NHCS Board of Education Regular Board Meeting | August 2, 2022

001and you never know we're going to have okay just send it to your email just a minute to get to our filter but you should have it in just a second thank you anytime girlfriend crystal with what i need for closed sessions i can okay are you staying for a second i will be here yes for the whole night yes um we some of what we're talking about in closed session um yep all right wait okay good evening everyone the august 2022 regular meet regular meeting of the board of education is called to order ms bowie will you please call the roll good afternoon ms craybill here miss walker miss adams here mr bullier miss justice here mr mcmanus president and mr will deboer also okay um so again welcome to the meeting of new

002hampshire county board of education for august thank you all for being with us in person or in the remote viewing audience we value and appreciate your participation your interests and your advocacy on behalf of the students and staff i ask that each of us do our part to contribute to a successful and non-stressful meeting by treating each other with dignity and respect throughout no matter what your thoughts or feelings are about an issue or even a particular group so that the board can remain focused on completing the governance work so necessary for our students and staff to be successful i just wanted to call your attention that on the agenda you will see estimated times for each topic as a courtesy to and a respect for the time of my fellow board members the new

003hanover county staff that is joining us and to the community at large i intend to stick as closely as possible to these estimated times to keep our discussion focused and on point so that being said um moving into our first agenda item and that is approval of the agenda move to approve as presented okay um is there a second okay um i have um is there somebody in the audience with us okay um i need to um the make one adjustment to the agenda if i may i'd like to add item d under information classified recognition program to be presented by dr barnes so i'm making that motion it's a an amended motion to that motion i'd like to also make an amendment all right we're gonna do one at the time okay okay all

004right all in favor say any discussion about the amended i'll second the amendment okay any discussion on that okay all in favor say aye aye aye okay mr wildeborn yes um chairman i'd like to see if we could add just at least an informational item about the uh fall for [Music] where we're at on that whole question i didn't get that information on what uh on seclusion rooms update yeah okay that's a motion is there a second second is there any discussion uh i'm not quite clear just is this an info i think he's what he's saying is in he wants to add an information session um i'm guessing item now e okay all right well there's people here i know that are interested and i think it'd be good idea to do that that's

005my opinion we've got everybody here okay um so i'd like to just toss in there that number one we weren't prepared for that you know with our senior staff to give any updates and not certain if there are any updates but i also wanted to just remind the rest of the board that we already have talked about this at several opportunities and we agreed at that point that we were going to wait until after the september meeting so that the schools had a chance to review their um their discipline plans and um update their school improvement plans and then and have those reviewed before we voted on that so that is my thoughts miss adams you have anything okay mr mcmanus yes you're fine with what whatever you said okay all right so um let's

006go ahead um and just take a vote on that miss billy will you call the roll oh the motion is to add seclusion um discussion of seclusion and restraints to the agenda yes not tomorrow are you prepared to do that um i i can provide the same information that i provided before but i have not the schools haven't provided their school improvement plans or their school plan for the management of student behavior yet right thank you i guess my question was i thought the idea was we were going to wait until after uh miss varnam spoke with the principals which she has done at this point so i just want to hear maybe what their their recounting was or or where their you know how that meeting went where we were at you know so

007i think we do have an update i can tell you that i was at the one of the sessions and it was basically informational and they went through scenarios and they talked about it and she told them exactly what she told us that she's expecting them to review their discipline plans and include it in the school improvement plans so there really wasn't any discussion that i heard where people were pushing back or saying yay okay all right so miss billy will you call the roll miss justice um yes mr mcmanus i'm not sure mrs crabill no miss adams no okay so we won't be adding that okay so now we are back to the original motion to um accept the agenda as amended um so we've already had a first and a second so um

008miss all in any more discussion okay all in favor say aye aye aye aye opposed okay great so we have that all right so next up on our agenda is our invocation the um the associate pastor from wrightsville beach methodist church reverend julia hayes will provide our invocation so go ahead and step forward will everyone please stand thank you so much for the privilege of getting to be here and uh leading us in prayer in this time will you join me now in prayer holy and loving god i thank you for each and every person in this room i thank you for the call that you've placed on their life to be deeply involved in the education of our young people lord as they gather today to discuss future plans would your spirit of peace

009be among them would you grant them vision and clarity would you give them eyes to see the path that you are calling them towards and lord would you keep us always mindful of the least the last and the lost among us that your justice would be done particularly for these children we love you and it's in jesus name we pray amen thank you okay so next we have our national anthem and um i just wanted to say to folks that um it is my goal to have a national anthem presentation at every one of our board meetings whether it be live or recorded and so tonight we will have a recording thank you to the communications department for calling through our archives [Music] oh [Music] fast [Music] that our flag was still there oh say

010does the stars [Music] so i don't know who that was but do you know who that was aiden singing yes okay thank you emily lane from new hanover high school did an excellent job okay will you please join me in the reciting of the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you everyone may be seated so um oh i thought we had made this change but um i guess since we didn't get it in writing i'll go ahead and do it out loud the next up on our agenda i would like to switch recognitions and introductions with the work session so um i'm making that motion is

011there a second to switch that okay so that recognitions can go now instead of the work oh i'm sorry okay my i just didn't update all right so all right so now we are ready to do recognitions um russell would you like to come forward first good evening tonight new hanover county schools is proud to recognize new hanover high school alumni aiden payne as the gatorade north carolina boys soccer player of the year aiden who was a forward on the team helped the wildcats make history when they won the first ever boys soccer state championship last fall throughout the season aiden scored 54 goals and had 11 assists including two goals in the state final leading him to most valuable player honors he also scored all four goals in the state semifinal aiden was named

012nc soccer scotches association player of the year and was named to the united soccer coach's all-american selection he is also a finalist for the boys soccer player of the year at the high school ot honors and was named to the high school ot all-state team he is committed to playing at nc state this fall let's give it up for aiden [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hey yeah congratulations [Applause] okay next up is administrative recognitions introductions dr barnes i'd like to bring in my my physical replacement here uh jennifer geller there she is i was going to say dr barnes looks a lot like jen geller tonight we'll take you thank you good evening it is my pleasure one of my most favorite parts of my job is the hiring aspect and bringing excellent talent here

013to the division and while we would love to introduce all of the staff that we bring to the division we are assured that at their school-based um faculty meetings those introductions will be made for school-based and department-based positions so tonight i have the pleasure of introducing administrative positions those that serve the entire division so first i have mr benjamin horn his career started out as an exceptional children's teacher and then moved on with his experience in other leadership positions such as a director of athletics dean of students coordinator student support is now currently serving as an ap in pender county he is from wilmington here so we're happy to have him back as the ap at hoggard so join me in welcoming mr horn thank you for making the trip across the border we're welcoming

014you with open arms uh we also have mr stanley that is here this evening he is our new executive director of finance and i know the finance department is extremely excited to have him joining the team um he'll be starting mid-august um and mr stanley's career he has served as a chief finance chief financial officer in whiteville as well as the vice president for finance and administration with bladen community college um and you may also know his wife that works here in the division as well miss amy stanley and child nutrition so we are excited to welcome mr stanley as well thank you both welcome to the team thank you so much okay okay so next on our agenda is the board work session so i have um mr mcmanus did you pass those um

015okay and i have each one of you to get one of these sheets too and then um oh yes i'm here chris adams this is for you and did you bring okay okay and said dr foss that's for you okay so um we talked about this at the um at the policy committee meeting and ran out of time so um we just thought that i would just bring it for a work session because this is one of those ones that we really have to get done so i do need your input so that um i can take it back to the policy committee you know for their input you knew once more to kind of follow our procedure so um those of you who are watching online um pete in particular if you um the

016policy that we're looking at is the one that we looked at in the policy committee so if you pull up simply you should be able to follow along with with the document that i'm using okay all right so um i brought this up miss adams gave me the opportunity about a year and a half ago to bring this up and we never were able to get past you know looking at these policies i mean looking at these committees but it's time that we have to and we are going to stick with this until we get her done um so starting a new year and i thought that would be a good opportunity so one of the one of the main reasons for doing this number one is that our board committee policy is sorely outdated

017and if you go onto the our website and you look up under under board of education and committees and click on that icon could we just pull this one down for just a minute and show us that so the audience if they want to follow along they can see that too because it's kind of hard to have two up at one time um committees no committees there you go so if you look at the list that that um anita miss baggy's going to scroll down for us this list and doesn't match up with our board policy and then if you as she's scrolling and looking we'll go back up but you saw on the left hand side there's a list of those committees and even there's an even there's a disconnect between some of the

018committees on the left and some of the committees on the list so we have to have something that is accurate for board purposes and for our community purposes um and this will be especially important as the year rolls in and we are looking to have members of our community and staff um on these committees so they're they're going to need to want to know you know what they're doing and what they're responsible for miss justice yes is there another way to view that besides up there because none of the hands-outs are on the that's why i'm having her put it up here because the you don't have a handout for it well you can't see it you can pull it up on the website yeah pull it up on your computer where i mean that's

019what i'm asking she just follow she just walked you through if you go to board and then you click on um because i had done that already and then it did not pop up we'll give you a minute none of those are there [Music] okay so while she's pulling that up um i will go ahead and get started on um all right so you can go ahead and just save that page and then come back to it for us do you have it miss justice it's not on the board policy side judy it's right here thank you miss baggy okay um yeah i want to thank you again for filling in for our um our technology team too because anita is an alumni at that seat and we welcome you back the um all right

020so if you if we are if you could pull me back anita for the for the audience to see the um 2230 the policy that you had there you go all right so um if you scroll down in there i don't see that the one that we have up has does it have red lines and my glasses just can't see that no okay so on on board members on your page the um second paragraph um oh no the policy committee said we're going to strike that the um i had added in there on the second line where it says that the chairperson of the board on an annual basis names the people and i had added in there for clarity can be changed if necessary by the chair at any time during the year the

021policy committee felt that that was implied um board chair options so we are going to take that writing out so that we are not redundant so go ahead and strike that out in the third paragraph about one two three the fourth line down where it says the superintendent or designee and i put in parentheses there um and this is my suggestions this isn't um the rule um district subject matter expert in parentheses so that we are clear that who is responsible um for what on each of the committees the whether it be a board member or a district person but even if it is a board member the district person will always have a the board member will always have a district subject matter expert on their team then if you move down to one

022two three four five six seven the seventh line on that same paragraph we're ensuring accurate and timely information is available to the committee during its deliberation of issues and then adding the sentence where it says subcommittees may be formed to enhance and expedite the work of the committee okay so now we're moving down into um the first committee as part of the policy the budget development committee and so now this is where i need um miss baggy to go back to the other page that we were just on and click on budget development committee so at one point when at some point and i don't know when we switched from this definition of our budget to mountain could you hold miss justice oh huh when did that happen okay so this up it was never

023changed you know since 2019 because it says right here that the board development committee is made up of um three board members to start with and that who um one three board members one who will be the chair of that and um an administrative person from the school district obviously dr faust and the finance team and so this committee will work together starting in december january and february to start talking about the budget and getting some things together and preparing some of the board members to know a little bit more and to help with the discussion um on that so when i saw that that was you know that was a major difference but it also says over here on the right that budget development committee board members entire board so we've got two conflicting

024things on the same page and um so i did some research and there are a number of other districts including the large ones like you know wake and um charlotte mack that they have smaller budget committees um to budget development committees to get the conversation started so i we need to decide if that is something that we want to do the or if we want to keep it as the whole budget committee the whole the whole committee and then we will probably need some parameters around that so miss adams um to miss justice's point in 2019 because we had four new members that came on that was the rationale for making it a full board committee i think that with the turnover on the board that potentially you could have new four new members again

025this year i think that keeping it as is with the entire board for 22.30 not on the website as in the policy as it stood in front of us my personal opinion is that i think that that is the best way to do it because it keeps everyone involved in the process okay because it looks like this this policy was changed in 2020 not in 2019. okay miss the justice of the um policy committee was was to talk on this i'm not sure why we're up here doing this but that's something this conversation should be done on the policy committee okay so judy i explained um when i first opened up the conversation no i did i said the policy committee and mr wilderboar was a part of it um we decided because we didn't

