell me and Mr Weber I need to know what hours how many hours are we counting right because when I look at this from what I've researched and when I reached out but you guys can decide something different I can only count what it says you if you tell me something different I can count something different I mean Mr Weber you can jump in I don't know if that's correct but I would need you to tell me if we're going back to the calendar committee and we're not

254doing six hours how many how much time are we doing call the role alphabetically please restate the motion absolutely we had a motion to accept calendar a for next year Miss Barnhart now miss Bradford no Miss crabill yes Miss Mason now Mr McManus no Miss Walker no and Mr Baltimore no so I would entertain another motion um okay at this point because calendar a is not passed It Was Defeated six to one or one to six excuse me let me see if I can get through this I make a motion that we continue to consider options that bring us a balanced calendar getting our kids out by Christmas and taking care of our dual enrollment students that we send it back to the calendar committee and they are to meet literally immediately and they come

255back with a choice that meets those guidelines and the hours I'm going to depend on somebody else to tell me what they would be um I I Yeah you mentioned the six hours 20 minutes a couple minutes ago what was that was that leaving recess in or was that that's leaving recess in and then I would need you to tell me because remember I've taken recess out because that's what I was my guidance has told me to take recess out but if the board wants to keep reset we know we can't keep in lunch right so we 62.2 is the highest we can go now we can increase the school debt I mean well I shouldn't say that but I mean I just need to know what you guys want me to do when I

256take back to the committee because I don't have my calculator up here so I don't even know what 6.2 will do but I will tell you it would change even D to make it harder because it's not as much time in the day um Mr McManus when can we call a meeting um I I was I would say I would try I honestly um I would try to call it as soon as possible I without looking at my own calendar and principals trying to make sure you know looking in the district calendar because I want to make sure my principals have the opportunity to be there I don't know um I don't know sir I would do it as quick as I feasibly could but I don't know if that's next week I can tell

257you it's not this week I don't know if it's next week or the week after so Mr wilderboard before you restate the motion for us to vote um I would like to throw out there that make a motion that we decide are we talking structured recess or not structured recess because that is a very important point so I would like to make a motion to include not include structured recess we have a first motion here I want to I want to make structured recess recess unstructured so that therefore we would not count it in our instructional time no you she's she's she didn't even make the whole motion and Pete did according to our rules help me out Mr um Weber is we can change the motion if the chair hasn't restated it and gotten

258a second and we didn't have any of that so um using that prerogative if I'm using it correctly chair I just got some information I think would be important for the board to hear my colleagues just helped me here if we did this 6.2 we all know we have to take out lunch I think we all agree on that that state is clear on clear as day on that if we did 6.2 and I'm not saying calendar D is the calendar but calendar 6.2 with the 165 days I think pretty sure that calendar D has that would not give us enough instructional hours for the year that would be 10 23. if you will if you will multiply 6.2 times 10 165 we get um 1023 for my quick math if you see something different

259please just share I'm just trying to figure it out I don't think that percentages because 20 minutes is a third of an hour so it would be 6.33 yeah yes okay right so okay sorry thank you yes we were just doing quick math this does not have to be this hard this is the thing that's killing me I just feel like it doesn't have to be this hard and I as far as instructions are today like I I've seen some schools that get that their hours away more and if we're just going to go the minimum and pick one school that does the minimum I just don't think that's fair to kind of count that I mean I know there's some schools that are 7 45 to 2 30 and some that are way earlier

260and some are a little bit later I mean if we're talking about instructional time and I agree with Miss Mason the math is not it would be 10 39 you're correct man it is 6.33 which we were given accounts that was 6.33 that did work so I think this discussion should be happening at the calendar committee if I could uh Mr Weber I am correct that I think that state law that we have to take the minimum it's not the average it's the minimum correct well you said that but in terms of calculating calendar instructional Appliance the instructional hours like are you asking for the number of hours in the statute or or for the manner in which DPI calculates compliance the matter I believe it I've always been told it's the minimum so if

261one school goes seven hours another school you know all the rest of the schools go six you have to go with the six it's not an average of the above correct and that's my understanding of how DPI makes that determination but I I can't tell you that for sure without doing further research into it at this point Miss Prevail had a motion and I did not ask for a second I apologize for that Miss uh prairieville's motion was to not not to uh count structure recess is there a second to that well and I'm sorry quick procedural point so I believe there's a motion on the table and while it has not been restated or seconded um under Robert's Rules another member could make suggestions with regards to the motion that's been stated um but

262right now there's a motion on the table that is not to my knowledge been seconded okay so we'll take it back to Ms Bradford's motion and that was to send it back to policy yeah I will second that was Mason seconds that um And to clarify it would have the structured hour or the structured instruction structured recess okay is it made what she thought was a motion but I guess she was trying to at this point would be an amendment all I'm trying to do is for us to be clear on what we're telling them to do because all we've done is say send it back we don't like it send it back we don't like it and so I want whatever the motion is and I'm gonna need it to be restated because it

263was about three sentences long the we need to give them very clear instructions and we need to decide that tonight before the calendar committee meets and so that has been our problem is we haven't been clear um on some of the minute details because that's what we keep our not arguing debating about so that's my only point so however we do that if I need to amend her motion but I'm going to need you to say it again because um or maybe type it on the screen because it is a really long motion okay okay see if I can do that my nose I make a motion to send it back to the calendar committee to meet immediately to include structured recess and to reach the six point two two minutes excuse me the 6.33

