NHCS Board of Education Townhall Meeting | July 19, 2022

001good evening everyone welcome to the new hanover county board of education's participation meeting um town hall format this is our first that we've had um as us as a board and first that our board has hosted in um a big number of years so we are excited to be here with you tonight um miss billy would you please call the roll here also present okay um next order of business is um approval of the agenda do i hear emotion so moved is there a second okay um any discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay approvally agenda um before we get started i just want to um again welcome everybody here and just as a reminder our rules of decorum do apply as they would with any one of our meetings so without

002further ado i'm going to turn it over to vanna white i mean excuse me um josh smith to lead us through the town wall all right thank you madam chair ladies and gentlemen good evening my name is josh smith i'm the chief communications officer of the district i'll be moderating town hall this evening i've got a script here to get through some housekeeping so bear with me uh first you'll notice the qr code on the screen first you'll notice the qr code on the screens this link is also posted to our website if you scan this code it'll bring you to a form where you can either submit questions in real time this evening and we'll be pulling some of those questions later in the evening or to provide feedback on this event and we'll

003take that into consideration as we plan the next public participation meeting in september this is obvious obviously the first time we've done something like this we'll work out the kinks tonight take your feedback and continue to improve so we have two parts to the event this evening during the first part i'll be asking each board member a question derived from the submissions that we've received so far board members you'll have three minutes to respond during this initial portion and then after all seven questions you'll each have one minute to provide any additional comments that you choose part two is going to be me coming around with a microphone to you and the audience to ask your questions directly of board members as well as fielding questions from those coming in submitted via the form and

004online for those viewing at home when we get to that portion i'll respectfully ask the audience to keep their questions concise and to strive to ensure we're asking questions of all members and for board members please remember this is a town hall and not a political debate so with that and this is in the notes i was going to do the let's get ready to rumble here we go all right here we go okay so we have received hundreds of questions from members of the community and obviously we don't have time in this form to address each one so instead i derived seven overall themes from 200 plus questions those themes are curriculum equity bullying school performance school calendar and school safety so i'm going to go straight down the dice miss justice we're going

005to begin with you so among many hot topics in schools across the country banned books the content of the curriculum state requirements this topic's quite near the top of these concerns the district is creating an online resource to make it easier for parents to navigate the curriculum content in real time but in addition to that you have a background in curriculum development and sit on our curriculum committee what measures can and should the board take to ensure transparency and accountability on what students are learning and the material provided in the curriculum including library books it's already available the state of north carolina believe it back in 1898 established standard course of study and rigorous work has been done since that time it covers every grade level uh from pre-k all the way up through 12

006every course it's accessible readily accessible through dpi online and this is these are the standards that teachers have to teach to and they are monitored constantly by school administration to make sure that they adhere to it there is no mystery in what we teach in classrooms and also the individual teachers also have individual websites and grade levels have websites and you can go in and find out what they're doing at any given time any given day practically so um there are lots of ways to access information same way with uh the libraries if you are well books if you're concerned you can talk to the teacher and they will tell you what they are using in their classrooms you can call the schools and they will check with the teachers a lot of you can

007go to the media call the media person and they can go ahead and tell you what we have online and what the teachers are using there's no mystery to any of this so if you want to find the information it is a little work on your part because you've got to open up a computer and go to a site or you've got to pick up a phone and call people you can call the teacher please call teachers teachers are more than happy to interact with parents they want to talk to parents they'll tell you what's going on in the classroom uh they'll tell you what books the students are reading uh it gets a little more difficult in parents as far as monitoring when it comes to middle school and high school only because that's

008that's age-appropriate as children develop they take on uh you know more of a responsible you know control of their education on the other hand all our media coordinators will let you know exactly what's in the library if you have a concern about your child's checking out a book you can actually communicate that with the media coordinator and tell them did you like to have permission before your children get you know let's call not that we would do that because parents don't usually do that these kids have access to everything on this to think that we're doing anything that is detrimental to our children we're focused on kids learning and as i said you can use i'm using the phone or the computer you can find out at any time what's going on individually with your

009with your child during the day individual classrooms with the state everything is in detail i mean i have stared at the standard course of study for 30 years over and over again to make sure you get it right the materials materials you bring in they are vetted by departments by teachers by administrators to make sure that they're appropriate and they are teachers want to teach knowledge they're not trying to if there's sadly this word indoctrination keeps coming up nobody's indoctrinating anybody we're educating children to what's happening in the world and you know you're talking about books as i said the biggest library in the world is right here thank you miss justice i appreciate that word time thank you very much mr mcmanus moving on to you it says in my notes here that you

010have some experience leading schools that's a joke you've obviously been a principal at various schools in the area for decades and said on the edi committee so my question for you is about bullying a topic that you know have no doubt have dealt with over the years what measures would you like to see implemented that would have a measurable decrease in bullying in our schools uh it is paramount that we deal with bullying it's to me and i said this at our meeting with the county commissioners uh to me it's the single most underrated disaster for students in our schools social media has taken over um i got away with dealing with it when i was a high school principal which is leading me into my answer but because when bullying online and or individually

011in the cafeteria on the buses anywhere where there's a gathering of two or more when you see a cow a child that's isolated in the lunchroom you see a child that's sitting outside the counselor's office every single day when you see a child whose grades were here and now they're here when the parents are calling and they're crying i think that's very serious so to answer your question we need to have a social media policy dealing with bullying and right now from what i have heard and been told is that often those who report that they are being bullied are the ones that are forced to change their classes or ride a different bus so they're the ones that are receiving having to make the changes which affects their relationships um so i think it's