026get through it to have a work session take the work from the policy to the work session get feedback and then go back to the policy committee so that we could have input from senior staff so we did go to policy first no senior staff has read it and it was not their request it was it was um nelson and pete's and my request to take it to a work session so we could have this dialogue so if you're not interested in having the dialogue then you can just this is something listen they would be doing we did we got started and we recommended that it come back to um the work session so if you if you watch the the meeting you can watch it and you can see that we did that and

027if i could yeah and i don't i can't hear you guys real well so i'm hoping i'm not jumping on the wrong path we want to get everybody's input on this it is such an important uh topic and uh also if we also talked about how to form the community being a part of that discussion pete i didn't hear what you said you're going to have to go to a different room or put headphones in or something okay i'll try again um thank you basically i just wanted to echo that we did decide to bring it back to the whole board to get input because it is such an important topic uh secondly we also even talked about in that first paragraph we kind of skimmed over that real quickly but in the first paragraph

028of the overall overarching policy because there are so many people that wonder how can i get a board committee and it says there that it's made up by the chair obviously like discuss that and also you know have a a set way you know it happens every year how long you know there's so many variables that we don't it's just kind of left out there and never never land we really need to have a firm uh understanding on how somebody can try to get on a board uh is it what it says right there is you know it's only the chairperson that makes up not only the the chairperson or chair yeah the chairperson but also makes up the entire committee okay we're talking about just the budget committee right now hold your thought because

029it's important all right so any more discussion on that from those of us sitting up here about the um recommendation to for the policy well it obviously needs to be put in in one form and not too different yeah well that part's true no what is your thoughts on entire board versus three-member subcommittee well obviously it's a good idea but it was when we started and she said we're going to possibly have four new members two one but no matter what it's good to have everybody always to be okay so you're saying yes you'd like to stay with the policy as it's re the wording is yeah we should have handled this earlier so i know we've tried um mr mcmanus do you have any thoughts on that okay then we'll leave it at that

030all right let's move on to the next one um and these are these what we're going through right now i apologize i skipped ahead these are our standing committees these are the ones that um so we would need to in the budget we would have to put in there some wording and we can get to that from policy about yeah how often they meet what do you want to do that kind of stuff so i'll look to you and you dr and um miss sutton and her team to come up with that all right so equity adversity diversity and inclusion committee um that one seems to be you know um that one as actually one of the ones that is very well defined um and if you see if you see on some of the

031um could you um flip back um miss baggy to the and click on the equity diversity inclusion committee so on this one you can see that we have all the members who are on the team we have the we have we don't have a subject matter expert listed but we have the members of the team and so that is one of the things like mr wildebore had brought up is that we the goal of this um not even an exercise but is not only to make sure we have the right committees but to have the same kind of information to support each committee up there so i didn't have any changes on the wording for the edi committee but right now the subject matter expert of that is our um title ix coordinate no it's

032not it's um it would be our chief equity officer so that is who the subject matter expert is for that okay so next on the um on the standing committees is the family communications committee and i was recommending um proposing that um after consultation with on the communications department the um and miss adams who was also on that committee that we um disband this committee and use the and the superintendent would create a parent advisory um committee um and hopefully with a representative we don't have to legislate that but with the the if unless we want to with a representative from each school on that committee so this this one would not be would not be necessary community it's kind of like the school improvement team where you must have a kid in school um

033to be a true parent you know to be on the parent advisory so that is what that recommendation was so miss justice i think it's an awful recommendation uh i wish more people would participate in the family communication committee um and we do need to push that more but we don't need a an advisory committee set up by us we need people in the community to come out and be involved um i you know we have a tendency and this is some of the complaints i get from the public a lot that we control too much information well this should be information that we that the parents almost control when you do this committee i like the way that the first um the equity committee's page was set up i like the way this committee's

034page is set up you ask for feedback and i think we should do this with all of them but as far as turning totally changing the family communications committee um that's that's a step too far in my opinion to have another advisory committee that's you know advising committees are good but this is actually family communications committee for the whole district yes ms adams would you since you started the committee would you weigh in on the wording there too sure i'll provide some context too i mean originally when the family communications committee was created it was because communications within the district was minimal and the purpose of it was to speak with our families to find out are you getting the information that you need how are you getting it how would you prefer to get

035it and we were very active for the first year meeting regularly we had um town not town halls but we had round table discussions with a lot of people in the community and it was fantastic and and thank you very much to all of those that served on the committee we had teachers um administrators and we had parents from representing from all over the county however when mr smith and his team began reaching out more and creating a very streamlined communications plan i feel that that committee has become obsolete because they are getting a lot of the feedback they are requesting to find out how do families want to be communicated with and they've made a lot of improvements one of those for instance you know one of the issues was that for our non-english

036speaking families how were they getting information and it wasn't getting to them the way that they needed it that's something that they have answered they have addressed and we have um strategies in place so i i'm i'm with ms crabill you know i feel that this committee um it took a lot of time but it was also because we didn't have the outreach that we have now and so my hat's off to the communications department you guys have done an incredible job so i i've been supportive of well this this committee is more than just giving parents information it's also to get feedback as from the community to us aboard and to filter it through the pr department you know they're they're good at communication that's that's why they're there but this is a different

037kind of communication this is a family communication with us and that's who should like as you said the first year was good and it can be good again and i don't i know that the energy has changed because things have changed but we can get back to that and we need to get input from the community people can come up here and speak to call of the audience we can get emails we can get phone calls we can get texts we can't meet people in person but to have a group together and get feedback from other members of the community is a very healthy way to understand what's going on in our schools and the advisory board that's to structure i mean we need to have we need to have people feel comfortable and and

038do things in such a way that's really representing our community that so that's to me i'm just going to let miss adams go and i'll go ahead and i'll make it i would just my only response to that was you know i think that with dr faust advisory committees that he has implemented that's one aspect but the other is we're doing town halls now too so we do have a direct line to our community so was it twice a year and then also two um four town halls we have three public participation meetings that are required per our policy 2310 and we committed to that and we've started with number one okay and so we're on that so my suggestion to you would be if you want a com if you want this committee to

039stay then you'll need to help write some of the goals because the goals of this committee are not good um they are not accurate and so we if you want the community involved then that would be a different kind of committee and so submit that to nelson and we will talk about it he's the policy committee chair submit it to nelson or you can tell me or you could tell pete and then they can bring it back up but that's where we are on this one well my concern is this is the first i heard that there was a problem with the goals etcetera it's not a problem it's just updating well yeah the update is good but this is this is just the first i've heard it would have been nice if i'd known

040it are we no this this was posted so um we could it was on assembly i'm not talking about that i'm talking about we just said the goals were bad they're not bad they're just we've met them we've met them and we do not need to keep working on the same goals all right though your point is noted and we will talk about that at policy next number four student scholarships for future teacher committee um in there on the second line about halfway through when it says four new hanover county high school seniors annually um i had originally suggested at least four and then it was recommended that we take out a number um because we don't know what budgetary restrictions will have so that we will have scholarships but not to limit us on

041the number so is that okay with everyone i'm comfortable with that yeah okay and we can always go back and revisit you know at a later time um and then so it's still um and then in the second paragraph instead of calling um miss bowie our administrative assistant to the board i wanted to call her the board clerk because that's what many other school districts call um the administrative assistant to the board is that appropriate or okay okay thank you for thank you for the head nod was somebody talking pete i think i said that was fine that was good okay all right so next we're on to the policy committee um that one i had no changes on three board members there and it it's um you know it fits right in we're following

042it we're doing it next number six the legislative committee this is one that we voted on actually a year ago and never got it put into policy and so i'll just read it out loud that the purpose of this committee is to serve as the liaison between the board of education and local and state elected officials so as to enhance their awareness of issues as they pertain to our local public education system the committee will be comprised of three board members preferably one from each party one board member on this committee will also serve as the board's liaison to the nc school boards association per policy 2650 liaison with the school boards association and will follow the ncsba legislative and other activities and report highlights to the entire board so um right now per policy

0432650 we do have a person one person selected to do that but their only thing is to attend ncsba meetings so this is um broadening the the scope of that work and um encouraging more dialogue um with our local and state elected officials are you are you proposing that yes matching up the policy but when do you see enacting this committee does it make sense to wait until after the election at this point um probably i mean it doesn't mean that we have to do it like tomorrow um and i mean we could wait to the new board chair you know gets in place um or i could i could attempt to start it now but um we that's a good point we can talk about that okay yes okay this committee was formed back

044was it in january um of last year i think it wasn't january of this year it was a long time it was one it was when i first brought it up um at our at our at a board meeting work session and i actually think that i asked to be on it and i wasn't you are your name to it your name is on the list well who's the chair back we did not adopt this as a policy we did not adopt this officially on the policy you are the ncsba legislature so so this all this has been sitting there a long time i'm glad to hear about it and this is very important and i think in my opinion we shouldn't wait for elections to start moving this because we need to talk with

045these government officials at all levels this is where we get so much of our everything so yes i think this is a good thing you can talk about when we enact it but we right now we just have to kind of get a get consensus to approve it okay the next one is the title nine committee and um so that one unfortunately that one doesn't have you know oh here it is this committee works with the superintendent and the staff is comprised of two board members and um i added um at the end it what says as well as staff and community members to ensure that students are not denied equal access to educational programming and opportunities on the basis of sex so that is the only thing that we need to add there um

046if you look back you don't have to switch back miss baggy but if you look back on the page that we've been looking at and click on the title ix committee that one also is pretty robust in its explanation of the work and that one is also on the front page of our website um so we'll we'll be looking about how when we get this finalized on how we advertise this a little bit more all right so those are our only standing committees that we have right now um so next would be the board advisory committees and um i um the first line i inserted the superintendent and the board will also form advisory committees for specific purposes to be chaired by new hanover county schools staff and that was always a little bit of

047a sticking point we weren't there was always like a little bit of a gray line on who was in charge of that so that is where the new hammond county school staff means the subject matter expert the board member the next sentence the board member does not serve as chair of the board advisory committees and then the last line where it says the um the assignment of the individual board members to these committees will be published each year and can be changed by the chair during the year so i'm going to take that one out because we already said through implication that the board chair has that um authority to do that so we can take off that last line so now we've come through here and we're looking and these ones are not um

048um veggie could you go back to that page i just want to look at something real quick because i mainly want to look at the the the things on the left all right i'm going to be i'm going to finish this up real quick is is the advisory council for exceptional students listed up there yes okay so these these committees that we're going through right now are also listed on the left-hand side on the advisory council for exceptional students um the only thing we have down there is in the second paragraph it says comprised of a board member i changed a to one so we would be specific and when i looked at their their bylaws or their standing notes the last sentence on there says attendance is mandatory to remain on the council so

049they had a requirement of that so i thought that we should put that in the policy um calendar committee doesn't change we have two representatives um no we don't we have um one board member um on that um number three i'm adding in and it says we're not even looking at the same one um in number yes okay this right now is because you're going to take this back to the uh policy committee and have the corrected what you're going over right now you zoom through there aces and we've done this several times over the last couple years we changed we took the aces off even though people keep referring to it because of its association with other term uh acronyms with aces uh so we were called you know we we decided as a

050group i think a year before last the advisory committee decided to be called the advisory council of exceptional students because aces has got it actually a very big so we're just taking is the and i'll make sure we bring that up so that the um the julie can you just add in on that is that accurate or do you want to wait until model c wait for policy okay i have that circle that we can come back to a policy if if that's possible yes we can do that not a problem okay so um number three is yeah is supposed to be um it will be they i added in the cte business advisory council um as an advisory team and that is basically policy 2670 that we'll be going over later um on that

051and that is going to be replacing the ctec advisory ad hoc committee and which we'll get to on the on the last piece of paper okay it's educator of the year committee that one stands on the gifted advisory council that one's good again in one of the places it said a member but it should be one member the i added another one in there the school health advisory council called shaq and i listed in there i'll just read the board maintains the school health advisory council to help plan update implement promote and monitor policy 6140 student wellness as well as to address other health and nutrition issues within the school system the council serves as an advisory committee regarding student health issues and works in conjunction with the district wellness coordinator to coordinate the school