264minutes and instructional hours and this instructional hours of 10 39. well if you do a hundred and the the other calendars had 178 days the calendar that you you're referring to has 165 days I think it is and it takes away 13 days but it gives you 33 extra minutes because it counts recess so that would change it to 10.39.5 um okay I think we have a first and a second to that that wouldn't come so it was buoy would you call the roll please Mr chair yes ma'am in her first motion she said balanced cap balanced semesters and she didn't say it in this one so are we are you taking it out or are you keeping it in because I heard your original motion to say meet immediately balance the semesters get us

265out before the holiday break and now we've added include structured recess and include 6.33 hour use the 6.33 hours and I don't know where I don't know what the 1029 Mr chair point of order I think she did restate the motion whether or not she disagree Miss crabill disagrees with what was said the first time or not doesn't matter she restated it and had a second so I just feel like we should go with that calendar committee is going to talk about this okay we have a first and a second um let's let's can you say it one more time please so that we haven't I don't know um a mega motion that we send this calendar request debate Discovery back to the calendar committee to meet immediately to increase structured recess I mean to

266include structured recess to reach 6.33 hours um 10.39.5 um with the goal of trying to balance with a goal of trying to balance but we're going to trust the calendar committee okay and we have a second for Miss Mason Mr Bowie would you please call the roll Miss Barnhart no Ms Bradford yes Miss crabill no Miss Mason yes Mr McManus no Miss Walker yes and Mr wildabour yes that passes four three I have a couple of questions to make sure I'm sorry chair um but I know the calendar committee is going to ask me what structure recess entails I can only go by when I ask DPI and it was lesson plans and I heard the board said it was not it was lesson plans tied to standards and goals so I just need some

267clarity on that as far as the board that that's what I would have to say because that's what I've been so I just need some clarity on that I also um need some just want to point out to the board that if we did 6.33 with 165 that gives us two days and two hours if anything were to happen we would have to go to makeup time I just had to make those things clear because those are things that I would make clear to the calendar committee but the biggest thing of it is is I need some clarity from the board what you want me to share structured recesses because I can only go by from what I've been getting from DPI well in this cradle it's your job to understand what structured recess means

268and I value that opinion and if DPI is telling you that structured recess required lesson plans then I feel like we should go with what you what you know and what you've been told because that's your job not ours Academy yeah if there's a county doing it I would ask them what they're doing that'd be the first place I'd start I don't know if there's a I don't know of a calendar I can call the calendar I've heard I can ask that question I just feel though if they're not doing it properly and DPI is share with me what should be done I still have to share that I just want the board unless you tell me otherwise actually after we get done tonight I can give you a name from somebody in that account

269that would be the contact person that should be able to help you with that and I definitely agree with Ms Graybill that you know we trust that you will do the right thing because obviously if the other group is not doing it properly we don't want to mimic a group that's not doing it properly yeah I just I just know when we say structural recess and we say lesson plans that changes things and I just want the board to know that's what I've been to share it's been shared with me from DPI so that's what I have to share I can call the other person probably know who you're talking about because I talk to them sometime and I can ask that question but I just need the board to be aware of that because

270I know that will probably be another thing that will be shared and I'm sorry I just want to be Clarity clear if we're going to go back to the calendar committee to of what our charge is thank you very much likewise I do apologize to the next group coming up because they've been here for a real long time but I would ask the Middle School athletic director of groups coordinators to please come forward and to speak appreciate you all being here tonight I know it's you started very early this morning and it's rather late tonight so I apologize for keeping here this long well thank you guys for giving us the opportunity to advocate for ourselves and speak tonight um my name is Kim Burkhart I'm the athletic director at Trask Byron Hager I'm the

271athletic director of herb Middle School Albert Hobbs Moore Road Middle School and we're missing a couple of us but you know in addition to us being athletic directors we all have coaching responsibilities at our school and some high schools so um being displayed is a presentation that we created with some of our response abilities and duties along with our current New Hanover County Schools pay scale from the school coaches and our athletic directors and I want to start by saying we are incredibly proud of our Middle School athletics and what we run is some of the best Middle School athletics in the state we offer incredible opportunities in the number of sports to our student athletes but I'll give ourselves a pat on the back it's a testament to the hard work and dedication that

272we put in and so up here we have some of the responsibilities that we have as athletic directors you know the purchasing of uniforms equipment scheduling buses games officials managing eligibility for all of our Sports so we run tryouts four times a year we're actually running trials Thursday I know personally I'm about to pump 150 athletes through the door at Trask and some of these larger schools are pushing more numbers but we do field maintenance because our games start at four o'clock so we can't expect our classroom teachers who are coaches to come and line our Fields so we're doing that responsibility for them we are game day administrators we manage our coaching staff we do the hiring ourselves manage volunteer paperwork make sure it's turned in properly all of us work over the summer

273but we are paid as teachers we're full-time teachers we've taken on the responsibility to be athletic directors which is also a full-time job do you just want anything I'll energet real quick okay just as you look out there at some of our duties uh I'll cut right to the chase what is the ask uh the ask is for an increase to the supplement that we get currently it's fourteen hundred dollars a year if you took all those duties we roughly did an hour count the hour count of those duties a year is 425 hours if you divided that by the fourteen hundred dollars you would come out to 3.29 an hour to deliver what we think is the best Middle School athletic program in the state um so you're looking at our current pay scale