012paramount that we established and i'd like to see that tied into our title ix policy i think that's the place to put it because there's we have to deal with bullying to me it's the most serious thing we have in our schools and as simple as i can say it is a discipline issue the parents must be involved it must be dealt with and i think the counselor is beginning obviously to go but at some point it's going to involve the administration but a title ix policy so that everyone understands the parameters and if we enforce it i think it'll help a great deal thank you sir miss walker the district has made progress in recent years addressing equity diversity inclusion it's central to our strategic plan and we're now in the process of bringing

013on uh chief equity officer you chair the edi committee can you talk about where you'd like to see the district with respect to edi in five years and how you'd like to see the district ensure that all students needs are being met regardless of race ethnicity sexual orientation associated economic background et cetera that's a very important topic and i and and something you know that i thought a lot about before i even ran for office um uh you know as a person that grew up here um you know probably on the poor side i've seen a lot of disparities as far as you know um opportunity gaps as far as that's concerned but i know we have worked very hard on our strategic plan i know that we have put a lot of time in

014it and and there will be opportunities to update that and change it it's a living document but edi is a pillar of that and that became something that those feedback from us as a board administrator it's a community at large and i think that it it is something that's very important to this community in this district we have a dedicated group what i've learned over the year and a half of being on edi committee is that we have a very passionate dedicated group of board members community members and administrators that really care about this topic there are several things that we have been working on that i'd like to see in five years maybe sooner than that i know one right now we did talk about suspensions not that long ago and we we've been

015working towards that um the seclusion rooms is definitely something that's next that um this board is very we'll been talking a lot about them and i would like to see those um with the support of our staff and administrators and getting [Music] sorry it's like my time's up what is happening um yeah so you know how we can support our staff and get to a place where we're not secluding children um that's important addressing the disproportionality especially when it comes to discipline and academics that is very important because what we typically do in edi which we all should do is start with the data and what we've seen from the data is that there are disproportionate amount of children of color um and easy kids that are being suspended and secluded and so and then

016that that goes on to academics as well they don't get there's not as much opportunity that we have seen with the data that we can address and that leads me on to looking at the aig programs the lyceum program all the specialty programs that um we see there's a gap there and i know we had a really good presentation a couple weeks ago from our aig coordinator that talked about looking at different ways to assess students and how to include them in programs i'm looking forward to the the equity officer because i you know when dr smith was here she was she's an integral part of helping us you know guide us in our um you know our communication with each other and keeping us on task um so that's going to help us as

017well i know i probably threw that in there if i forgot to mention that um but then you know for me as well a big topic for me is pre-k um i think it should be universal i think commissioners have really you know done well getting more classes for us but the waitlists are just too long too long still and i think that's going to help with kindergarten readiness there's so many oh and additional supports for lgbtq plus students we did our survey title nine survey that told us that they really do need supports and so i'm looking forward to helping that thank you thank you ma'am the timer went up somewhere miss craybill physical safety is top of mind for every parent in the country our district i've obviously experienced gun violence at the

018beginning of last school year we've seen tragedies like you've already since you actually work in the realm of safety in your day job what would you like to see the district do to ensure student safety and prevent violence on our campuses well um first of all i just wanted to you know thanks for that question this is i am i'm a safety professional by trade so safety is always on my mind um i can't drive down the road without looking at you know construction workers you know hanging out of their trucks um i can't walk into a school and not notice you know a lot of things that are happening in there um but i do want to say that um i think that um we have a good solid safety program and safety initiatives

019in our school district um first we just hired a new executive director you meet him every time that you come into our meetings in his very short tenure here he has evaluated our programs and has made recommendations to staff um and to increase the the the staff cohesiveness and understanding of our safety issues and also working with our community partners as evidenced here with all of our law enforcement folks um here to help us um not only our has he looked at our programs he's looking at our practices and with those practices we are practicing those practices you know one of the things i was an athlete um in high school and college and the and a lot of coaches up here on the board you you should practice like you play so we need

020to have drills continuing to have drills we do we have them at the safety at the school level we have them at the district level we have them i'm at the crisis management team level where we have multi interdisciplinary agencies we've had the support of the county commissioners to help us in funding a lot of our safety initiatives first thing coming is port city united they we've done a risk vulnerability study that we did in 2019 we are continuing to knock off the things that are on that list with that we've had the help of the county commissioners since then you know jumping right in to help us put together teams and um they've committed to a million dollars per year you know to help fund our safety initiatives in our schools um one such

021initiative is the vestibules that are going on this summer we have freeman williston j.c rowe and lake forest academy next summer we will have gregory powell gregory roland grist and new hanover county schools so that that limits the um the access to coming in the schools we have a lot more adults in the building which is one thing that all of us agree on you have to build the relationships in order to stop some of the problems internally from coming in externally so we have an sro in every in every at least one in every secondary school and we have commitment to have sros in all of our elementary schools we have extra adults in the buildings with our ptas our um our social workers our counselors our community partner volunteers we have security cameras

022inside and outside our buildings monitoring what is going on um so and i would i just want to wrap and leave it with you is that we need you to help us as well is that when you come to a building don't ask a student or a teacher to let you in a door you know go around to the front sign in and do all that kind of stuff so we we really appreciate um the whole community thank you miss craybill or time thank you very much miss adams with budget talks dominating board conversations for several months now the question around providing schools the appropriate level of resources to meet students where they are is always central to that conversation what can and should the board do to ensure student success amongst all school and

023student subgroups including our ec aig english language learner populations i think as long as we're keeping our conversation centered on students we will be in the right space which i know our administration is doing and i think that it also wraps into equity we have to meet all of our kids where they are every single child that comes into our classroom is coming with a different experience a different story a different skill set as board members it's our job to make sure that every child that comes into a school is getting what they need to find their success and get their support and that's not easy to do you know this is there's a lot of different needs for our students whether they're coming from challenging circumstances in their home life whether they are coming