052system's efforts to promote student and employee health and wellness in compliance with state and federal requirements i just lifted that straight out of the shack wording so that we don't have again a conflict of wording the council must include and this also is part of the requirement that the council must include each member of the following groups once a school board member and we're going to put one school system administrators school system food service representatives physical education teachers school health professionals students parents guardians and the public so we will we will talk about that again in policy but that is um that's required and then i took the opportunity there to just put in um student voice um i didn't know how we wanted to do that um but it looks like in the policy

053that they're suggesting they want to have some sort of advisory team um but we don't have to talk about that right this moment i just put that in there so that we could be thinking about how we want um our student voice to be you know in addition to what they're presenting you know we're going to have to make some sort of decision so that is there kind of as a placeholder so that we don't forget that we want our students involved next letter c ad hoc committees and what you have in front of you is another list of the ad hoc committees and ad hoc committees are not required um as part of our policy but i did make a one line on there that said the board clerk will maintain a list of

054ad hoc committees and you can find the ad hoc committees on the that that page we were just on and um so i put it all into a spreadsheet and so that we could keep track of the ad hoc committees that we formed hold on just one sec the ad hoc committee's can you be she's going to scroll down to it board committees keep rolling keep rolling is that them is are those the ad hocs that we just scrolled by okay so you can see right there so we've got the bond committee um we really only have that when we have bonds so we would keep that as an ad hoc committee um capital yes ma'am excuse me okay because i am looking at this out of the uh our website and we have the

055board of education representatives and the different committees i skipped that for right now well okay can we go in the order that that's in the policy recommendations hold that thought we're going to get to it okay because a whole bunch of hold on all right so the ad hoc committees we have up there in the capital request um that's really not a committee it's um we appoint a board member to that but we can we can make that a committee if we want it to be that will be talked about in policy the dress code committee that was one that was the oh the board meetings and agenda committee um we had on here ad hoc and that was that was dissolved the dress code committee has dissolved and then um i am recommending um

056to the policy committee that we re dissolve the isaac bear building ad hoc committee because we are at a place now that the school system can take the late can take the take the reins and the lead on what that looks like so um and then so the ncsb legislative committee we were going to merge i was going to merge that into the legislative services so that we get that taken care of and then ctek requested that this committee be resolved dissolved and included in the um the committee that i've i suggested to you called the the ct cte advisory so those are all things that we that the policy committee just wanted you to weigh in on so does anybody have any comments about the ad hoc committees that we have okay so you're

057going to go back up in a minute do we have any comments on the ad hoc committees yes well yeah you you dissolved yeah you said that the dress code committee was dissolved and that was all over the place here okay good all right no okay so now so we got that one so next up is the board appointments to outside committees and um that was not part of this original policy but i added that in so that we had a way to officially tie in policy 2660 and the wording there is the board of education is often asked to appoint one of its members or designee to an outside committee commission or board to provide input on behalf of new hanover county schools this will be done in accordance with policy 2660 board appointments

058to outside committees we will be talking about that committee later on the agenda tonight then letter e is um to mr wildebore's point is that all board standing and advisory committees will have a chair take review and approve minutes or group memory have a clear mission and goals determine member length recruit and maintain a diverse committee membership using a common membership application and recruiting time window and periodically report progress to the entire board we do have a section on our standing section on our agenda for committee reports but we never have any so um that's one thing i wanted to try and bring forth i didn't think that we needed as part of policy what that standard application looked like the unless you knew that we unless the policy committee brought that forward and my

059plan also was to after this is adopted was to bring together all of the subject matter experts for all of our committees and talk about what that looks like so that we it's not the the application is not being made in a vacuum it's being made with input from all the different committees um with that okay and then finally hold on one sec and then finally the last one was the open meetings laws um basically i just put all standing committees of the board and subcommittees formed within our public bodies so um miss justice all right so we're going over this now you listen to suggestions now going back to politics going back to policy this was just for you to have to give me some input uh mr world aboard has heard the input

060um i've heard the input we will talk about this at the policy committee in august which is next week okay thank you all right so that is a wrap on um the work section thank you for um going through that with me because this is one of those ones as everybody has said it's long overdue okay so now next on our agenda is the superintendent's report first i'll begin with a few budget updates ashley of course will go into more detail during her presentation but i want to highlight some significant increases that our employees will see due to this year's budget you can see and they will see the average salaries for some of our classified employees is well over fifteen dollars an hour the state mandated a four percent raise or fifteen dollar per

061hour but in many cases we far exceeded that mandate with some positions seeing well over 15 i'm sorry well over 10 these paid scales will be backdated until july 1st of course upon um board approval i want to ensure that our employees understand they'll see these changes starting with this mom's paycheck of course again after the board has the opportunity to vote on the budget this evening slide the next slide once again i'm happy to report that we continue to fill vacancies at an incredible rate and we will be among the most prepared in the state to start school later this month one of the things i was at at a conference thursday and friday with um the big 12 and so those are the the school districts that have um 25 000 plus and

062a lot of those school districts have well over 200 vacancies that are open right now and so just a big shout out to all of our hiring managers our anyone who was processing applications that was processing those vacancies and making sure that individuals were getting what they needed we now have 25 schools with zero teacher vacancies and only 32 teacher vacancies out of certified staff positions with recommendations of course there'll be more recommendations in the personnel file that you'll you'll see later both coddington and eden open their schools this year with zero teacher vacancies and we are working closely to close out any vacancies for snipes and freeman for which they will open next week this concludes my report okay thank you okay so next up is the board chair report um first and foremost

063i want to say i want to say let's go let's roll let's be ready to go on august the 29th that our staff and our students for traditional schools will all be coming back to school and um right now we have our two year-round schools in in session and our two restart schools will start on thursday and friday i had the opportunity to visit the one of our year-round schools when they started and it was smooth and i and i happened to just overhear um on the announcement something that um i know that dr faust had been talking about with his principal so it was really exciting to be able to listen to that in action um and so i'm looking forward to going on thursday and friday to our two restart schools and then

064um and good luck to all the traditional schools and with your open houses coming up we look forward to that and um want to encourage all parents who are listening to attend your school's open house if you can and find out how you can get involved in your school at the school level through your pta pto parent support organizations your school improvement team and whatever else that your school might need might see as a priority so thank you in advance for all of you parents who i know will be doing that um i did want to just also give a shout out to the our career and technical department and actually it's really our technology department too putting together putting together the coding camp that the board members had a chance to go and watch

065their presentations and i'm going to tell you what these kids are amazing some of the things that they thought of to create apps for um was just like spot on i'm like i wanted them to like sell it to me right then you know to help me with with different kinds of things and their presentation skills were just you know phenomenal you know for sixth and seventh graders talking to just a room full of adult strangers um so thank you um ms brinson and um to the cte uh ms futrell you know for putting that together and the incredible partnership you knew through apple that um our our board i mean our board our superintendent and um his team was able to secure um also too just wanted to let you know too that um

066several of our board members have been away um doing some training this summer i attended the north carolina school boards association summer conference and um the legal conference so i've got some got a lot of good insight that i was able to share or we'll be sharing with our staff on different kinds of things that the ncsba is um following on our behalf so um and that's really about it i'm looking forward to a good school year starting it off with a bang and you'll be hearing more about you know getting on the energy bus and i hope that you will join us for a very productive um ride okay so next is our information so first up mr anderson brogdon hall gymnasium structural repairs update thank you you all were able to share and

067celebrate such good news and i'm unfortunately i'm not here to do that tonight um the manufacturing company as you know uh providing the wood flooring for uh the brogden hall gymnasium has gone out of business they're not able to provide the wood or the uh our contractor is not able to secure that wood now the contractor has identified another wood flooring company that that they are working with but there will be a delay in completing this project one of the things that we've been looking at very closely wood floor comes in different grades grades typically or generally refer to the clearness of the wood so a a wood that has a grade one has very very few color variations in that wood and in a grade three would have more color variations in the wood

068this project included a grade two and that's consistent with the other high school gymnasiums that were recently constructed constructed while we can get a grade three in faster new hanover high school and our facility plan and construction staff really felt that it was uh to our advantage to stay with that grade two because of the light stain that we're using on that floor so right now we do not have confirmed dates but i can let you know that the wood flooring is expected to be delivered in early september it will take about a month to install and the bleachers are expected to be delivered in late september uh the installation of those bleachers is uh scheduled for early october and we anticipate the final completion of the project to be mid to late october at

069this point as we can as we move along in our project and we can confirm delivery dates i'll be glad to share that information with you at this time given the schedule that i just presented the delay will impact volleyball only volleyball will begin august 1st they'll practice at north carolina coastal volleyball gym when school starts in jb volleyball starts they will practice at the princess place gym right after school and the varsity will continue to practice at the coastal volleyball gym games will be held at cape fear community college's schwartz center this delay in the project will not impact wrestling which is another fall sport wrestling matches are hosted in the princess place gym if i want to just you know we we we plan for the best or we we hope for the

070best we plan for the worst got that backwards but i always tell people we have a schedule we have that's a plan a said have a plan b you hope you never need it but point being if brogdon hall is not ready for the start of basketball season the varsity boys basketball team will practice at williston the varsity girls will practice at dc virgo and the jv teams will practice at snipes games will be held at cape fear community college's short center the first day of basketball practice is october 31st so if everything goes as scheduled your basketball will not be impacted but again we're going to have a plan b just in case and until we can get these dates confirmed are there any questions yeah i just had a quick one um i'm

071not familiar with where the north carolina coastal volleyball gym is can you how far away is that from the school i believe that's um that's out toward the well they used to be at the airport and i think they is it still at the airport or did they move out towards castle it's not near castle pain isn't it yes is that where i saw you one time wow and so will our students will our athletes be just taking on the bus there um i don't know they haven't been able to drive um okay i didn't i didn't ask that question a very good question new hanover high school does have an activity buses assigned to their school okay so if they may be using that if they need transportation we will certainly provide transportation okay

072that's that was my question again in case kids can't get there if they get that they don't drive okay anybody else have any questions well that's a big bad bummer but um we're glad that you have a plan plan a plan b and um we'll look forward to hearing something positive next month okay um next up is um informational framework the um i'm sorry um instructional framework is um dr faison online yes i'm here can you hear me we can okay well i just wanted to take a few minutes to share with the board and our community our instructional framework and i know i've shared the board has seen this before but i really want to recap for everyone some of the highlight points that we're focusing on this year so i'm going to back

073up and just say the instructional framework is a way we can have a common vision and a common language among our teachers so it was created with teachers we used we reached out to our teacher advisory groups they went back to their schools and actually collaborate with their teachers to come up what are those instructional practices that we feel best and communicated in our district so then the principals view this as well so we're really happy to say that this is our instructional framework so you will note with the instructional framework and i'm going to ask you to slide down there are four pillars that outline an instructional framework planning instruction culture and reflection out of these four pillars we have lifted up three areas we're considering our focus areas we know if you try

074to do too many things well too many things you do nothing well so we are going to lift up three things that we're going to focus on this year so we don't want our teachers to have to do anything new our teachers have gone through a lot we just want to help them hone on their crap that that is the goal this year just to do what we know as teachers and educators are the best practices so the first one is when you slide down um scroll down to prac planning is the top one and that is aligning um learning targets so we're lifting up learning targets and you might remember them i've heard them call objectives or essential questions they're all the same thing but it's about where do we want our students to

075go what is the objective of this lesson so we want to unpack them actually have students and teachers working before they do a lesson what is the goal of this lesson what does this this target mean what are these verbs what am i what are you asking me to learn and that way it'll make it so the students are thinking about that throughout we also are asking that the teachers reference this this is what we're doing remember we are um analyzing character traits so everything we do is coming back if that was the learning target so that is number one is learning targets number two for uh if you scroll down again i'm sorry um is under um keep going i'm sorry number two is visual learning tools so visual learning tools uh basically walls