274uh these are just some key highlights for that and and some of the inequities within the pay scale that's been in place so like I said we get 1400 for the year um our Cheerleading Coach which we all were driving force for them to be recognized as a sport back in 2019 they weren't recognized as a sport in this County at the middle school level before that before we advocated for that and they rightfully show our cheerleading coaches get 2 200 to work their Seasons our football coaches 1200 to work a season and a football assistant makes as much as a head coach for every other sport so as you can see we have a coach who I will say this again our Cheerleading Coach who's here supporting us athletic directors deserves that 2200 but

275uh a coach should not be getting paid more money than an athletic director especially when none of us were consulted on that pay increase that happened last year um so we do have some data from back to as you can as you can see uh there's been a 160 dollar raise in the last 13 to 14 years to our Middle School athletic director pay in addition to that our coaches have only seen 150 raise in those 13 to 14 years and our pay scale has been stagnant since 2015. and I'll add to that via added boys and girls cross country and recognized here so and just in the last four years five years so we've added three Sports and we've been in the same spot since 2015. I will say that with equal to 14

276we do get a lot of us under myself included there's been some years I didn't get paid because I've been buying please for a child or an athlete who couldn't get it or some type of path over the frosting I've not had that on pocket because our budget I have no money in our accounts because once we get our budget and everything gets taken care of our buses everything else we literally had about 1200 they want us to buy paint for our bills were already in the hole so just a number of reference we run 13 sports teams and the county provides fifteen thousand dollars to run our 15 sports teams yeah go ahead I'm sorry and just like she was saying we brought a great sports program and I'm one that I love all

277the kids play in the camp and I'm taking money out of my own pocket and again there's been years I've been paid I would take that money and I'd buy cleats or I would buy a staple across some athlete would benefit from especially their brains and stuff I have to give them to a sport so what we do spend a lot of our own money debt you know so um we've been advocating for this for uh say increase at least all of my time that I've been an athletic director for about four or five years I know they have done it prior they've been in the game a little bit longer than I have um but we went did the data and we figured out what surrounding counties are paying but they're not coming close

278to what we're offering for our students um the number of sports opportunities if you look right next door in Brunswick County they even fund assistance uh but you can see kind of what's going on in some of the other counties around us and how we're behind and I will say for most of us and we're working full-time hours for these we're working most of my planning and I'm in the power I don't test the subject how many laid now so I'm actually spending a lot of time after school and after at home just doing is that like you know and I mean I love doing it I love the kids but at some point it's just it's a lot of stress but um we love what we do we have coaches that deserve to be

279paid more and coaches that support us that are here behind us staying here until almost it's 10 o'clock at night who support the work that we do and the opportunities that we provide for our kids I can personally say that who I am as a person is because the opportunities I was given as an athlete the opportunities I had to play in school teams and and we want to provide that same opportunity for our kids do you guys have any questions we have any questions on the board Ms Walker no I would uh thank you very much for coming I know um this is a bit of a hard decision to do and I'm glad that you are here advocating for yourself and we certainly want to be mindful of that and listen to what

280you have to say can you speak a little bit to the um the value that at the Middle School athletics has for students I know that there's a lot but I would love to hear you know what you feel yeah I mean in New Hanover County um at the high school level you know we've got some of the best um Sports programs in the State uh produce state champions yearly um at the middle school level you know we really lay that Foundation uh we get the kids acclimated to what it's like to be a student athlete the expectations on grades behaviors that you're monitored during your in Seasons you're monitor during your out seasons and it's it's just a large part of a school Community you know Athletics really is whether you're playing or whether

281you're a fan watching you know we have hundreds of students try out for sports we have hundreds of students and parents come and watch our games so we're proud of what we've done we think we are an integral part of a functioning school system so that's why we're standing here before you said I yeah some kids just come to school for sports do their work so I mean we I mean all of us we try to push that and told these kids to come to school we want these kids to play a sport to actually you know pull their grades up to actually show responsibility to show you know be a good citizen you know just to represent our school in any type of way okay I want to say thank you for coming out

282tonight I know the value added and I wholeheartedly support an increase in pay for you guys and I appreciate you coming out because we're about to be talking about the budget and so being intentional with the light line items um I also want to share that that was some this was something that our central office staff did present to the last board um that with intentional conversations about budget elsewhere unfortunately cut you guys and so I want to give nod an acknowledgment of that that they do see the value add that you bring to this community and so I definitely think it's gonna be a Continuum as we look forward to make sure that we're treating you guys with respect for the value that you bring to our students sorry you had to wait so

283long but the board you stay and watch the rest of them I can only speak myself but I think we all hear you I was a trash for seven years female athlete director um back to what I've said twice the line already we're only as good successful discipline academics perceptional schools as those who work with and so we need to listen to you I'd be live if I didn't tell you everybody wants a piece of the budget and so but I think these numbers are worse than I thought yeah and I think that's just not for me to show you these numbers are pitiful now that doesn't mean you get it but I think we're all listening to you and you'll be right there at the top of the priority list we have to in

284Oakland County Commissioners will understand the need for how all this plays into the success of our schools individually and you know in a composite Arena so can't thank you enough thank you and for coming tonight I want to Echo everything that's been said Thank you thank you for the success bring to our school district it has not gone unnoticed the yeah um we're all going to say the same thing is that we're going to support you um it has to be you know folded into our our budget discussion and paying one group more or paying anybody more takes away from something else so that is going to be a big Balancing Act but um I just I do want to speak to your point about Athletics is important to some students so much the fact