024from some sort of learning disability that challenges them in the classroom whether they haven't eaten in the morning and so to be able to say there is one band-aid and one budget line item that is going to address all kids it's not going to happen so i think what we need to continue to keep doing is listening to our stakeholders talking to our communities talking to our families what is it that you need and what is it that's going to help support your children and you as families as well i think as a board we need to continue to listen administration can continue to listen i think all of the committees that are functioning and having really good conversations and sharing ideas innovation comes from diversity and if we have a bunch of people saying

025the same thing in the same room we are not going to create the processes and procedures that are necessary for our school system to succeed so i encourage different thought but we need to come to a place that's also respectful and i think that we've lacked some of that over the past couple years and so my hope is is that as the board moves forward and around budget when we talk about where should we be putting our money our money needs to be on our students and helping them be successful and so um that's a tough conversation but i ask for respect i ask for good dialogue and i'm not even going to use my full three minutes if that's all right fine with me thank you ma'am mr wildebore we know the new hanover

026county is experiencing explosive population growth there's no sign of it slowing down the board's actually heard architectural designs for new schools but that's on the horizon and we have a few areas of overcrowding now how would you like to see the board address overcrowding and increase teacher to student ratios mr smith i do thank you for that question and again i'd just like i'd like to take 10 seconds of my time and thank everybody who is in attendance here and is watching online that's a great question i do think i look back at my own history and i started at north topsail back in 2008 and we had a school of 880 uh in a school built for about 535 so we i jumped in with both feet right off um i think first thing

027i want to kind of piggyback on what ms adam said is thinking outside the box a lot of times using get making advantage of every square foot you have maybe even changing your schedule in at times to be able to meet the needs of all your students in the various areas it's it's a tough situation also bringing in learning cottages they're a temporary effects i know they're not the best thing in the world uh and that brings us over to ms craybill's area as far as safety because you put a learning cottage outside then you have or how you're going to get in and out of the building i was very fortunate in my school we had a great pto that partnered with me and partnered with us and we were able to put in

028buzzers and this kind of thing to try to keep that keep this the outside students being able to get in safely but i think it is uh some of the other things that have been mentioned having additional adults in the building to be able to protect those students as they do go in and out of buildings um obviously we you know looking ahead as you mentioned in new growth new buildings partnering with the county commissioners and with the state you know looking at a possible bond to be able to fund some of these new schools you know it's a great problem to have it really is you know it's a tough problem but it's a great problem to have because that means there are students that want to come to our schools and you know

029i think in in the big picture it's all about what's best for our students at all times so i think we need to look at uh every avenue we can you know it could be slightly redistricting i know that's a really tough word to say especially in election year but you know we have to look at the possibility if we have a school that is under it's not overcrowded but we have under population maybe we need to you know look at the possibility of shifting some students and of course we want to get uh input from the parents input from the educators so we have the best picture for those students moving ahead thank you thank you sir mr boyer this day and age most of us live and die by the calendar this is

030especially true of parents of kids in school we've seen the calendar change in recent years which has led to some frustrations talk about the school calendar process you serve on that committee how is it developed and why is it changing why has it changed in the past few years that's a that's a really good question as a father of two school-aged children and a wife who works in this you know husband of a wife who works in the school i wonder if they didn't slip that in for you but i appreciate the question um so in north carolina we're bound by state statute to follow certain laws with regards to our calendar and one of those is that the school year has to start on the monday closest to the 23rd of august and in

031this case that's a very late start now when i got on the board and started with the calendar committee one thing we wanted to try to do was align our semester with the community college we have over 2000 dual enrolled students they struggled mightily to balance their schedules because our semester ended after the new year and so we tried to balance that and we did that for a couple of years and what we found was that it placed a tremendous burden not only on our educators but on our elementary and middle school students and so we were aligning we were helping our dual enrolled population but it was to the detriment of the rest of the system and you know as everybody sort of mentioned our focus is always on maximizing what we can do

032for our students and so in new hanover county there now there are two ways statewide where we can say well how do we meet the state requirements one is through days state mandates that you have to have 180 days the other and this provides us with our very limited flexibility is through hours we don't do days we do hours and the state mandates you have to have 1025 hours of classroom instruction we go over that we go over that by a considerable margin and it's because we do that it's because we use our hours rather than our days that we have an opportunity to provide a day off as we did earlier to our students we had to adjust the calendar we had a snow day this year you guys noticed we didn't make it

033up because we are over on our hours and so because of all these stipulations because we try to get through with ours the calendar has changed considerably over the last few years i know that can be very frustrating for families the state also mandates that our year-round schools meet certain requirements and that's the reason for the the spring breaks this semester between our year-round schools and our traditional schools not aligning i know that's very disappointing uh it's disappointing for a lot of our families who have a kid in elementary school maybe goes to cottington or eating and then a kid in middle school and then those spring breaks aren't going to align and it's not that we don't want to do that and it's not that we don't try to do that it's we are

034really mandated heavily by our state and before i have my time expire i just urge you guys to contact your state representatives and say we need calendar flexibility we've been fighting that fight for a while thank you sir okay anita if you could let's set a one minute timer we're gonna come back around one more time feel free to have a minute to respond to anything that may have come up or add additional remarks you can take it you can choose not to it's up to you miss justice we'll start with you as soon as uh we're good with the timer and anything to add we just talked about an awful lot of topics uh one thing that struck me is about how knowledgeable we are that's part of what's being what is it takes