076that teach when you walk in a classroom and you know what students are learning because you can see their work up you can see the anchor charts and some of the things that students are doing and they're doing collaborative with the teacher so that is the second one and the last one that we are doing for our focus area is student discourse and what is student discourse it's just a fancy way for us as educators to say students talking using academic vocabulary so they're using that key those key terms when we're talking about things they are using the vocabulary that is related to the subject matter and we give them time to collaborate and talk and it's structured so we put structures in place so both students are talking they know where they're going so

077again there are three focus areas learning targets unpacking the learning target visual visual learning tools and student discourse those are the areas that we will be focusing on as an as a district instructionally we know if you look at this um instructional framework there are number a number of things here and all of those are valuable all of those are important we know teachers will still in the culture area they will still be a relationship with students we know that we expect that and we want that we know when we look at reflection we're still going to use data to drive instruction but we picked out three that we felt if we could get our teachers to hone in on this it'll take us to the next level with instruction so um we presented this

078at the leadership retreat it went over very well and we're excited and we'll be sharing this with our teachers in the coming days and we look forward to supporting and supporting them in this any questions i just wanted to make one comment first of all thank you dr faust for inviting the board of education to come to your leadership retreat and i'm gonna tell you what the the she dr faison went through this many many times in a lot of different sessions and to mr wildeboro's point about like what was the feedback when we were listening you know to ms farnham talking the feedback on this was phenomenal everyone was buying into it and we're already talking about the ways they were going to be posting their target goals and so i'm excited you know

079to be able to go into a classroom and just see that and i know our substitute teachers will be happy to see that and parents will be happy to see that so thank you dr faison for the work that you did in putting this together it's it's a nice little bible if you will for you know how we're gonna how we're gonna move forward um in 22-23 so thank you thank you okay um next up on our agenda is um where'd i go jumped ahead the um social studies curriculum update will that be you as well yes that will be me okay uh so we wanted you know we live in a nation that's very good with history and our state and our own community so mr matthews our social studies lead has done so

080much to provide resources and our teachers are doing so many things to communicate valuable history and we just want to highlight it so we're going to start with 9 11 because it will be coming up i wanted to make sure everyone knew that we provide our teachers our secondary and our elementary teachers with resources there's also a documentary um a documentary out and it's updated each year last year we had great participation with this so we'll be doing that again as well so just make sure everybody knows that 911 is coming up and we need to make sure that um everyone knows and realizes that we do a lot with that in our school because that is a critical part in our nation's history also constitution day uh constitution day is actually the 17th but

081that falls on a saturday so it will be recognized on the 16th this year we also sent out materials materials for our schools our secondary and our elementary coaches and administrators so they can um have them the resources to do that last year mr matthews found that there was a lot of different schools who actually had invited guest speakers they included announcements about this so our schools have really stepped up with this i just want to highlight them and just call them out for a job well done on doing that and 1898 1898 is a significant part of our history here locally so i wanted to share where it is represented in our community and i mean in our school curriculum first and the first place they see this will be in the third grade

082in the third grade they do the tar heel walking tour and they actually go to john taylor's home where the tragic event happened and they visit the memorial so that is what the tour is about he also and when i say he mr matthews our social studies lead provides them provides our schools with uh resources and there is a historical fiction um story that they can read that kind of helps them reaccount that you're thinking from the level of a third grader so um they have that as well in fourth grade we do you know our state history so we revisit that here um in our community and we make sure that they have that so they see it again in fourth grade in eighth grade it is a part of our eighth grade curriculum

083as well and because you know our eighth grade curriculum focuses on north carolina and american history so 1898 is there as well and they also have um what we'll call it what he calls a history lab and you know you think about labs you think about dissecting and this is how they can dissect the history it actually allows them to do different stuff um with it right postcards and be transported in that time and then lastly and in high school it is a part of american history so i just wanted to take a minute to highlight some of the wonderful tools that we have that highlights 1898 and i'll take any questions well um if i could from far far away here first of all i do think that it's very respectful we do talk

084about 911 i think that's that's very very strong um september 16th uh september 17th constitution day again i think that's that's excellent um i'm you know i'm going to continue to be concerned about our social studies curriculum overall with uh you know glossary terms such as oppressed and oppressor marginalized people and i'm just concerned with our 1898 that we are you know that i think we should teach factual history period and discussion not uh you know change facts and stuff so can you tell me without a doubt you know that we're not you know and like i said i don't want to get a republican democrat but right you know it's been changed and it's been changed again it's been changed again so um can you speak to that we are definitely teaching it factually

085because i've heard from a lot of people that uh it is it is being changed and repackaged um especially the 1898. so what i will say to you is we share facts uh we ask our teachers to share facts we you have to be very careful with history not to bring or anything you're teaching to bring your interpretation that is not our fullest educators so can i say that all teachers you know somebody doesn't slip up like i can't say that we work with them and try to make sure that they don't you shouldn't when someone is teaching something whether it's history or anything else you should never know their view because it's not about their view it's about the facts so that's what i would say thank you and just a question because i've

086another question i've been getting a lot of lately is where okay um mrs smith would like to know exactly what her eighth grader is being taught where what would be the easiest way for mrs smith to go online to find out or um you know exactly like for instance these these actual extra tools we're giving uh teachers um you know whether it be 911 whether it be constitution day or whether it be 1898 where can they see exactly what what's going on so dr faust shared briefly that we are actually you know first of all let me add answer by saying you they could always go to the state guide and see the standards but that's not parent-friendly so what we've done is under dr faust's charges we have created what we call a scope

087and sequence and parents will be able to go and see what their child is being taught by the unit also they'll have resources to partner with us because that's our big thing too right we want to tell you what we're teaching so you can um help us and partner with us so we have scope and sequence that outlines what what is being taught and the parents can just click on that if i have a child in sixth grade and i want to know what is the social studies curriculum right what are they being taught i click on that it is there the standards are there and some resources are there and that is on our website or is that on the school level website where is that exactly that is going to be live by

088the first day of school just keep in mind we are doing this to we have one social studies um lead person one science so it's taking them time to make sure we get this all there so uh it'll be ready most of it is ready but they will be it will go live by the first day of school at the latest with the core areas so social studies and all those and we're still working on some of our cte and but we're we are making it so parents can definitely see we want to be very transparent that's awesome so it would be under the regular website under you know um construction yes we think it's great so what i'll do when it's live um and so maybe um the september board meeting um i'll actually

089walk you through it and let you see it uh but it's right on our regular uh board meeting i can do that or but it's right there on the curriculum page i'm sorry on the curriculum page our regular curriculum page thank you very much i appreciate that that's important um judy did you have something else you want oh well uh when mr wilderboy asked his question i actually did and i wish i still could do did the historic tours for the third graders tar heels go walking it was great but we cover an awful lot of history of wilmington a lot and 1898's a very integral part of it but that's only one of probably a dozen parts and and we teach facts and the facts are there they have them on the signage um

090and the memorial what it's talking about so i mean they're not giving opinions they're just reading the facts that are actually approved by the historic district here in wilmington before they put these uh information also too i wanted to reiterate that this has been going on for a number of years like eight to ten years i mean that we have been talking about this um and adding in new things as they become as they become developed and input is received so thank you so much dr faison for that update and um please extend our thanks to mr matthews for um you know staying on top of all this and keeping us keeping us current as we're studying our history so thank you okay so next up is item d which is um classified recognition program

091no we added that part of our agenda and here comes dr barnes oh i mean i didn't do another outfit change up yeah good evening again thank you for having me here um over the past several months we've had multiple opportunities to hear from our employees to hear from our families regarding culture climate working conditions compensation classification to name a few and a recurring theme really of great interest to human resources of course many staff across the division was the staff's desire classified staff's desire to be recognized in a similar fashion as our instructional staff so teacher recognition you know think teacher recognition or principal recognition so with this information and direction from dr faust and dr barnes we're really excited to share with you um and all of our employees this evening the excellence

092exemplified classified recognition program thank you um so in new hampshire county schools expectations is an expectation excellence is an expectation i'm sorry i'll try that again um so with that it is an expectation for our students and for our staff and this program what it will do is allow our staff the opportunities to recognize and nominate their colleagues so nominations can be from teachers administrators and of course any classified staff and what we're doing is looking for opportunities for our employees to recognize excellence that they see in their everyday work so what that will mean is excellence demonstrated through their job responsibilities making unique contributions to their department to their school or to the division as a whole creating a supportive environment where there's a culture of respect and inclusion all while making a positive

093impact on student achievement knowing that's really what we're all here for these award recipients will truly exemplify what excellence is in new hanover county schools so the nomination process the criteria you'll see is listed here it touches upon what i just read and what we're looking for and someone that embodies excellence in their work there will be a selection committee that will be representation from across the school division and these awards will be offered or our staff will be recognized four times a year and all of our eligible employees by department or category are listed here so it is all of our classified support staff thank you so um these are just the highlights really there are many pieces and details to the program and this information following tonight will be available on the human

094resources web page we'd ask that you visit that website where you'll see an additional presentation that really goes into more of the details where you can find the deadlines to submit your nomination when those awards will be released and the nomination forms that will need to be submitted as well as information about what we're looking for more specifically so you'll find that information on the hr website so we encourage everyone to nominate staff we're very proud of all of our employees here in the district and this is the opportunity to recognize those that you work alongside of that truly are excellent employees and then we'll ask that you turn and tune into school board meetings where four times a year again two staff from across the division will be recognized of course by dr faust

095and the board ms adams i'm an hr person and i love this thrilled to see it thank you i guess my question is our families get to see a lot of amazing things that our staff do as well do we have anything in place at this point or is there any discussion about our families within the county being able to celebrate in a different way i know this is staff driven which is fantastic i love peer awards but what about for our families down the line since you guys are doing all these great programs sure absolutely for our families to be able to nominate staff absolutely and i think this is a great starting place and and we'll work closely with communications um just an absolutely wonderful team to work with in terms of sharing

096this information but that's wonderful feedback and it's something that we've talked about and i think um sort of piloting and getting out there and looking at what this um will require that's a definite a great place to go i love it thank you for doing this yeah dr barnes did you want to add in your your head is getting bigger and bigger on our screen so it looks like maybe you want to say something oh no that's pete's head sorry never mind i need new glasses we both look he's much chancellor than i am what a nice thing to say miss crayville i'm sorry no but our intention will be able to be allowed uh other folks students and parents to nominate as well so we'll be working with that to increase that okay great

097any other questions and actually i have my hand raised and i'll do it again um i have two quick two quick number one i think it's an outstanding idea i think we need to highlight our classified staff and in every way we can so that's outstanding is there a thought that we eventually would bring it on to the certified staff also because everybody likes to hear good things what do you do absolutely i think in terms of a recognition program i i would believe strongly believe that school-based recognitions occur um you know all the time and i think if there's another structure or recommendation in place to do something outside of what we already do to recognize our instructional staff is certainly something that um based on dr faust and dr barnes approval we could

098isn't that something that we do through the inside nhcs newsletter already yeah so we are working on that sharing story thank you for for doing that because yeah it everybody nobody does the work to be recognized but it does feel good when you are so absolutely thank you very much okay um so that's all we have for information tonight um next on our agenda is call to the audience but before we do that um i'd like to take a five-minute break so um it's 6 24 so please come back at 6 30 so we can um and we are just everybody wants to know we are like right on target so gay yay miss justice are you around okay um quick announcement before we get started here um i was just told that our live

099stream is down right now so the folks at home won't be able to watch right now but the full recording will be but we're recording everything that we're doing and that will be available tomorrow so just in case you're hearing from friends that they that they've lost the feed we are aware of that and we do apologize okay so um first up is veronica mclaren brown oh wait a minute i'm sorry let me you can come on no you come up i forgot to make my announcements i apologize we were sailing through okay so thank you for signing up to share your comments and concerns with the board we welcome engagement from our school community and from the community at large there are several items we need to cover before we get started with call