285that that even just gets them to school our whole Middle School lacrosse program was started on that premise um it was an after school you can play if you if you do your work so that is not lost on me you know that whole benefit too so just know that we're gonna we're gonna try the um it's going to be up to you know our our senior staff you know to look and and make some hard choices but thank you for being here and doing what you do and working the extra hours and you know practice hard play hard yeah I just want to Echo I think to be clear uh we all think our worth is our current athletic supplement each quarter because we are doing that amount of work and then some we

286just want to be respected and recognized and realize that you have seven incredibly dedicated athletic directors that provide opportunities for our students and we just hope that you see our worth incompensated appropriately well again I'm not going to say the same thing your bell said but I do I thank you number one for staying very late tonight and but also for everything you do because you know I used to be in your shoes so I definitely uh appreciate each and every one of you and we're going to do our very best for you thank you thanks guys we'll carry on um and the next one is me that's going to be very short uh I'm going to make a motion right off the front end and we'll go from there uh I move that we

287send policy 2230 back to policy committee for the purpose of establishing a uniform application for joining committees establishing numbers of committee members number of years the committee members serve and the timeline for joining the committee so I'll restate that I make a motion that we send policy 22 30 back to the policy committee for the purpose of establishing a uniform application for joining a committee establishing numbers of committee members numbers of year number of years committee members serve and a timeline for joining committees I've talked about this for two years I think this is a very important thing I've had people ask me hey I want to join X Y or Z committee and we ask how do you do that you know some people some committees you're on for years some committees you're on

288for multiple years I think it needs to be uniform I think we need to have a uniform timeline you know I would suggest beginning of school year but that's up to the policy committee I'm not giving them any any further so I make that motion When anybody second that please miss Bradford second sat is there a further discussion with Miss crabill yes before I offer another um motion on top of that is that I think we'd be better served not to have the policy committee decide this but to have um someone take the lead and pull together all of our committee chairs and our subject matter experts so that they can give input on what that looks like the um each of the the different and that has been my stance all along is that

289as soon as we get our committees established what took us six months to even get this policy changed is that we need input not the policy committee to decide that I think that we need our subject matter experts over here and the people that work for them and the board committee chairs to be um heavily heavily involved in that and not the policy committee okay so are you amending make them I yes I would like to amend your motion to establish an ad hoc committee that works with the committee chairs and subject matter experts to develop the membership information in letter e of that of policy um 2230. okay we have an amendment so is there a second to that Amendment okay without that uh that is defeated so we go back to the original

290motion uh we are is there any other discussion if not as buoy would you call the role please Mr wildebear aye Ms Bradford I Miss Barnhart yes Miss craville no Miss Mason yes Mr McManus Ms Walker that motion passes six to one so we'll send policy 2230 back with that caveat we are now on d which is policies 3620 Ms Bradford you asked for discussion on this yes Mr chairman for the purpose of discussion I moved send the motion adopted on June 8 2021 waving the first reading on policy 3620 extracurricular activities and student organizations which was on the June 8 2021 agenda for a first reading it passed by a 4-3 vote over the repeated stated objections that it violated board policy a second we have a first and a second is there any

291discussion Miss Walker yes about what this refers to it kind of seems a little hidden about what it means I mean you're saying go back to a certain date and time where it was first reading was waived and on what specifically I would like to know yeah can you state that not restating it because I understood what you meant procedurally I just feel like the it was it was passed by the board and in order to rescind a policy that we've passed I'd like to know what the change is supposed to be well I believe as I remember the change was the addition of the motion is to discuss it so we have a motion in a second does that not then move to rescind the motion was to rescind correct is that not true

292right yes I've made a motion so that we can okay that's what I'm doing I'm trying to clarify exactly why we were trying to rescind this policy that's been passed by the board yes okay yeah I'm just checking to see if we're ready to talk about it I'm oh yeah I'm quite aware of the time um at the this board's May 11 policy meeting 3620 extracurricular activities and student organizations was moved forward with the mended Language by the policy committee to be placed on the June 8 20 20 21 regular meeting for a first reading and it and it and it went through the policy committee on a two to one vote will Deborah descending the next on June 8 2021 in a 4-3 vote with MS crabill um Mr wildmore and Mr Venice buddy

293know no no no I did not vote no to that one yeah it was to waive the first reading you did vote no to that I think you mean it was Mr Boyer because he's the one that brought that up to wave and he did it remotely I remember that meeting specifically you voted against it ma'am voted against what to waive it to waive because it voted right because I don't like to waive policies and that's my point we spend so much time going through the minutia of Robert's Rules of Order and getting things right and that night we got it wrong because we waived a first reading on an important thing and it was 11 45 at night check your record and I believe that we that we that the actions of the board

294procedurally were incorrect so I am asking to rescind the waving of that first reading and then consider the Amendments that were up for policy 36 20. can I ask a question of our attorney as I as I read our policies if someone is not at a meeting they and then they zoom in and then they Zoom back out that is against our policy correct so basically if somebody was not here they were out of state or whatever and they zoomed in just to be part of a discussion and then they zoomed back out that does that also violates our policy correct um remote participation is governed by policy remote participation is governed by your board policy 2302 there is a section I'm scrolling to it now on conditions and requirements for remote participation that's in