035to be on this board and do a good job and it's been rough the last couple years and i think that the expertise that this board has a lot of the members has really made it even though it's to a lot of times the public doesn't think so or does it seem so has made it a lot more beneficial to our students because we've been able to use this knowledge base to make good decisions sometimes it takes a long time to get those decisions made sometimes that's a good thing sometimes it's a bad thing but as i said we got real strong knowledge base here i actually enjoyed listening to all the different perspectives on different topics i could talk more about career i can talk about curriculum all day i prefer to have people

036ask me questions because there is so much to it so um you know that's i guess from here out that's probably the best way for us to for me anyway to uh proceed thank you ma'am resetting and mr mcnance just were quickly uh i came over and she was been a few years but when the state began the state testing into grade testing and in the certain course testing they've reduced that considerably i don't know if it's because of the cost what we call the test scores but that's why the curriculum is so accessible so that you can see what is being taught because that's what the kids technically the test would be about that particular curriculum as a ninth grade teacher might want to teach english her family's reading in the old days another

037one is i can date myself now typing or writing oh and or another would be lit and so when they went to the 10th grade they all had a little bit of something but they didn't have all of everything and so the state aligned what specifics should be taught so that when you get to the next grade when they test they find out in fact if the kids can spit out what they supposedly to again back to the building i think it's important that i'd like to add oops gotta stop there sir we got a tight ship to run we'll come back to that thank you i appreciate you okay i'm gonna piggyback so it's all good all right we resetting miss walker so i wanted to piggyback what he was getting ready to talk

038about and what he talked about i um the overcrowding and the ratio issue i mean development's gone crazy we're gonna be the comprehensive plan told us how many people were coming here and and i think for the longest time when development was concerned people didn't consider that as infrastructure i don't think they considered um you know i know when my daughter was at laney there was like four or five trailers out there it was like 500 kids over and districting does help with that a lot but we're going to have to build a couple more schools at least i think at least the middle and and we can't forget new hanover high school that's my alma mater it is 100 years old as we know it has got a lot of foundational problems and it's

039going to need a lot of money i mean it comes down to money and hopefully we will have an opportunity for a bond referendum i hope um because otherwise i don't see how we're going to be able to pay to pay because no one wants to knock hannover down i know people will fight over that i'm pretty sure but we have a lot to to do as far as you know how we develop and and being smart about it okay thank you ma'am resetting and miss crable go um so i would like to just add in there um i the the questions that you all asked and submitted we read them all and they line up really nicely with our strategic plan so it really shows that the input that you provided us when we

040were putting together our strategic plan you know fit right in and we were able to develop strategies and goals you know to meet those um and the the next level down is school improvement team so in school improvement plans so that's a way that i would encourage all of you to try you know get involved if you have a student at a school and i would encourage us all to use district systems um as our first go-to call a teacher call a teacher call a principal um use the district system such as the forms that we have to challenge questionable material um to look at curriculum versus going to the media as our number one go-to um and then also too just um get involved and you'll see as we're coming up we're working on

041board um committees and they're in a common application process so we're looking forward to having more people uh join us in our effort to support our students thank you ma'am miss adams i would just like to comment but you know i had an opportunity to see the questions sorry an opportunity to see the questions that were submitted and um you know so many questions were relating about school school safety and i think it was right after the uvalde shooting and as a parent i feel that it's terrifying to think that our child would go to school and not be safe right um and i just want to make a comment to that because this rolls into what hugh talked about and um what stephanie krabill talked about from from the safety perspective a lot of

042it starts with mental health and i want to remind parents we have mental health supports in place at our schools please make sure your children know how to access them please make sure that our counselors to know that your counselors are there we have social workers in some schools we have communities and schools make sure you're reaching out you know i have a 10 year old son and you know he is in that place right now that suicide rates are the highest for boys between the ages of 8 and 12. so it starts early so let's make sure that we're doing our due diligence as parents check in with our kids let's make sure we're keeping our kids safe and having difficult conversations thank you miss adams resetting and mr wildebore thank you again i'd

043like you to talk a little bit more about safety as a principal i always told my staff that the school is often and should be the best and safest place for for all our children along those lines i think i met this week with the sheriff's department we talked about with some other high ranking officials and we talked about some of the safety issues and some of the ways we can improve those one i'd like to look at is safety teams in every single school we have an overall safety team but not every school has a safety team looking at sr or sros huge part i think they're vital in every uh level and giving them access back to some of our cameras also having cameras throughout the school and also as we mentioned before

044having a group such as not necessarily this group but such as the watchdogs the you know parents being involved in the school being trained being able to walk the halls to help keep our students safe someone having that adult on campus to keep us safe keep them safe excuse me thank you sir and mr boyer yeah i'd like to touch on safety too briefly but just from a slightly different perspective i spent 13 years in military law enforcement physical security that was my first career and i can tell you that the best time to stop a bullet is in second grade not seconds before they start flying and so you know with all and you know mr mcmanus touched on it as well with all of the things that our kids have going on and

045all the things that they face that we didn't face as kids mental health is more important than ever we are coming out of a pandemic where for you know a year the anchor that is the life of a child that school that safe space that was gone that was taken from them and so you know the pandemic continues and its effects continue for these kids so you know i think mental health is the number one safety issue because it blocks the other physical security issues or it can all right thank you sir okay this brings us to part two i'm gonna transition microphones in the back if we could get the portable mic working please so we're gonna transition to part two and this is gonna alternate between me coming around with a microphone and

046asking and allowing you to to ask your questions of the board that we have enough or few enough people where i'm just going to make my way across starting this way and going this way and then we're going to alternate with questions that are coming in in real time from folks viewing live at home uh if we have questions there too so am i getting testing testing i think we're good okay and then anita if we could reset to three minutes and we'll we'll stick to the three minute format as we move out so let's if we're ready i don't have to go this way but i can start i can start on a side all right i see a hand over here so we'll start we'll do the opposite of what i just said