100to the audience per board policy 2310 board boards are allow up to one hour of public comment for call to the audience please speak on the topic that you indicated on your call to the audience sign up the public has asked this board and our school system to be more transparent and truthful and we respectfully ask that you do the same please please refrain from using profanity derogatory language and other slurs in your remarks or you will be asked to sit down and perhaps even leave individuals may stand at their seats in support of a speaker or stand alongside the podium while an individual speaks but aisles must be kept clear at all times per fire code regulations no one at any time is allowed to approach the dios we must respect the rights of

101individuals who have come here to address the board as well as those who are just here to listen audience members should refrain from yelling out or responding to comments made by speakers during the called the audience violators will be given a warning and if the behavior continues they will be asked to leave disruptions by any person or persons at a public meeting will be subject to action including removal from the meeting per general statute 143-318-17 a person who willfully interrupts disturbs or disrupts at an official meeting and who upon being directed to leave the meeting by the presiding officer willfully refuses to leave the meeting is guilty of a class two misdemeanor okay so with that introduction miss mclaren brown go ahead the vision of new hanover county school system is to provide and maintain

102a safe respectful and secure learning environment but can you provide a safe and secure learning environment when you lock children in seclusion rooms the answer is no no it is impossible locking children in seclusion rooms causes them harm feeling of anger embarrassment humiliation sadness loss of their dignity loss of hearing learning time pain that lasts for a lifetime and sadly enough we also know that locking children in seclusion rooms may be a deadly practice in the use of seclusion rooms in all new hanover county schools seek input from our educators and families education and training in the use of positive behavior supports crisis reduction and management de-escalation techniques techniques and other best practices past policy that achieves the vision of our school system to keep our children safe make our vision for our children more

103than just some words on a website in the use of seclusions rooms for our children thank [Applause] you you're going to go up instead okay all right so speakers um next up is barbara guerrero um our countdown clock is not working okay all right then never mind we'll save you from my loud obnoxious buzzer so um go ahead i'm glad i'm here tonight i haven't been here for a month or two for several reasons but i would like to ask you to please place on your september board meeting agenda an item that would end the use of seclusion rooms in new hanover schools by july 1st that time frame gives 11 months to prepare for the end of this isolation method that data shows to be ineffective and harmful it is not a practice that

104is employed in many of the new hanover county schools and therefore the end of this practice should not be hard to accomplish you know it's harmful the audience knows it's harmful and we want you to please end this practice thank you ms garrow sam pierce [Applause] hello thank you for the opportunity to speak and thank you for all the work that you do it's so important this is my first time uh before this body and i'm brought here compelled to speak on the subject of seclusion rooms i i find it very very disturbing and i i just don't believe that there's any research that supports this practice for changing behavior in a in a positive way i think actually there's there's a lot of evidence that this can do great harm and this is harm

105that will pay society will pay for for a long time when you disrupt the well-being of a child by by putting them into a seclusion room i feel strongly about this and i feel strongly about the children and i just ask that that you bring this forward and you end this practice for the school year the 2023-24 school year i think that's time to get it done thank you very much and again thank you for your work thank you mr bellamy laura [Applause] oh i'm sorry sam i'm sorry wrong name i thanked you for being the wrong person robert bellamy how you doing today i just want to explain this the way i see it i it's kind of simple but i just wrote it i'm not here to place any personal attack on anyone

106here because believe me i like everyone here but i know if any of you board members were kids again you will all be you all look at being in seclusion in a little different way i like miss just judas miss judy justice in my mind would be like why are you doing this to me even as a kid she would know this is not right and fight against anything cruel any type any type of cruel treatment and the fight never ends with miss jewish justice i know that mr hugh mannis he probably would be like i don't understand this this is america we cannot allow this treatment my daddy is a mayor this is in my mind that's what i'm thinking and miss crabill you know would be fighting all the way to the end

107biting if you have to if needed because she would be will not allow anyone to treat her in any foul way i know you're a fighter dr foust would be like this don't seem right i need to talk to my parents can i call my dad that's where i see that if you was a kid you'd probably say that and miss adams you know she probably would say um miss adams would be like i would not accept this i won't let you treat me like a boy my daddy will be here and tell you all off tomorrow i am a princess i see all of you being in some type of fighting spirits and uh and i feel that you can also do that as grown-ups and i think you know i know you guys

108made a great decision with the the kids one one through seven and i know you guys you know are you terrific you know you got a terrific mind your terrific thinkers you wouldn't be in the position if you weren't so i feel that you will make a great decision when it comes to talking about getting these kids together thank you thank you [Applause] let me just say that the live streaming is back up okay so um we're back on track but for the folks who are listening in that little section that you missed you'll be able to review that tomorrow um when we get on tv um next up is laura axtown i hope i pronounced that close okay my husband's coming up too practical it's ax film okay it's german and yeah okay in

109america we save phonetically anyway i'm here to urge you all to plan to vote to end the use of seclusion rooms and closets in all new hanover county schools by july 1st 2023 please revise policy 4320r with 11 months between now and then real progress can be made educating and tr and training school staff and positive behavior alternatives that will benefit all students staff families and the community as many other people have said this is a long-term effect rejection isolation shunning expulsion and seclusion do nothing positive for a person and as especially an immature child thank you laura staff house i am here tonight in support of changing policy 4302 aura and ending the use of seclusion rooms effective 2023-2024 school year similar to the change in policy regarding in the suspension of children 4

1105 6 and 7 years old with specific exceptions ending the use of seclusion rooms would have similar exceptions use of rooms require written consent from parents following child specific iep describing behavior and circumstances in which seclusion could be used and situations when seclusion is necessary to protect the student or another person from physical harm or non-physical intervention or when that has failed of the 25 000 students in new hanover county school system approximately 50 were secluded each year there's no data available for the school year 2021 2022 the percentage of total students affected is minimal minimal training is required for the students for the schools that would have to put something in place to stop using seclusion the board should be sure to make a policy change to treat all students equally therefore a vote

111to change to policy for school year 2023 2024 should create minimal disruption please change the policy and stop traumatizing our children thank you thank you miss stackhouse blaylock i'm a friend of peter rolich and he asked he's recovering from surgery from last week and he asked me to read a brief statement of his first i want to publicly thank some of our board members for publicly supporting end of the year seclusion rooms by the beginning of the 23-24 school year thank you to judy justice stephanie walker and pete wildebore children have been harmed by being forced into padded closets and will continue to be harmed during the current school year new policies can take time to implement and student ieps will need to be revised but based on your own data the next 11 months

112is more than enough time to begin the training of positive behavior alternatives that will benefit all children and school staff vote to ban the use of seclusion rooms at your september 6th meeting thank you and he also said that he'll be back on for the september 6th meeting and looks forward to celebrating the end of another punitive practice that targets our youngest neediest and most press students thank you thank you mr blaylock [Applause] hi there this is my first time speaking to the board and i thank all the members for the opportunity i'm an immigration human rights attorney a former graduate of hogwarts high school and first vice chair of the democratic party and i strongly believe we must end the use of seclusion rooms by july 1st of 2023 children should not be locked

113in cages at the border and they should not be locked in padded classrooms in our local schools they are unnecessary ineffective and unsupported by data and research they not only disproportionately affect and harm students of color and those with disabilities but they haven't been shown to be effective in any manner in any positive way policy 4302r unquestionably is detrimental to our students and i respectfully request that the board changes the policy at the next meeting thank you all thank you ms hopkins hello i'm cammy o'keefe i've lived in wilmington for over 20 years once again i want to congratulate this board on rescinding the policy of out-of-school suspensions for children seven and under tonight i will advocate for another positive policy change joining others in opposition to the policy of the use of seclusion rooms

114in our schools i request that the board end this policy by the beginning of the 23-24 school year because of the small number of schools and students involved 11 months is sufficient to support administrators educators and staff in implementing positive behavioral alternatives the use of seclusion rooms harms our children change this policy and help our children thank you alicia okay um steven exhale thanks to my wife for coaching you up on the pronunciation my name is stephen axthelm um i have two young adult children emmett and charlotte i cannot think of any time during their schooling when they would have benefited from being locked up alone in a room i assume all of you have children or grandchildren and grandchildren right judy do you think they would have benefited by being locked up alone in

115a room scott wilson's son spent 1900 minutes in seclusion rooms in 2018-2019 do you think any of your children or grandchildren would have benefited from spending 31 and two-thirds hours of their school year locked up alone in a seclusion room and then there's this the most recent data this is from the star news from the office of civil rights on seclusion and new hanover county schools filed in 2017 shows 55 students with disabilities were put into seclusion during the survey year of those students of those 55 students 70 were black 30 were white while in total there were 1087 black students with disabilities and 1 431 white students with disabilities that's 43 percent black students and 67 percent white students so there's something else there the new hanover county school system is in the business

116of helping children learn not locking children up is this the training wheels experience for the school to prison pipeline and the use of seclusion rooms please by july 1st use the next 11 months to begin the training of positive behavioral alternatives that will benefit all the children and the staff vote to ban the use of seclusion rooms on september 6th carol thank you for the opportunity to speak um i'm brand new to this um but i am a mother and a grandmother and i was a school social worker not in north carolina but for over 35 years what we do know what research does show is that the dropout rate among students is very much affected by disengagement and students in elementary early elementary school become very easily disengaged from education from the process by

117suspensions by seclusion by restraints by punitive disciplinary actions and we do know that children can learn educators are here to provide for the whole child and we know that social emotional learning interpersonal learning positive behavioral supports help children learn to manage themselves be able to control their behavior and work appropriately with others so i urge this board to ban seclusion and restraints and to begin initiate training staff and educators to provide positive behavioral supports thank you thank you mark whitehead people thank you i'm here to expose some of the insulting wasteful factually baseless racist critical race theory indoctrination that is forced on our teachers two summer summers ago we were forced to watch an equity podcast by a man with an online degree he began by saying at 4 18 and i quote i ended

118up in idaho not a lot of brothers out here but i get by at 5 30 he said you think with a phd your brother would know how to do fractions and decimals not a guy with an online degree and he said this because he was talking about his kid it was fully 15 minutes into the presentation that he started talking about what he was supposed to and this was apparently his moto operandi because the teachers at another presentation told me that a teacher actually typed in asking him to get to the point at the 15 minute mark there was only one fact in this whole seminar of two hours oh and this one that i typed in the chat box over 50 asian organizations had recently sued the ivy leagues and unc chapel hill

119for admissions to which our online doctor was shocked he had no idea because it did not fit his narrative of victimization which he reinforced at an hour and 17 minutes by saying quote our system was not built for people like me end quote well apparently our system was built for the first generation asian kids because they're who they do the best i cannot comment in part two of his presentation because the next day he forgot about it and came on an hour late the third time i saw him he did the same thing that's what we're spending your money on we also had a microaggression training the lady showed us an example of microaggression from the tv show blackish in which a black female anesthesiologist is asked by a white female counterpart where she got

120her degree and she answers uh university of california los angeles the older white lady is really impressed and the the character in the show became very angry and think well not very young but angry and insulted that this was a microaggression there are three things wrong with this one the lead character is insulted by a micro aggression of someone in in insulating that she only advanced because of her color they also had a check your privilege slide on this presentation that's the exact thank you very much [Applause] why is my time started because you're at the podium and you oh no no no that's not how it works it starts when you speak you didn't do it to the other people on july 19th the department of ed released new guidance to help school support

121students with disabilities and avoid discriminatory use of discipline in this guidance the ocr and i quote a school policy that is neutral on its face may still have the unjustified discriminatory effect of denying a student with a disability meaningful access to the school's aids benefits or services or of excluding them based on disability even if the even if the discrimination is unintentional if ocr finds sufficient evidence that the policy has discriminatory effects based on disability ocr would likely consider the policy to be discriminatory end quote in new hanover county over 90 percent of seclusions involve disabled children the elementary education specifications document adopted by the board in 2009 requires seclusion rooms to be built in ec classrooms there is no such requirement for gen ed why aren't the rooms built in neutral spaces that serve