295section C um and I'm sorry I'm catching up here um in section c 5 states that a board member participating in a meeting remotely shall use his or her best efforts to participate in all or as much of the meeting as circumstances permit and not merely for the closed session portion of the meeting or a limited number of agenda items there is if your question is whether a member can zoom in for one item only um again C5 encourages or requires members to use their best efforts to participate in all or as much and not merely for a limited number there's also a procedure in section d which states that a member of the board who desires to participate in a meeting remotely shall notify the board chair and Superintendent at least four hours in

296advance of the meeting so that the necessary arrangements can be made I I think from a procedural standpoint board members I'd I hear you that you're tired of hearing about Robert's rules um but so the motion on the table that's before the board was stated as a motion to rescind so that motion under Robert's Rules the intent of that is to cancel a previous board action and and I am looking for a little bit of clarity on is it to cancel the waving of the first reading but not a motion to so I was not present at this medium my understanding is so there must have been a motion to waive the requirement for first reading followed by emotion to amend the policy itself is that correct it is okay so so the motion that's

297standing before you now that's been moved and seconded it's to rescind the board's action in June to wave first reading it does not rescind the subsequent board action that would have approved the policy change okay Mr chairman so waving of a policy is not a procedural error we are allowed to do that and it is my recollection that Mr Boyer was on the meeting because his picture was up in the corner up until I mean I I don't remember when he signed off but he was definitely in there for the beginning part of the meeting I know I know I was talking about procedural because we didn't do anything wrong we are allowed to waive first reading but what I want Clarity on before we vote is if we rescind the first reading does that

298take us does that just put it back into the policy cue for a second reading it's not taking or it be we've already adopted it so what does that do what are you trying to do get rid of the policy if that's the case it should go back to policy committee for another discussion so I'm just I'm unclear is to if you waive the first reading what good does that do us because we haven't waived what we haven't we're not changing the policy so I don't understand what you're trying to do I mean I do understand what you're trying to do but I think that it would be better if we said I would like to pull this policy out and send it back to the policy committee we have a whole new policy committee

299with all the people on it that are going to make the change that you want so I think that we should follow that rule instead of trying to rescind a wave that's my opinion before nobody seconded it yet so before we seconded I think that yeah we did okay well that I think the other people should know the know what happened just uh as my recollection and you were here too so uh I disagree um unfortunately with you Mr Crab on that um that Mr bullier actually had it joined the meeting for that vote he came at the last second he was the fourth vote to waive the policy and then um voted actually was the one who made the recommendation for the changes and then he said I'm out after that and left um

300so yeah that's either here or there but that's so regardless I think we have heard that I don't think we've had a violation of our policy um I mean we can go back and forth and look up go back at the tape and look at it but I think we've passed the policy already I agree with Ms crabill in this instance if there's a policy you guys aren't don't care for then send it bring it up in policy committee and then bring it to the board again for a vote I don't think trying to do it on the technicality is going to I don't think it's I don't think it's procedurally correct and I think we've it's been an adoption for over a year now so I mean I think that's the way it should

301be done and I don't think we've we did anything wrong as a board the last time so I'm gonna I'm gonna Just Disagree Mr chairman first as far as point of discussion um it's to my knowledge that no one is utilizing this policy as it's written and so as sense of urgency it becomes to change it while there are students utilizing this policy would not be appropriate and please jump in if I miss speaking in that realm but because we do not have anybody that is utilizing these qualifications that is why a faster turnaround for a change would be something for discussion versus going through the policy so I beg to differ that we have um 25 000 student or 13 000 students that are utilizing this policy because the policy is extracurricular activities and

302that includes all students in all clubs and so we probably do have 25 000 25 000 students because I just think this is a backdoor attempt for you to take away the rights of transgender students and to not provide equal opportunities for all of our students and I was going back through my notes and we are going to be violating Title IX laws if we take that out and um there the I was looking at my notes from lots of different things I've been to so many seminars and webinars on this that the the new law is unclear about Athletics but it is very clear that we have to provide equal opportunities for all of our students no matter what your thoughts are on transgender so if that is what you want to do then

303say it out loud and don't backdoor us I think that we need to be clear with each other and straightforward we're coming to the board Norms where we're going to agree in just a minute I hope to not surprise people and not backdoor people and that's exactly what this is and it's just not right it's Walker I mean the last thing I'm going to say is I'm I have to agree wholeheartedly Miss crabill I feel like if if the attempt is to try and change the policy that we pass in regard to the transgender students we have in our County I'm never going to be on board with it one and two if if that is the the case then send it back to policy and let the process play out and let everybody speak

304their mind on what they really want to do with this policy I'm never going to be on board with any discrimination against children and especially transgender kids who already have it hard enough and I think the reason why we we've worked hard to well I wouldn't say we're hard but to put it into this policy in place was to be mindful of all the children in this County and and and you know and say they do exist and they are human and they have a right and so if you guys want to do that send it to policy and have a discussion and we have a first and second in front of us miss uh would you please call the roll I'm sorry Mr McManus answer your hand if I apologize the motion is to