047i'm going to maripovich it i'm not letting go with this microphone so i'm going to hold it as you know i attend a lot of board meetings and one thing that has become apparent i just retired as a teacher and i worked at jc rowe which is one of the alternative schools and i realized that almost everybody sitting up there has no clue what's going on at jc rowe and i can honestly say i've not really seen anyone from the central office there very often except for one person who volunteered to cover as a sub when we ran short on subs i want to know why some schools do not get visited very often and what you really should do to fix that in the future is there a particular board member that you'd like

048to post this question to any one of them can handle it but apparently i'm will okay okay mr wildeberry please i raised my hand back well um first off i would like to say i do try to visit schools quite a lot i have not been to roe i will be honest i've been to mosley at least four times and i do go there and try to talk to teachers teacher assistants students i mean students are the best part of the of the the whole equation but to get more people to go to schools i mean just what you did invite us i would love to you know if something's going on at a school i think any one of us or all of us would love to come you know i guess if we

049all came it might be a problem because you're not allowed to have four people at one school but um please reach out you can send me an email say hey could you stop by my school i actually had one of the principals uh after we had a newspaper article reach out to me and say hey my staff is in turmoil would you stop by tomorrow i said yeah i have several things i'm supposed to do but you know what this is more important so i i cleared my schedule and came out there that day so um you know i'll but i will i'm going to put row on my schedule and i will be there i know that the board was invited i believe judy didn't you come to one i thought you did somebody

050did did come to one briefly um but yeah but our our population was actually very different from mosley's because mostly he's gotten away from more of a traditional alternative school to just alternative um but yeah i mean i know that we there was one in the fall and one in the spring and um we did put it out there as a big invitation it was an after-school event i i to be honest i i would prefer now i'm not saying i wouldn't want to go to something like that but i'd prefer to see the students doing what they do best being in in class learning uh teachers interacting uh and you know just informally not not some kind of a formal thing where i'm coming through and evaluating anybody but um just going through and

051and seeing what's going on in school when the school is in in session but i'll definitely come after school too yeah it was actually nice our students who are usually overlooked got a chance it there was a little bit i mean they got to perform which they don't always get to do and it was through one of the um extra programs that we had there you know with um coming in and doing art you know therapy through art so yeah it wasn't traditional but believe me there were a lot of our students there and it should continue like that but i think it is important for you guys to come during the day you know um you know about our food being delivered you know that we don't have a nurse there and things like

052that that are really important and there's more than five kids there maybe you know oh yeah there's more than five kids yes ma'am thank you all right thank you very much john let me check in anything coming in online if so go ahead and please yes we have a few questions um the first one is sort of a budget and staffing questions two parts will my child's school have funding for an aig teacher and why are we why are necessary positions being eliminated volunteer oh okay let's let's split the three minutes let's try this so let's just go down the line miss justice please we need more money for staffing uh the state just gave us a little bit more but it's still not enough they've been cutting since 2010. we live in the ninth

053richest county in the state we have access to some funding that no other county has through the in-house hospital endowment and the special fund that they set aside that's up to the county commissioners at this point for us to get that funding that's the only source left and that's up to the public to talk to them because at this point our budget has been passed their budget has been passed that doesn't mean that they can't create special situations where they can get that money and it is there and we are not wasting it um this is something that a discussion and a dialogue needs to take place between the community and those county commissioners because i think we're pretty much done about everything we can do in order to get them to pay attention to

054our needs and we've got some desperate situations here we have shortages and we're going to have more shortages we're competing now with the private sector that's desperate for employees i've had so many good friends that are wonderful teachers and tas that have had to leave because they just have to support themselves thank you miss justice i want to give time for others miss crable yes i um i am not aware of any positions that have been cut at this point in time that that is projections that we may have to work through um that what we may be what this this parent may be experiencing is a realignment of aig resources at that particular school like they may have to share now they're put they may be pushing in versus pulling out there's a lot

055of different things that are going into that so i would just like to say before you say the positions are cut you know to definitely check with your principal um and then to call you know um send an email to dr faust and let him um answer or to dr faison who is our assistant superintendent for instruction so um yeah so that's my thoughts on that thank you uh mr mcmanus i to add a little bit to that uh i'll ask dr faust that he said that we're as you've stated with absolutely no reductions in aig services uh so i take that what you said but i'll also mention that when it's also is available online on our website are for people expenditure i just want to make sure which is a dialogue now going

056on that we don't want to punish people at the top we don't want to punish people at the bottom everyone needs to get the resources necessary to make them successful but we're spending 83 000 per people in mostly and we're spending what eleven thousand at new hanover high school i'm still trying to digest that and figure out but that's another whole topic for discussion okay any last minute comments on this topic can that 83 thousands for row i i don't want to have mostly falsely identified but we're talking about aig resources right now okay thank you for that questions over here to uh mr carmichael i just had a question uh everyone here agrees that mental health is a top priority so what i'm trying to figure out is why do we practice using seclusion

057rooms and then the other question is there's a shortage of mental health workers in our schools already there are some school counselors with a caseload of 100 or more and there's some with 100 or less but we use seclusion rooms and inflict more trauma on kids but we believe that mental health is a top priority so i'm just trying to figure that out miss walker let's start with you with that if you don't mind so i agree mental health is very important pandemic has affected the whole world we all have felt it um i have owned personal stories with mental health issues not myself but family members and i know how important it is people people don't i think when they hear mental health it's you know um you see any counselor and that everybody