122all students new hanover county specifically targets disabled students with this requirement and for 13 years have shown clear intent to disproportionately seclude and discriminate against them not only this but the board consistently fails to support our ec program staff and students ms adams you bring up safety but i've never heard you ask how you can improve our ec programs you defend this policy by blaming young children and have chosen to discriminate against them versus protecting them this is not equity new hampshire county has received negative media attention for the use of seclusion disability rights paid us a visit the department of justice is looking at the use of seclusion across school districts in north carolina and now the ocr is telling you to avoid discriminatory discipline you must end seclusion otherwise you risk getting a

123call from the department of justice or office of civil rights the choice is yours thank you miss isles christina mercier good evening it's no secret that new hanover county schools has had a share of issues with employees who have had inappropriate interactions with students as of now these former employees have either been convicted of their crimes or died before trial as a result of their actions all teachers in new hanover county schools were required to take professional development on sexual assault now i'm going to talk personally about what happened to me as i took the class which was online and offered during covid when i was working from home as i was taking the class i had a memory i'd repressed pop into my mind i had been sexually assaulted over several weeks by a

124peer who was in my sunday school class he did not rape me but he definitely touched me without my consent here i was a veteran teacher and i didn't know what to do about it the memory took over my thoughts i had no one to talk to there was no instruction in the course that said if anything in this course has caused you trauma please contact i was alone and i didn't know what to do surely i'm not the only teacher who had repressed memories of sexual assault i eventually sought out professional counseling on my own but why was there no preparation by the school system and professionals who created the course for this why were we left alone as i've dealt with my resurface memories i've seen multiple articles about how the lawyers for

125new hanover county schools are trying to get most of the defendants in the civil case concerning michael kelly's victims dropped every time i see her hear this mentioned i become angry one of the last stories i read said the victims are going to have to undergo a mental health evaluation again i cannot believe the torture of the school system's lawyers are foisting upon these young adults these young people were abused for years and some even told adults who did not act on the information i cannot imagine the anguish they must live with daily and honestly the fact that they are still living is a feat in itself and i hope they all understand that it does not matter that none of you are here when michael kelly's crimes occurred while it's an issue you inherited

126you should not be re-victimizing these young people i'm urging you to not worry about saving money settle the civil case and let these young men heal and don't just concern yourself with checking off boxes when it comes to something as important as sexual assault we all deserve better make that your legacy [Applause] good evening tonight i want to talk about setting timelines over the last several meetings members of this board and your advisors advisors have repeatedly said it is impossible to set a timeline for eliminating the use of seclusion rooms i strongly disagree in the 30 years i taught in new hanover we continually had timelines it might have been a professional development course that we were doing independently there was a completion date therefore a timeline training for state or local testing had timelines

127this is true everywhere one example outside of schools my son-in-law works for the computer programming company sas his job is project based he is given a project and a completion date he is responsible for the timeline to finish the project by the designated date timelines are vital and readily doable for the ending the use of seclusion rooms the timeline is simple there is an obvious completion date completely in the use of seclusion rooms by august you already know the steps necessary to complete this use the training program the district already has to train the programs in the required schools how to de-escalate and make the use of seclusion rooms unnecessary you have already identified that there are less than 10 schools that still require this training so as one prominent shoe company says just do

128it thank you um mrs dorian good evening my name is dorian camardi first i'd like to thank miss bernadette allen at uh rachel freeman pta today we had open house we signed up over 50 parents so far that i left around 5 30 and 10 of the parents five other parents are new parents and fi the other five are men of color so that's a big improvement for us uh the other thing i would like to say that you know seclusion does need to end right away because at the town hall i asked the question and the response was because of staffing so if seclusion is still happening now but you can't end it because of staffing problems then are you really adequately staffed i mean unless you are a hundred and ten percent comfortable

129with locking a child in a room because they threw a chair across the room i mean you're fine with locking a child in a room and leaving them there because that's best for them because he threw a chair and that scares you but really he's probably just acting out because he doesn't know how to express his emotions properly or maybe he has a behavioral issue but the solution is to lock him away and then expect him to do great things when it comes to growth and progress in school everyone here wants to end it tonight even the people on the right you can make a motion tonight for a tentative timeline to end seclusion you can at least do that and if you get it wrong you amend it but you can at least do

130that tonight so i don't see how we are staffed at all these schools doing great things but at the same time practicing seclusion i don't understand that but mental health is a top priority here it's something we love and practice here thank you mr cromartie thank you [Applause] good evening first i wanted to comment about the title ix policy change that's under uh first reading it states that basically if a formal complaint comes forward it's usually resolved through a formal investigation and adjudication and now we're trying to add in a sentence about or a informal or an informal resolution process which is concerning we've already had issues with that where people went through a complaint process got ran around in a circle and it was considered an informal process things need to be done there

131needs to be a paper trail there needs to be accountability no gray area please do not reconsider that whoever decided that one that was ridiculous come on now next false anniversary congratulations two years here that means either an evaluation just occurred or an evaluation is about to happen so let's go back and review what's happened as far as kansas city comments from teachers and administrators we had people state that they resigned because they were bullied and disrespected they that you created a toxic work environment and he actually threatened staff at a convocation there in kansas city there was comments that basically he blamed teachers for the shortcomings of the district which that reminds me that we had the same thing happen here where we had dozens of teachers show up and confront you about some

132of your statements and then the same thing we had the new hanover county association of educators start a petition for you to resign as well same thing this is from a news article the move leaves the district with few apparent options most top administrators from the previous superintendent left in months after faust where's mr o'brien at where's a bunch of other people that have been here for decades and that i've known for decades this is our city and you came in and you've pushed people out same thing with another one a common left faust targeted black administrators people were fired demoted or was forced to resign where's lashawn smith at you resigned you demoted her right and you did so stating that you had the will of the board that's what your attorney stated that

133because of your contract you had the will of the board to do so this is ridiculous y'all have a good day see you next month josie barnhart good evening tonight i want to openly address my concerns for the pre-k in elementary implementation of the sexual abuse prevention curriculum save for smarter kids i've spoken up with my concerns about our districts suddenly bypassing parents to survey our students and in the summer of 2021 new hanover county changed their policy to allow surveys to be administered to students without receiving parental consent by simply stating an opt-out policy i question this decision because in the last year we have seen surveys of the title ix survey we've seen panorama surveys at select elementary schools and also the tobacco state survey i've asked what are these goals what changes

134are we planning to make with them how can we ensure students of parents who do not want their kids participating have alternate activities who gets this data parents don't like to feel bypass when it comes to our kids this sex abuse prevention curriculum for our three-year-olds came as a result from the title ix survey that we gave to our secondary students let me be clear it is not the role of schools to talk to our kids about sex when we talk about this in an open forum what we're essentially doing is a group therapy session i'm asking you today to have an alternative for parents like me who to want who do not want my kids participating in a potentially traumatic experience that they're going to be sharing from from counterparts of an experience that

135they should not have had as a child we should be training our teachers in signs of prevention so that intentional intervention with specific kids can be given two questions i want to ask will this curriculum for our three-year-olds require parental consent versus an opt-out program which is what we just updated in our last month policy for our middle school or sex ed the second is with budget cuts being a concern how much money would we save if we didn't utilize this curriculum and instead implemented um trainings for our teachers and i'd love to hear the answers thank you thank you miss barnhart um considerably shorter good evening i'm melissa mason this board this evening is considering amendments to policy 7805 regarding the superintendent's evaluation but the real issue is oversight the board this board was

136expressly constituted by state law to make the superintendent accountable to voters yet faust's contract was written and approved to limit oversight by the community by keeping the content of his evaluations relatively quiet i haven't heard anything now the current board wants to further limit its own ability to hold the superintendent to account we spend roughly 50 percent of our budget on schools the superintendent has the sole responsibility for the education of our children our future so why do we keep taking steps to make the most power powerful position in our county less accountable and what's the consequence well if you're the wilsons and you found out that your child has put in been put in seclusion rooms for countless hours as a disciplinary measure you might want to know if this egregious violation of your

137child's rights or county policy came up at all during the evaluation new york state prisons banned seclusion because it was deemed to be a form of torture surely the wholesale abuse of this barbaric practice in our schools should be a matter for public scrutiny the wilson case involves violation of policy failure to dissipate discipline guilty parties and false reporting all of which are fireable offenses for everyone involved faust contract does not trump state law which gives this community the right to oversight we need to make sure no contract is ever written like this again thank you miss mason matt rhodes thank you for letting me speak i want to talk a little bit about school safety as we approach the upcoming school year but from a standpoint of truancy i've got children in the school

138system my son just graduated uh from hoggard um very proud of him my daughter is going to be going into eighth grade and when i would drop them off to school a lot of times i would stop somewhere and get a cup of coffee and the you know people working there know i have children they say where are your kids i said they better be in school because that's where i left them so what i've seen a lot of is that kids that are walking to school or being driven to school they get dropped off near school and they they appear to be going towards the woods anywhere but school so that's concerning for me there's not a lot the school system can do if they don't come in the door and i know they

139get 10 excused absences but i want parents to be aware and children to be aware that you know every year we have close to 840 000 children are abducted fbi says every 40 seconds a child is abducted so these kids could be putting their lives in danger but also too i know that some of these students who have told me and their parents have told me as well that a lot of times they will come home in the middle of the day maybe they forgot something maybe they want to eat lunch at home or use a restroom and then they go back and the parents say well how did you leave school did you check out no i just went through a door and left well how do you go back you go to the

140front office no one of my friends leaves the door open or is waiting for me so those are security issues that i hope that we'll be aware of and that we'll deal with because it's very important and kids being in school is where they need to be and the reality is is that if they're not they could be at the wrong place at the wrong time and i do not want to see anyone's child hurt or injured thank you [Applause] why are pornographic and sex books being allowed in our public schools what person or what people approve of this material to be put into our public schools we think exposing our children to this material is a good idea okay first it was books then across other states they have what's called and in some

141public libraries they have what's called drag from the story hour i mean what's i mean what's next are they going to invite strippers to our public school schools and set up pools and have them demonstrate in front of our children i mean that's completely outrageous i came across a particular book in my alma mater and it reads this take her out back we boys figure then hand on titties put it in their coin box put it in her cornhole grab a hold of that braid rub that calico that can be found on page 39 of the book called out of darkness that can be found in my alma mater at new hanover high school long story short the book is about anal sex i do not want our children reading about animal sex sex i

142want you to focus on education i want you to focus on reading writing english math science arithmetic this is completely outrageous these books have to go and for those of you who want to know where these books can be found you can look on pavementeducation.com where you can look up the book uh where these books are in our across our county in our public schools so who are the people that are producing this material to be read because this is completely unacceptable sneaking these books in without without parental knowledge or taxpayers knowledge this needs to change we will find out who approved this material and we will get you out good night thank you mr dude webb pat bradford good evening the second book in the list of books that sheriff ed mcmahon sent to

143the district attorney to evaluate was called out of darkness by ashley perez this book is found at holly shelter middle ashley high and new hanover high school three excerpts that i have for you tonight can be found at pavementeducationproject.com page 33 tells the story of miranda and it says none of us like miranda all of us pretend to the text goes on to explain that miranda is latino on page 67 she was there when henry came into the bathroom and closed the door behind him she watched as he placed both hands on the wall beneath the mirror and pressed his forehead against the glass a moment later one of his hands slid into his pajamas page 68 he talked he took one of her hands in his and squeezed it come over here he pulled

144her to her feet close to him he shifted his pajamas and then the part of him that made him a man stuck out reddish purple and frightening she had never seen one before except on a baby this was different page 380 lie back open your legs stop crying don't try to tell me this is the first time you've done this henry said henry she protested i haven't i never you've lied already enough he said then he pushed her back until her head was on the ground beto you come here watch but don't try anything i've got the gun right here better looked long enough to see the revolver his father held near his sister's face and the shotgun and i won't continue besides the rape the book ends in murder this board has the ability