305rescind the motion adopted on June 8 2021 waving the first reading on policy 3620 extracurricular activities and student organizations it was was on June 8 2021 for the first it was on the agenda for the first reading that is my motion that's that's where we are right now okay we have a second first and second is Bowie Miss Barnhart yes Miss Bradford yes Miss crabill no no Miss Mason Mr McManus yes Miss Walker no and Mr wildabour yes that passes four to three Mr wildeborg thanks man I moved to now consider the proposed amendment Amendment language and policy 3620 extracurricular activities in student organizations proposed that the May 11 2021 meeting policy meeting and move forward with the amended language to be placed on the June 8 2021 calendar I move it to be in

306the first reading I mean into the I move it for consideration now I don't want to don't understand I don't understand that yeah what was to be on the agenda for a first reading and a second reading waive the first reading and you move forward with the second so now we've we've rescinded that first so the policy is now up for a vote yeah that's what my motion is dear Mr waterborne so just to be clear we when we were going through our policy manual when we have a new policy you have to have a first and a second reading when you are amending an existing policy we do not have to have a first and second reading all we have to do is go through once so what we've just voted on is really

307moot because we don't we don't have to do that we just did it because we wanted to be thorough so I just wanted to make that point out and I just again I have to say this is a backdoor effort of not being a team player we you added it to the agenda without telling anybody we don't have our Title IX coordinator here um I don't know if anybody this is not my place you know Dr Faust would have to um assign someone to talk about this but we haven't given our staff an opportunity to even talk about this we haven't given our Title IX coordinator who we hired specifically to make sure that we don't break the law you're you're worried we're worried about breaking calendar law but we're not worrying about breaking discrimination

308laws I'm I'm having a stroke right now that we are this is the beginning of the end where we're going to back door each other every single meeting and I think we need to check our conscience it's just not right Mr chair I don't really understand what we're doing here I feel like if the the goal was to rescind the policy that several board members didn't like was that not done and what is this next motion I don't understand what we're doing I really really don't I need Clarity Mr Ms Weber please um so the board just considered and approved a motion to rescind a previous board action waiving the requirement that policies be you know first reading and a second reading that that was approved just now that that action does not then also

309rescind the subsequent action at that previous board meeting in which the board I I was not here I assume ultimately approved a change to um policy 3620 so where the board is now policy 3620 remains in effect as written and as approved by the board in June there have been no changes to it um procedurally I apologize Miss Bradford from a procedural perspective the boards policy governing how policies are developed it's policy policy development adoption and review in section c um to Ms crabill's Point states that the board May revise or rescind in existing board policy only by a majority vote if a proposal to revise or rescind a policy is included in the published meeting agenda the board may take action on the proposal at that board meeting if however a proposal to revise

310or rescind a policy is presented at the board meeting as an addendum to the published agenda the board will not take action on the proposal until a subsequent meeting so if a member now wanted to propose an amendment to or a rescinding of policy 3620 buy your own policy 2410 the board would not be able to take action on it until a subsequent meeting meeting February or later that's a procedural consideration for you as Miss uh Walker said probably the best thing to do would be to make a motion to send it back to policy um Miss Walker I mean Miss Bradford would have to rescind her motion well actually you didn't get a second okay then thank you would someone like you move to move I moved to I moved to move policy 3620s

311amendments from that night back to the policy committee is there a second further discussion Mr Weber are we do do we move to send the amendment back or do we move to send the whole policy back I mean either either would be an option for the board whether the board now wants to direct the calendar committee to review the policy as a whole or just to review the previous action and the amendment that occurred in June it would it would be at your discretion and I would like to remind the board that we did have a discussion of this in November without said members here including the Title IX director so it's not like it's the first time that's happened but I'll leave that alone we have a first with do we get a second

312yes send policy 3620 Amendment back to policy committee for further discussion there's a second uh all probably needs to do it by role yeah Mr wildeborg aye Ms Bradford aye Ms Barnhart yes Miss crabill no Miss Mason yes Mr McManus and Miss Walker no says five to two we'll carry on new business budget board budget uh priorities [Applause] I have a short activity I would like for the board to participate in as a way for us to be able to know what your priorities are as we're starting to develop the budget process and so as you can see I've got poster boards behind me and behind you and we've got listed on each poster board one goal that came from our strategic plan you have at your seat cards with your name and they're each

313marked priority one through six and so um what I would like for you to do is to take your card and stick it to the PO each poster so one card on each poster and it needs to whatever your priority is it goes to that poster it says everyone understand the activity okay all right so if you guys could do that for us that would be great here we go you're way on the end Chris I'm sorry you're at your desk amazing oh is that what those are right um all right with me again [Music] all right okay it is right now still 23. that's it this too oh he's got your name on it too okay let's do that that's it okay yeah for at least two hours hand it sounds like it's right

314here [Music] that's why we put your names on themselves you're amazing okay we will carry on I think yeah I appreciate your help thank you thank you very much thank you thank you um we are going to carry on with board agenda review um Mr McManus Mr McMahon could you join us thank you I'm sorry distracted here back to the ranch uh and I'm just gonna keep running forward and see what happens uh I would like to make a motion I move that we add a discussion of excuse me no I don't that's already done that um yes it's been a long day sorry about that I'd like to discuss at this point we we added this in we would like to discuss uh moving our board agenda review from a uh closed session situation

315or a not open situation to an open meeting where we could have the whole board there and then we can move right behind that to a closed session to make us not be here until 11 o'clock on nights like tonight I do know that the County Commissioners as well as the city council use that model it's something that would be flexible so if we tried it for a couple months and it did not work then we could always go back I mean it's not something that would have to be set in stone forever I think it would be a positive move so that everyone can get things on agenda as needed that way we wouldn't have to try to have a lot of other things going on uh it also we also would need to