058kind of need yours to that but people don't understand that if if something's really going on sometimes people don't say anything everyone has their own way they deal with their mental health issues having the support there is important i think working on the seclusion room issue is what i think we're trying to do and i hope that we do come to a conclusion very soon on that but that you know that's still to your point about not having enough mental support i think we really do need to look at that because i feel like i know at least from from my personal experience in high school um counselors were a lifesaver and i think that if we had more people there that were accessible that you know if a kid was having an issue you

059could just walk in and talk to somebody that would be very very helpful and not feel like that it was a stigma i don't know if i answered it but i hope i did thank you ma'am any other comments from any other board member on this question or topic i'm looking back through um miss bradford asked me this question a while ago about mental health professionals in our school system um so we have added 150 counselors social workers school psychologists plus 38 mental health therapists to our system this year um so and of these of these people the um they're they're being put in equitably through the school systems that have the higher number of um needs but that's um numbers that we currently have okay so so the question is why still use seclusion

060rooms that was the second part of the question so which one did you we all answered the first part the mental health right i i will so pause the timer real quick and let's address now why still use seclusion rooms given all of these additional resources uh miss adams i think that you know if you've been watching the meetings over the past couple months you've seen the conversations and if we are providing options to our educators and we take an option away they have to be properly prepared for what is the backup plan and that is what is being worked on that is what's being designed um you know julie varnam and our student support team are actively developing strategies looking at training and we're working through the system um we've all seen the data

061we understand we understand that the community's concern about seclusion rooms i've also been in a school where i was volunteering in the morning and a chair got tossed across a room and i watched a classroom of children be evacuated of a second grade classroom and so i'm not saying that seclusion rooms are the end-all be-all and that it's something that we should be working to have our children be placed in but there are extreme circumstances extreme circumstances if we can get it on the front end if we are working with sel curriculum helping children learn to regulate emotions helping to come up with strategies to work through those hopefully we don't have to get to that point and that is what our student support team is working on right now thank you ma'am and this

062is an important topic i purposefully left it off the seven that i derived because i knew we were going to talk about it tonight so i'm going to pause the timer and give ample opportunity to address this uh mr boyer thank you very much and thank you for the question um you know there are obviously times you know we we live in we operate in a system with 26 000 students and 4 000 employees and mistakes get made and there are times where somebody might use seclusion inappropriately and that is not okay and that should be brought to our attention but the question is you know why do we use them there are also times to miss adam's point where kids just have an absolute break and they are a danger to themselves and i'm

063so glad i really hope that nobody has a child who has that type of episode or that type of need but it does happen it does happen in our school system and they need that tool to be able to address it until they are equipped with another tool so we're working through that process thank you miss justice right my background's different than i've actually worked with at-risk kids and that were one step away from being adjudicated because of behaviors and i've also worked in other school districts across the state i've never in my life seen so many so much use of the seclusion and in this and restraints too as in this district luckily it was brought to our attention by a parent thank you um missiles and then other people have have recognized the

064situation and keep fighting to end them uh if you've seen the stacks of kids that were i mean this sick of kids that have had to go through that in one year alone it was unnecessary because i have worked in other districts it was part of a culture that is now changing we are getting training our staff is but they're in to say i don't think ever if you have the right training and the right knowledge and you start young you don't ever need to be using seclusion rooms just restraint with properly trained people can be necessary but beyond that there is in my professional opinion having been in other situations with children a lot more severe than some of the things that you've ever experienced there are other ways to deal with this because

065in my opinion i've said it repeatedly it's a form of torture for children and it just makes makes whatever the behavior situation a heck of a lot worse sometimes lifetime okay mr wildebore if you could close us out on this topic all right uh i did work uh for one year at the alternative school in brunswick county and uh at that school uh we didn't use seclusion but we just as a board i think the majority of the board has reached out to just a wide variety of folks to hear experts i think several of us have talked to a gentleman talk spoken with a gentleman from maryland who was an advocate to get rid of seclusion rooms and he has talked about some great programs we've shared them with ms varnam to try to

066get that you know to be sped up as quickly as possible to you know ending seclusion rooms thank you sir john do we have anything that's come in online yes uh question is how will elementary principals teach your staff and parents be made aware of the newly revised short-term suspension policy 4351 before the beginning of the school year i feel like that's a question for me but communication could you repeat the question please and use it in a sentence sorry yes how will elementary principals teachers staff and parents be made aware of the newly revised short-term suspension policy 4351 before the school year miss adams please um so i will say as a parent i've already received communication from my elementary school about policy changes for this year um and came this week in an

067email format um so i can say that from a parent perspective but i also know that dr faust they have their principal leadership retreat coming up on next monday and tuesday and i believe that they will be going over a lot of policy changes updates for the year and so all of that information is going to be communicated talked about how to implement and and i trust that that will be done with fidelity okay anything to add mr scrabble another way that the principals find out about these things is we do have a principal that attends all of our policy committee meetings and um from the um principals and ap association and they have a checklist that they have developed on how to take notes and they share that out with their principal peers so

068not only will they hear it from dr faust and um and julie barnum you know in their leadership they'll get it from their peers on what they've heard um at the meetings and we'll have it post online okay miss justice um by the way it is a question for you in a sense but it's wonderful the type of communication we have now with parents today you're talking about going through the schools having the schools notify them they online repeatedly online you'll get texts you'll get emails you'll get phone calls that's what i'm assuming knowing how this works because i too i have custody of my grandchildren and it's wonderful i mean i had kids growing up during the 90s and now i've got them in school now and the ability to communicate with the public