145to take your school this book out of our schools your time is up you need to do it okay so um thank you all for your for your input next up is closed session so is there a motion to enter closed session pursuant to the items that are listed on the screen for to discuss um personnel matters and board of education versus john does one through 13. motion to go into closed session is there a second second um all in favor say aye any opposed okay we are in closed session well we got way off schedule well we were supposed to be at 7 50 we were supposed to be here so we're not too bad consensus okay folks are you ready okay all righty let's see come on let me get my computer back

146up stay there um anita are we ready did you say yes oh i'm sorry okay so next on our agenda are there consensus items do i hear a motion to approve motion to approve consensus items as presented um is there a second okay any discussion all right all in favor say aye any opposed okay those are approved with um pete i didn't hear you did you say something no ma'am no i said i you said i okay approved five to zero okay next up under old business local salary schedules for fiscal year 22 23. good evening everyone good evening so at your seat um you've got a copy of the powerpoint presentation that we'll go through and you should also have two different salary schedules i've provided a draft of the new salary schedules that

147we'll we'll just go over overview of those tonight um but i wanted you to have a copy of the complete salary schedules in case you wanted to look at particular things you'd have that document and then you also have the one that we used for this past fiscal year that we're currently using to pay from just if you want to compare the two you have that okay so for mr wildebore um he will just be following along on what's on the screen yes okay it's an assembly okay so pete you may have to go back and forth okay so um first i just wanted to start off by saying when we go through the presentation um the salary schedules that we talk about are going to be based on the state budget bill that passed

148um and that actually passed july 11th i think we discussed that last board meeting and so our recommendations for these salary schedules will be based on that state budget that passed and also the conversations that we've had regarding the board's budget initiatives over the past several months and do i have the clicker okay okay thank you i appreciate your help um so first i just wanted to share that the when the state passed um their budget it was effective as of july 1st so we will certainly make our schedules also effective july 1st and what will what will happen is once the salary schedules are approved and so if they're approved tonight then we will go back and we will include these raises or pay changes in our employees paychecks for this month and then

149of course as i had mentioned before it's retro or it's effective as of july 1 so we've already paid that july check so we'll at the end of august we'll also include that increase for july that hasn't been paid yet so they'll get both those payments in their august checks i did want to share the state retirement contribution the employer paid contribution in the state budget that passed was 24.5 percent it was a little bit higher in our planning budget we had estimated 24.19 percent so there's just a small difference there that i'll bring a budget amendment back to you for that small change and the health insurance amount was the same as we had in our planning budget so we were good there and so we'll start with the certified salary schedules these salary

150schedules are actually um prepared by the state so we all use the same certified salary schedules and so we will just use those salary schedules as we're implementing the raises and as you can see here the teacher and instructional support personnel the raise for them the average for that scale increase was 4.2 percent and that ranged from 2.5 to 7.2 percent depending on the years of experience for new hanover county schools the average teacher's salary is about 51 000 now with these new scales and beginning teacher pay is actually increased with these scales it was thirty five thousand four hundred and sixty dollars um annually and now it's up to thirty seven thousand the teacher i'm sorry the assistant principal salary schedule also increased four percent and the principal salary scale went up four percent

151as well just this year a little bit just to refresh your memory about the principal salary scales in in case you're not familiar maybe you don't remember principal salary scales are actually based on average daily membership at their school and also their um growth um they it's based on their growth data and um um right i just smoked it just left me in their evos growth and so something that's a little bit different this year previously when we had good test data we were looking at the best two of the last three years but you know we've held principles harmless for the past two years so the state's doing a reset on this and so actually when they're looking at principal salaries when we get our test scores related to last year we'll usually get

152those around december january i believe and so once we get that information they're just going to be looking at last year's test scores to determine that growth piece of the principal pay so that's that's a little different than what we've done in the past and so now let's move on and talk about our non-certified sometimes we refer those as classifieds salary schedules and so these are really the schedules that we're bringing to you for your approval tonight and the reason we're approving these is these are actually the state gives us ranges for these different pay types and then each lea has the flexibility to determine their own salary schedules and so that's why we're bringing those for approval and of course if they're based on the state mandated increases so even though they're our salary

153scales we still have to give a four percent excuse me a four percent increase to our employees and we still have to pay a minimum um hourly rate of pay of fifteen dollars an hour so with that certified i'm sorry um central office administration the salary schedule increase was went up four percent and the non-salary personnel we had the state mandate was like i had said before the four percent or the 15 minimum pay however as a board this was very important for us so we decided that we really wanted to do we wanted to fix our salary skills the compression that we had in those non-certified salary scales and so as a result of that a lot of these grades received more than the four percent that was required by the state and so

154you can see that here so grades 55 through 60 looking at those grades they actually received an average increase of about 11 percent so that we were able to fix that compression for them and then grade 61 through 78 they there wasn't as much compression once we got that far down the chart if you can envision kind of how the charts laid out and so we were able to just give the four percent in that area and not um negatively impact the salary schedule bus drivers and bus aides average salary increase for them was 6.3 percent that allowed us to once again fix the compression on that salary scale as well and also put them on a 30-year salary scale but they were on a 15-year before child nutrition the same thing were able to

155fix the compression with that scale and because they were paid even lower than what the bus drivers were that ended up being about 13.7 percent increase for for them to get them to where they needed to be and also to get rid of the compression that was on that scale for them okay um do we want to wait till the end that's why i was going to answer questions as we go is this is this an intermediate stopping point or should we just hang on okay yeah i mean that's fine okay yeah the bus drivers um so at this point we have bus drivers that are making are making similar are making at least 15 an hour along with the child nutrition workers that are in the cafeterias correct so bus drivers are making 16

156an hour because they were already making 15. okay and we wanted them to be making more than the bus monitors and we were required to pay them the 15. so so they're they're at 16. okay i just wanted to clarify that yeah thank you for that thank you and if i could ask before we jump off that slide um where exactly are tas in this um in in the in the grades um and i actually have um if we go if we'll wait just a second is the slide after the next one and then and then we'll be able to see that and also if you um there are two documents in the supporting document column if the first one is under local salary schedule which is the powerpoint that ashley is doing now if

157you click on the local salary schedule you'll see the salary schedules i think there's what a 58. yeah so teacher assistants are 57 57. thank you yes and we do have some more information on that coming up before we get to that i did want to share that we had some hourly rates of pay and the flat rates that we are also adjusting that i wanted to make you aware of and so these are specifically related to instructional substitutes and so the items you see start their long-term license subs and tas as subs or teachers the state actually mandates that we base that rate of pay that daily rate of pay on beginning teacher pay and so we've done we've made the adjustment here and that increase is of course due to the fact that

158the beginning teacher pay went up and then we adjusted the other rates accordingly based on where they were in the previous year so they got a either a four percent increase or if for example um there was last year between full-time unlicensed sub and full-time with experience in north carolina or out of state license there was a two dollar difference in two between those two rates of pay so we kept that same logic and so that's where the hourly rates came from at the bottom of that scale okay and then on the next slide we have we're going to talk about tutors and non-instructional substitutes and the same logic is used here as on the previous slide so the certified tutor rate is based on beginning teacher pay it's just an hourly rate there and

159then if you look at the bottom of that scale you know where of course as we talked about before required to pay at least 15 dollars an hour and so we had to bump those rates up to 15 and then previously bus driver sub was 50 cents more than the bus aid sub and so we kept that same logic as we were going through the scale okay and then here this is the slide that i thought would be helpful so these are some of the areas that we had talked about previously and i think i had this written down so bus drivers so this is um we talked a lot about beginning pay for different areas and so you have the salary schedules there that you can look to see where each of those different

160grades what the starting point is for them but i thought it was important to point out so bus drivers even though they start at 16 an hour if we look at years of experience for our bus drivers in new hanover county schools they average at about a step 15 so a step 15 on that new salary scale is 17.94 and then the same thing for child nutrition based on years of experience in of our staff in new hanover county schools most of our staff fall around step 15 as as far as our hourly child nutrition staff and so that hourly rate of pay is 15.57 teacher assistance the average years of experience here is nine years that's a grade 57 and so that on average our teacher assistants are going to be at 16 and

16174 cents and custodians on average are going to be at 16 and 24 cents um their average years of experience is about eight so they're on step eight i also thought it would be helpful to talk about bonuses so you we've already talked about these and you've approved the ester bonuses but i feel like it was important to go through this and just in case you hear things about this so in the state budget they also approved to reinstate the performance bonus for grades three through eight math and reading and that will be based on last year's test results and they're going to continue the bonuses that they've been paying over the past several years for cte and ibb and aice for principal bonuses they didn't pay those last year but those are going to

162be coming back for this upcoming year once we get the test results for last year principals will be eligible depending on what their scores look like to receive that bonus again and then this is something we have talked about previously using esser funds to pay a don certified bonus and so we are still planning to go forward with that and building that into our essar plan that will be coming back to you for approval but as part of that plan that bonus is going to go to employees with standard hours of 30 hours or more a week they're going to be permanent employees the retention bonus is going to be the thousand dollars that we talked about and we plan to pay that 500 in on november 30th and that's going to be based on

163people employed as of november 1st and then pay the other 500 june 30th and that will be based on employees employed as of june 1st and that is all i have for you tonight and so i just request approval of the local salary scales as presented um is there a motion to approve the salary schedules as presented motion to approve okay is there a second second okay any more discussion or any more questions is justice yes i'm just i just looked at this a teacher's assistant with nine years of experience make 16 and 74 cents it's not your fault that's for sure so don't think i'm accusing you i'm just saying this whole situation is sad the county just gave their employees the 1685 minimum this is so sad this is just sad this is

164wrong but is there a question well the discussion is that i i i know how i feel about it you know how i feel about i haven't changed it and i wish the county would change it i know the state's already given us money so it's their turn and they got it okay anything else ms adams just a quick comment thank you miss sutton for all that you've done on this this has been a long process and you have been amazing your finance team has been amazing and thank you dr foust for guiding this as well thank you thank you but you still have to come up once in a while and speak just so you can do it i'm looking forward to a little break okay um all in favor of the um accepting

165the salary schedule as presented say aye aye aye fish to water board i i guess i i i i i um yeah i i i gotta echo some of the thoughts that uh you know this is a shame i i you know i've been fighting so hard for that you know but i guess we have to do what we do is we give them something so hi okay so that passes first well i didn't vote you didn't i thought i heard your voice okay miss billy will you please call the roll miss justice no mr mcmanus yes mr wildebore yes ms craybill yes and ms adams yes okay so that passes five to one thank you i mean i'm sorry four to one order one yes okay so before we move on to the next

166item i um need to apologize i in my case to get rolling i skipped over approval of the minutes and so um could we go back to item 13 and um is there a motion to approve the amendments as presented i'll make that motion is there a second second okay any discussion um so miss bowie i did have a question for you on the june the seventh minutes when we talked about the year-round discussion calendar we it has everybody down as vote not recorded okay thank you um other than that i don't have anything so all in favor say aye aye aye mr waterborne i'm muted i'm sorry i was muted i okay thank you okay and so i do want to just circle back for one second two to the um the consensus items

167i just wanted to take the opportunity to acknowledge and thank and express my sincere appreciation on behalf of the board of education to all the organizations who partner with new hanover county schools to enrich and enhance the educational experience of our students and our staff um so that they get the richest and most robust learning opportunities that they can so for any partners that are listening and any folks that work with these partners please relay that to them for us okay now back on track old business we just finished new business policies for first reading so i will be taking those on behalf of um mr boyer the policies for first reading we really don't do anything with um policy code 1725 4035-7236-r is a new policy for us but basically all it's doing is

168just pulling out um definitions which we had never done before so the ncsba recommended that we have a second policy for that and then policy 7805 was the superintendent evaluation um so those are those are just for first reading so they're really not discussion items at this time unless we needed to add something yes excuse me let him go ahead and go first he's in paul on the policy committee yeah i just had a question because we have two different versions of the superintendent evaluation here and the only reason that they are both there is one is show the one was really hard to read because it was so marked up and so they're both really the same thing um the the one policy that has all the red it was um where we we