316have a um after discussing this with Dr Faust we would need to have the ability to have an emergency closed session at the beginning of our meeting if we so needed I'll make that motion she's seconded so it's bad for a second Mr McManus yes sir some of us on my third year aboard we've had this discussion about anything he needed and what's my favorite saying about this time alone we don't play well we don't play with them we're going to meet earlier As Time said I have no problem that's not going to change if we come in here for uh whatever and still stay we have to make a commitment well just to keep them here but I think a lot of people say no matter what time but they don't need videos but

317yet make them stay just in case we have to have a question that comes into their territory right but this is I agree well it's unacceptable well this would actually have a second meeting so we would have an extra meeting but it would be a very short meeting right right because this is ridiculous I agree are we in discussion yes we are in terms of discussion this would take the per session ninety percent of the time off the board meeting so bam you've lost an hour and it would also possibly stop any bickering that goes on in amending the uh uh agenda so let's pick up 15 minutes there and if we've had a chance to discuss what's on the agenda in a less formal setting perhaps these long drawn-out debates we'll call them discussions

318friendly conversations would be shortened the goal is to probably straight two solid hours off the monthly meeting by trying this it doesn't work we'll try something else but my commitment is to shorten these meetings and to streamline things and I think this is a good way to try it and that's what the county does and that's what the city does and it works for them if you've ever been to a County Commission meeting I mean you sit down you spread your stuff out and it's just about gone it's done they they really know how to to to the meeting to go yes um I like the idea of doing that but here is my concerns is that we are only moving the conversation of adding things to the agenda um from one meeting to the

319next because we added this whole this whole last thing about policy 3620 took us about 25 minutes that we didn't have to add and it took us about 10 minutes to get the agenda at you know changed so we and if you noticed on two of our items there's nothing written on there about what we're going to discuss one of them being disciplined there was nothing on there on what we're going to discuss about discipline and then on the one that you brought up about board committees Mr World of War it says the board will review board committees it doesn't say that the board will talk about policy 2230. so we are going to if we're going to change our format then we have to commit also to having accurate information on there and maybe

320we just need to talk about that at the closed session but I don't think it's going to change anything about our debating on what goes on the agenda we're just going to move it from one meeting to the next but I'm I can I can go with with trying anyone else okay uh all in favor please signify by saying I I all opposed passes seven zero when does that start uh we'll start that in February February yes correct and next we will have the board Norms which Ms crabill has added Mr crabill yes so um we talked about this a little bit at the retreat and I um we really didn't talk about it I just you know threw out some ideas and it looks like they were all except whoops looks like they were

321all accepted the one thing that was changed um from my suggestions where I had said um be transparent in our actions by not surprising the board chair and each other at the last minute at meetings in the media and or on social media which all of that happened this week the board Norms that Mr wildebear has put before us um just says in the event of agenda changes notify the board chair and each other as soon as possible and I'm not really talking about agenda changes I'm talking about surprising each other like somehow that calendar got on social media tomorrow we know some of us are going to be on the radio or in the newspaper so I just feel like we need to be commit to making that just a little more um a

322little more definitive but I I really think that we need board Norms because tonight we if we had adopted these in the very beginning then we wouldn't have even had some of the discussions that we had but I I want to make a motion that we accept these board Norms as a working document for us we have a motion we have a second Booker this tribal just make a motion she did I did I made a motion to accept the board Norms that um Mr World of War as a working document as a working document that will be housed in our Archive of documents so Norms are not policy we're just Norms are not policy they're just okay I will second then yeah seconds Walker any further discussion it's not that the only thing that

323I would like to see out of I think I gave you this back um is you know we have talked about we are individual people but coming together as the collective whole so once decisions are made um you know I and I have some that I voted against in some situations tonight um we're walking away as a team of this was the decision of the board and to respect the decision of the board not you know everybody is Right rightfully so going to give their speeches of where they feel on those situations but as we walk away from decisions this is as a collective whole and so I think that we should do that to the best of our ability too yeah I mean it's part of the working document I would just say once

324a decision is made that the board individual board members will um not negatively talk about a decision made that the board will respect the decision well that's a great first by the decision Mr chair are you okay with uh I was going to say I am okay with adding that in you know into the into the if we add them now my motion doesn't change okay all right Miss Walker um I'm not really sure what that means I don't think anybody wants to be negative but we're going to have disagreements and of opinion and I think as First Amendment rights that we have we can voice that opinion and I understand the decisions are going to be made by a majority of the board but I mean there are certain things that are going to

325definitely come up that I'm going to have a differing opinion on so people are just going to have to be okay with that if it's my opinion then it's my opinion so I don't know if that has to be a norm I mean I just okay I appreciate that thank you Mr Patrick um somebody Claire for for me what a board Norm is what a working document is do you not have any of those in your company like standard like like an HR procedure how we treat each other what we can do and not do because there's nothing labeled a working document no ma'am okay so let me look up real quick if you would the definition of a norm um the I mean in my business we all treat each other respectfully and professionally