069now is phenomenal so i am sure it will definitely be out there and mr wilbor did you have anything close i was just going to say that you know our communications department is excellent and they lead the charge in getting the word out so there you are yep oh shucks okay thanks all let's go to the side of the room ms bradford so we've had eight topics and then dorian brought up the seclusion rooms and i want to commend you for talking to us we've waited a long time to get to talk to you so we've done let's see we've done school safety we've done curriculum we've done bullying we've done the edi officer we've done the budget growth in the population calendar and school i haven't heard anybody address academics we have children that

070are failing to read and write and do math and you cannot succeed in life without reading writing and doing math the basics parents want their children to learn the basics they can't get a job unless they can fill out an application they're not going to go to college unless they can read and write they're not going to build the next rocket to some planet if they can't do math they can't be employed by me if they can't read and write and do math and yet you're not addressing the academic performance of our students over half of them can't read and write so what are you doing right now to teach our children how to read and write that we don't know about let's throw the timer out the window and go down the line miss

071justice okay bringing in curriculum go to the classrooms they are teaching them teaching them hard and working hard they need to be reinforced at home a lot of parents have that opportunity a lot of parents don't it is a challenge i'm not young i've been hearing this complaint since i started out in the work world in the 80s when i got into education i heard it even more so it's always going to be a challenge but they are teaching them and a lot of them i mean they work very very hard with their kids we're not not teaching a math look at that curriculum look at the courses that the state offers this is what the teachers you can go online and do it this is what the standards they have to teach to people

072complain about the testing i do i think there's too much testing but you can see that when you look at the test it's rigorous in the sense that it's trying to make sure or that's the attempt to see if the kids have reached those milestones in order to go forward and that they have those skills so it's being done but if nothing else and still it takes a village we need to have more quality in the schools as far as supports for our teachers unless last year during the pandemics a peripheral example two years a lot of it you needed support at home and the poor the parents were working was really hard and you can see the kids that didn't they do as well as the ones that did it really has a lot

073to do with being able for people to work with kids and here we go again we need more resources we need more teachers assistants we need more staff okay mr mcmanus any response oh yeah what miss justin said is a very accurate the reading comprehension level and the math levels are both trying to be addressed as much as humanly possible during the course of a day near software distribution of software to our students new programs teachers doing professional development with these new programs to know how to implement them and and for the success of those programs a great deal of after and before school we offered summer school this past summer we sent out letters to every i think we had a potential of 1500 somebody correct me at least students and i think only

074what 800 i don't know the numbers still they did about 800 showed up for summer school so we missed roughly half um i think we're trying to address that but in all flightness when you've got kids who regardless of the background or the reason are you or so behind and then two years of pandemic it's horrendous it's a disaster i mean and there's no magic pill there's no magic wand it's work but i do know that we are focusing on kids with their reading and their math if we can get them to come and i'll throw this in which is a bar because i was the upset potato but the 50 rule did not help that we have stopped that that is going to be readdressed you'll hear about that next meeting and so we

075are stepping up and doing the best we can the trick is to get the kids into school i don't know if running the buses has been done off and on for years across the state across the country to try to get kids into school in the summertime that's the only time we have unless somebody wants to go to year-round schools that's something that hasn't been discussed but take the kids that are so far behind and go to school year round thank you sir ed miss walker and i tag team a little bit absolutely please and again the question is and correct me if i'm wrong what are you doing right now to address academic deficiencies as a board why are so many children failing okay well first first and foremost is that we look at

076the academic performance from previous years and compare where they are and where we are in our testing right now and use that to inform our different instruction we use eureka math that the teachers have all been through training on how to do that i sat in on one of the classes for an eight hour day um learned lesson planning and and practice you know teaching those which was very good we have the same sort of program in our in our language arts a um fun fundament foundations thank you um where and i've sat in that class too where you're teaching kids back to phonics but i do want to encourage you i don't know all these things um off the top of our head but if you go to our school website um under the

077strategic plan um you'll see all the different ones and what ms walker pulled up real quickly was um the the strategic plan and we scrolled down through um what is this called the goals and strategies yeah and go down to the it's goal number one um academic performance and it talks about things like how we monitor the progress how we use plc so the teachers get together and talk with each other about best practices on how to teach um we have professional development that lines up with that um our teaching i mean our north carolina teaching survey our teaching working condition survey showed that um teachers were aware that we were trying to align pd with the things that they need and that they were happy that they got to select different things to go

078to i mean we've got we've got a reading one of our strategies increased percentage of students reading at or above a level third grade level at 90 percent and then we've got one the first one is what we just talked about earlier is increasing the number of pre-k students meaning or exceeding age expectations i mean you all you have to do is go and look at the strategic plan to look at all the different strategies that we have all gathered together school board members community members administrators everybody has put together um as goals and we have we have timelines we have people that are responsible for it they have to come to us and let us know so i mean as far as i mean in the edi realm we like i discussed earlier there

079is disproportionality there is a problem we need to address that and i think one of the strategies was pre-k uh kindergarten readiness because if you if you have students that are coming in behind but we can catch them up by the time they get to third grade they're going to be doing a lot better on third radio jesus what should we get that's what we judged on i mean great okay thank you ladies and gentlemen this is you see this is strategic plan high level each school has their own little mini strategic plan called their school improvement plan where they're actually looking at the data from their own students and looking at where we need to put into more programming or where we need to use our instructional coaches better okay miss adams i am

080a huge proponent that one day of tests does not represent what's going on in a building it just doesn't um i understand the failure numbers but there's also other data that you need to look at and that's the growth right it's not just about proficiency are we growing our students and i think part of the reason maybe we haven't talked about the failure rates in this conversation so far is that no one's asked but really that's a given that's what we do that's why we're here we're here to support the academic success of all of our students math and reading we understand that is that is the central portion of this our teachers are looking at data daily and when they're looking at that data they're figuring out okay student a is struggling in this