169struck out and put back in that the the one with the one that we're approving is the one that um is they're both the same actually and that is the entire thing from the end uh from the uh nc sba yeah yes it's it's it's the wording that we got from them that um the majority of school boards across the state are using but okay i just want to make sure that was clarified thank you thanks pete okay okay there's two things first of all i'd like to ask uh miss uh mr mccoy i'm sorry um now this evaluation 7805. that is our current policy for the board correct absolutely i don't think there's currently a superintendent evaluation policy in place we had it we voted 18 20 or 1840 from the old policies so

170it's still so it's still in place if it's the old policy manual correct if the board hasn't acted to revoke it then yes yes okay so it is so i want to make that clear 7805 is in place no no it is not why not it's the the version that was in the previous policy manual is now obsolete since the board hasn't acted to remove it that's the one that's currently in place until the board adopts the 7805 what i'm confused we've been through 7805 like three times and it keeps getting sent back this is the policy that we want to put in this is the only policy we have left that has not been approved so what is our what is our superintendent's evaluation policy presently that we are using the only policy that

171is currently in place is from the old obsolete policy manual and the board hasn't revoked that prior policy so technically it's still in place this policy would replace that policy when adopted because this is correct this was a doc this was adopted according to this it says adopted blank there is no there's it has not been adopted i remember voting on this because we didn't we has not been adopted this is a brand new policy that's why it's on for first reading so we have two of them no one is just a cleaned up versions for make it for easier reading one without any red is what we're doing he's also removing all the red and that's what you had just told pete it was what the reason was was to clear it up yes

172and that reason remains the same okay i would like to go ahead and clarify something too with mr shy i do know that we didn't talk about this policy and we as a board voted on it at the time that we were going to use the superintendent's state evaluation that was a vote up here on the diocese so what does that mean as far as that is uh at this point until i guess we adopt this which is what we're looking at since we did a vote on that does that mean that's the one we should be using according to what we did yes so the boy so the board actually doesn't even have to have a superintendent evaluation policy there's no requirement that it has such a policy and so the board chose in

173the absence of having this policy previously to vote to use a certain tool and even with this new policy you can still do that so this this policy in the first paragraph says the board shall annually evaluate the superintendent the board may use the evaluate valuation process and guidelines established by the state board of education including the rubric for evaluating north korea superintendents or such other processes and evaluation tools as the board chooses so moving forward with the adoption of this policy the board can continue to use the state board of education rubric or another um rubric or document if it so chooses okay does the previous and i don't have it popped up right now because of the confusion does it come does the previous superintendent's evaluation that we're using before these does that

174say anything about the north carolina state uh it doesn't okay but i do know that we as a group up here voted to use that we voted to use the um the old instrument that's the only thing we voted on that's that is what that is that we didn't go through all that training for that you voted the vote that you're speaking of is when we voted to adopt the new tool for this year yeah so that was the vote but that the policy is about the process right so that's the difference so we did vote we did vote to use that tool this is the tool for this for 20 years 22 23. thank you that's what i've been trying to clear up for every time i ask this question because i remember the

175vote and i'm glad that you've got the historical knowledge uh because we don't have policies in place right now to straighten things up that's that's aligned to what our voting was so for this year we did vote to do that thank you very much okay so those are policies for first reading they will be back on the agenda next next month all right next up are the title nine policies and um basically the there were very few changes in in what we're still using the ncsba structure and when we adopted these policies back in october of 2020 and then revisited and revised it in february of 21 we had opted to to leave out the informal grievance process because we were still um getting our training together we were still grappling with making sure that

176everybody knew how to follow um the formal grievance process so the only thing that has changed with these two type with these two policies is the insertion of the informal grievance process which and then so jarrell will be developing um in conjunction with um his team what the informal grievance process looks like and um and then training will ensue so that's what those two um policy changes are all about nothing and and the wording is straight from ncsba and is from the federal government okay everybody wants miss justice all right and this is first reading correct no these are these are we're adopting these are already in place and so we don't have to do first and second reading we we just read them and we vote you're talking about the title nine one the

177the new title nine ones yes i mean the old title nine ones the title nine policy 70 17 25-40 40 35 72 36 sexual harassment prohibited conduct and reporting process and policy 1726-4036-7237 title 9 sexual harassment grievance process did we have a first reading on this judy we adopted these back in october of 2020 and then we revised them in february of 2021 so we have already voted on them we are using them actively right now in our district including the informal district no we are adding in the informal um process so you're adding that in tonight for the first time you want us to vote on it there's no first reading on that part no that that's not how the review process works once it's a policy you don't have to do first reading

178okay so this is the first i have heard of this except i think it's been on a discussion from the public uh for the last 24 hours or so and uh here's my concern i would like to see what the process is that jarrell is going to come up with and strength before he even trains anybody so we can approve that because with our history and what we have been through i do not want to have the question the public in any way shape or form question what we're doing it's not going to be any better because we've got a heck of a lot in the future that's going to be involved with the sexual assaults that went on for decades here allegedly and so unless we can help the public trust us and i

179think if he would present to us first what his investigative process is before he does the training and then we could vote on it then the public would feel better about what we're doing well judy the um the board does not approve procedures that is what the superintendent and his staff do we approve the policies and they enact them into place so we don't approve those procedures normally you don't but the board can do it well mr shiver should can the board approve procedures i you know instead of them automatically happening i would like to see the public know that we know what they are and that we approve them believe me this history in this district is still here and we've got as i said there's a lot facing us in the future and

180i want the public to trust us as much as possible they would probably like to hear what these investigative uh policies are and how they're going to be gone through considering what didn't take place for decades allegedly and if i if i should if i could add something don't yell at him mr shive is talking oh i'm sorry all right yeah hang on i'll call on you go ahead colin so i'm i'm reading this policy for the first time and i defer to mr lewis about the particulars but i believe that an informal process requires voluntary written consent of both the parties so it's not something to be forced on anyone right and so it's not if there's a concern about the district using an informal resolution process that's that's only going to be available

181or would only be utilized if both parties agree to that in writing and it can also be rescinded if they change their mind before the investigation is complete is that right that's what jarrell told us at policy committee okay all right mr voting okay thank you and i was going to mention that i had been made aware of a situation at one of the schools that um it drugged on for months after months after months and the the complainant uh was around the other the other child uh and it was very concerning to me and also to the the person so i think this actually addresses that where it could be instead of it you know ongoing situation that takes months after months after months it is a situation that it can be taken care

182of a little bit quicker and again it does have this stipulation that both parties have to agree to it so i i think it is it's got some merit to it for sure mr lewis are you online are you on the zoom call with us yes i am would you care to um please weigh in this obviously i'm not doing a good job of describing what we talked about the policy committee meeting so if you would just weigh in on this i'd appreciate it uh sure so i i think to understand the informal resolution process i need to discuss what the formal process is so for a title ix investigation to begin for sexual misconduct the first has to be a formal complaint filed a formal complaint can be filed by a complainant or victim

183or in certain circumstances i as the timeline coordinator can decide to file a formal complaint if a formal complaint is filed what happens next we begin a timeline investigation process that can take up to up to 120 days mr wilderboard acknowledged some of these can be pretty lengthy depending on how many witnesses we have if there are students with disabilities students from families that don't speak english as their first language can slow things down so with the formal process we investigate and we determine if there is a violation of the title on policy based on the facts that we find under the informal resolution that would allow us to have a wider base and range of options to resolve uh title complaints the way to enter into the formal complaint the informal resolution process is

184there first still has to be a filing of a formal complaint by a victim or the title ix coordinator from there the parties would be presented with their rights under the informal resolution process such as voluntary written consent before it's being entered by all parties involved at any time during the informal resolution process a party can withdraw from the informal resolution process and then enter into the formal investigation process if they are no longer comfortable in the informal resolution process or something does not work um as they thought it should um so and at the end essentially the formal resolution process allowed for the parties to have more say more of a um better grasp on how this particular situation impacts them directly and better fits to their needs while also providing a quicker resolution

185than the formal process also the informal resolution process cannot be implemented or utilized for in cases of a student making a sexual misconduct complaint against an employee so it can be used on employee on employee cases student on student cases but it can never be used for cases involving a student and an yeah and also mr lewis will will you still you still have oversight over all the comp all the complaints no matter what resolution process is used is that correct correct so my role would be to ensure that all these cases are carried out following federal policy federal law regulations so um i would still be hands on in this process formal or informal okay thank you miss justice has a question well thank you for that this and this is what i want

186to do is have the public understand what we're doing so there's no confusion as far as the process uh now are the parents from the very first time that the child approaches an adult are the parents notified about what's going on so that the child is not just left to their own devices to do this until maybe the end of the day or the next day or is the parent notified immediately about what's going on yeah so the parent is notified as part of the standard title on process so like i said once we get that formal complaint we have to do a follow-up what we call the interactive process where we talk about the rights and that's where we would offer the opportunity for the parties to utilize the informal resolution process with the

187caveat that all parties the correspondent and the victim must both agree to enter into the formal resolution process so at that at that first meeting with the family we talked about the rights that all students and the families have they would have all that information beforehand so they can make an informed decision about what works best for their particular case so so no questioning no versions no um discussion with the child will occur until the parent is there present and you give them their rights and and so that everybody will know exactly what's going on and the child's not alone so there's no way in shape they're going to feel intimidated or alone alone feel like they have to please the adult that is part of the title my interactive process this informal resolution would

188not change that interactive process so in other words a parent will be there from the get-go very first a parent or an advisor or caregiver would be involved okay the legal whoever is considering the guardian of the child will know immediately before they question the child to i mean that's another concern of the public is that children not have an adult representation and children do have a tendency to what our police adults are around that's just kids um and so that a lot of the public is concerned that the child will not have that immediately upon making the complaint or the even the child accused so both of the parents are guardians they could be guardians are notified immediately before anything's done correct thank you okay so is there a motion to do do we

189want to approve these um one at the time or do we want to do them together as a unit because they both they're both have insertion of the same words i mean i'll make a motion to approve the amendments to title ix policies together okay is there a second is there a second you are talking about these policies in front of us now i'll second it any more discussion okay miss billy will you please call the roll mr welterborg aye miss justice all right mr mcmanus yes ms craybill yes and ms adams hi okay that's five to zero thank you okay so next up is paula's amendment to policy 2660 and so that this one falls um into some of the discussion that we had earlier today board appointments to outside committees um the major

190there is one major change there um the hannah block historic uso building community arts center committee it was disbanded so we're taking that out of our policy and that is really the only change on that one move to approve is there a second second okay all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed okay um next one up is policy 2670 also going along with our board committees um the business advisory council and so what we have done with that one is inserted cte or we'll probably spell out career and technical business advisory council some of the wording in there has changed we've gone from nine members to 11 members and inserted that a board of education member will be a member of that council new hanover county schools career technical and met including a

191wilmington chamber of commerce designee but um none of none of the and i i forget why these um these highlights are in there they don't mean anything um to that no i was it was a note to myself to to ask a question so yeah so that um is those are the changes for that and then they will be referenced in the board committees is there a motion to accept this one as presented move to approve okay is there a second second okay all any more discussion yeah um is this is the one that you said previously was the uh i was the c-tech advisory board this was not this was not originally c-tech c-tech advisory board will be absorbed into this okay i'm just trying to clarify how they're not being left out they're

192just going to be absorbed okay okay um all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed okay great that one passes all right so um going on down okay let's see we'll go to announcements unless anybody has a committee report i didn't no one told me that they did um the policy committee will meet on tuesday august the 9th at 9 00 a.m at the board of education center and the august interim meeting of the board of education will be held on tuesday august 16th beginning at 5 pm so next on our agenda is the second closed session do i hear a motion to go into closed session pursuant to the items listed on the page motion to go into closed session is there a second second okay all in favor say aye aye aye

193any opposed okay we're in closed session just one more body so we can adjourn yeah we don't even have an advice chair so i don't know what's in there karma okay next on the agenda is um adjournment do i hear a motion to adjourn second okay all in favor say aye aye the thumb drive you