326at all times period you know so it it some of this to me is just it's just common sense it's it's how you are I don't think it needs to be a policy I don't think it needs to be a document I think we just need to try really hard to be nice to each other I think it's just as a new board coming together I think we're collectively setting the tone of how we treat one another it's I mean as a classroom teacher that's what you do you go over the roles of what the expectations are and you walk through it with your students to say this is the expectation when we're here and so that's what this document says to me this is the expectation as we work together and if I can

327piggyback on that you know a lot of times with classrooms you actually you know bring everybody together to make that decision you know so it's not like the teacher stands in front of the classroom and says these are the rules you're going to follow a lot of times especially older children you can have them be part of that discussion but we're children but we can act like children very quickly and we can we cannot work collaboratively and so all I want is for us to make a conscious decision that we will do all of the things on here and so that we can avoid some of what just happened tonight and you can look you can Google board Norms um to do that but I also just wanted to make sure that we didn't have

328these for the for the past two years and we tried at like four different meetings and we imploded we can't afford to do that again we have to set expectations um Dr Foust sets expectations of his staff he has expectations of us we have expectations of him we should have we should have expectations of ourself and I do recall talking about that at our board training on successful boards Miss Mason um and would the public have access to these to be able to see these yeah I don't even mind posting We can put them on the damn door so what I what I would propose is that are not proposed but say is that we're making it transparent to the public we're saying this is what we are expecting of ourselves and we are telling

329the public and and they're going to hold us accountable and I think that that is it and they should we have a motion in a second do you do that yeah I'm sorry well who's going to speak there Ms Walker yes sir thank you I will just say as a person that has been on this board for two years and I will say again like I did at the retreat thank you very much um sorry uh I think that you know it's fine to have Norms but people have to practice what they preach as well and I feel like that it did not happen in the last two years and if someone's going to say to me I would like for you to act this way then you know that but that works both ways

330and I think that should go without saying but I have to say it because my experience has been different to what we're trying to say we're doing and I agree we are adults so I think we are responsible for our own actions all right so we have a motion and a sec Mr McManus you are going to say something I like what you're saying but let's just be honest I'm going to say if you build radio TV and in the paper I love you for the camera challenge usually people run right up because one or two will go to the camera they say something you're going to say it how it comes out well thank you you're going to be on radio you're going to ask you questions I mean that's going to be very

331hard everyone to measure or to weigh but it's a reasonable and and I'll be honest look at schedule appointments with principals when you want to visit I can guarantee of the seven of us not everybody's going to do that it's just I'll do what schedule schedule appointments with the pretzels when you want to visit schools you're saying you want this to be your working document rule you know your guiding document opinion I've asked the principles that they wanted to die what are you earned tonight Mr the Aki even said come to me anytime yes ma'am in our board training one of the things they talked to us about was how disruptive a board member can be to a building showing up that was my only thought process on that and to miss Barn I want

332to compliment Miss Barnhart she was on the radio this morning and she started off her interview with I just want to let you know that these are my thoughts and not those of the board and I think that the point you were trying to make maybe not is that even though a four to three vote is an ouch because it does it means that we're not United it has to mean that we are united we are not ever not allowed to say I I disagree with that decision but I will work with the board to continue to make progress so I think that's what you were trying to say is that there's going to be a lot of times when we differ but we we can't go out and trash each other and trash our

333board and trash our superintendent and trash our senior staff and our principals because we don't like how they do discipline because we don't like how they set classroom expectations we have to commit to trying to make our school system better and believing that it is good that I mean that's all that I was trying to do and I think that's what you were trying to say is that freedom of speech is not being stifled here it's just think before you speak I guess maybe if we want to put that in there um we can were you referring to my Mr McMahon's yes Mr McMaster no no I was not was not a school in my life let's go ahead and so we have a motion in a second to accept these board Norms uh all

334in favor say aye aye all opposed okay I save them okay passes six to one um do we have any committee reports I have not been told of any um I do want to see uh well I'll talk to Miss um Barnhart after about this but I notice we don't have a uh policy committee planned but she just found out she was in the policy commission so we'll get that planned very soon announcements uh the curriculum committee will meet on Monday January 23rd at 3 45 in the Board of Education Center the attendance seating capacity will be 170 the general public will have an option to view remotely on nhcs.tv YouTube the February regular board meeting will be held on Tuesday February 7 2023 5 PM at the board of education center right here 1805

335South 13th Street the general public will have an option to view remotely on nhcs.tv YouTube um we don't have any need for a closed session unless you guys really want to no no I don't think so um are we having an interim meeting I don't think we have any from interim does anybody have a need for an indoor meeting well well we're talking about I really felt like Finnish [Music] a working meeting somewhere to where we pick up some of that stuff that we didn't quite get to so we didn't get to the 100 year plan um and just and just finish it in fact we finished it and so but I'm not proposing this this month I'm just saying and I'd like to schedule the next meeting with the public and tonight we heard

336from somebody who said hold it somewhere else and I think logistically that's doesn't work because we can't live stream it and this that and the other but I want to be really sensitive to what the Public's needs are I think we need to schedule that next um what's it called Town Hall the town hall right absolutely but we would do that February at without any other information needed at this point I would entertain a motion to adjourn second second all in favor not opposed okay very good thank you all happy Board of Education Month oh yeah right there besides more papers I will be on the radio tomorrow morning just let you know you're going to be talking about me I will at 7 30 in the morning it's not working did everybody get there

337um okay hey what's Jack y'all refer to it tonight [Music] um okay student health advisory okay yeah all right excuse me