081competency student b is not how can i diversify my instructional strategies to reach both of these students to make sure they are continuing to grow it's happening every day in our classrooms you can see it in the reading breakouts it's it's a hundred percent of what we're focused on and so um i think that and just and i'll just throw this out here uh next year we've got an after-school partnership with the ymca i'm on the board for youth services and i can tell you that they're looking to hire educational support not just after-school camp counselors because even our after-school partners are looking to support academically it is a community issue we've got to work together we are partnering with a lot of organizations that are focused on our students and their growth and academics

082is i hundred percent assure you at the center of all of that mr wildebore one second i've seen the strategic plan i watched it all a majority of what i see in the strategic plan and a majority of what i see you do week after week and month after month is edi sel and we want our children to have good mental health but they need to read there we need to write they need to understand the civics of our country they need to know to salute the flag and the national anthem this is the only meeting i've ever been in where our kids don't stand up for the national anthem or the pledge of allegiance so we're failing our kids and you're giving me defenses but you're not telling me anything that you know you're

083just focusing all of your attention on a social emotional learning and not on the basics that parents want to see reading writing and math gentlemen if you could close us out on this topic and then we'll take other questions all right well thank you for that um as i said before i try to go to schools a lot so i'm going to just give you a just a small synopsis of some of the things some of the good things i've seen not across in every single thing but some of the best practices i have seen teachers that know their students the point where in small groups yes i love elementary schools but in small groups where they they have students in different groups and different for different subjects and those groups are changing at all

084different times so they bring those students together they work with them uh maybe a different concept they're they're doing something else raising the bar and i can't say i've seen that throughout the all everywhere but that's that's something needs to happen i know we've been through a pandemic so we're like okay we're just going to kind of stay in the same old same old mode we need to raise the bar we need to challenge our students we need to challenge our teachers and teacher assistants for their very best each and every day i know they do their very best but we need to continue to keep that up as mr mcmanus has mentioned we got rid of 50. i mean i am definitely one that would say that 50 was nothing but a a pain

085that really hurt us because it did you know giving somebody something for nothing and not challenging them and having at least an expectation and there's that big word expectation that they are going to try their best and i talked to a teacher for over an hour one day from one of the high schools that told me that we can't we can't get the students buy-in because we're giving them a 50 so they don't even need to try in you know handing glove with that is is the attendant policy at the high schools and you know not at the elementary but at the high schools where we said yeah if you come that's great if you don't well that's okay too it's not okay you need to be in school to learn you can't learn from

086home yes i'm not a big virtual learner proponent but you know to be there with the teachers to work with the teachers face to face in small groups helping those students to okay i didn't get that concept can you work with me again you know after school to whatever you need to do and that's what that teacher told me we'll do whatever it takes to get our students to success if you give us the opportunity and that's what we need to do is we need to support those teachers teacher assistants principals everyone like that so that they can have that opportunity to do their very best job with those students to educate them okay mr blur your final comment yeah thank you very much and i love uh miss craig i love your answer you

087know what are we doing we're doing eureka math what are we doing we're doing foundations what are we doing we're putting together a strategic plan that tells the people that we are elected to lead this is where our focus needs to be and i do share some of your frustration miss bradford because it's not about reading or writing only you're right we can't work for you if we can't read seventy percent of our prison population seventy percent cannot read on a third grade level and we talk about the school-to-prison pipeline but we don't often talk about that big piece of it reading is not about a score it's not about a school system getting an or a school an individual school getting an a grade or a b grade or a c grade this is

088life and death this is how our future generation is going to grow up and live but i'm going to push back a little bit and say a focus on sel and a focus on edi i can't read i can't work for you if i don't read i can't read if my neighbor's house was raided last night because there was a gun fight two blocks away i can't read if my stomach is empty and i can't keep my head up so i have to lay down so those wrap around services that we're trying to provide they are critical to exactly what you're talking about and it's not that we're not focused on one and only focused on the other it's all of it we need to do all of it but we are absolutely focused on

089academics as a board okay thank you so i'm seeing more hands go up so i'm going to kind of pivot to more of a audience centric i want to get around and i want to be equitable and so doing and i'm going to change the rules and i'm going to go three minutes again because this is like whose line is it anyway where i'm drew carey and i make up the rules as i go sir do you have a question i do well thank you it speaks well of the the board that you're willing to have the town hall meeting here tonight my my basic concern is safety of the children and i live in cayley's cove which is directly across from myrtle grove middle school development that's new it's on piner road very busy

090road as most of you most of you know and the only markings that we have to guarantee some safety is two signs that say a school zone a few hundred yards on both sides of it there speed limit is 45 through that whole area during the school year it drops down to and i've been pursuing this issue you know since the since the winter time and first speaking with the uh with d.o.t uh mr hancock who was uh who was there who actually has a son that attends there so he was very sympathetic to my concerns that i that i had and and to illustrate what's going on is for for over two years i saw a father you know march his kids over to the school back and forth you know can i say

091dodging traffic you know making sure what was you know what was happening and it's going to continue it's a young it's a young development they're much younger than i am i'll say there and i do have a grandson though that's uh nine years old living with us so he would have the possibility of uh of attending there as as well and so that's that's a concern that uh that i've had and uh i've been told that uh that they couldn't reduce the speed limit mr hancock said that the it didn't merit reducing the speed limit you know through that point in time um and i know that uh mr wildebore and i have had some conversations about it and he's been he's been with me on this issue for several several months now and so

092we were told we could not have a crosswalk because of the logistics of building a crosswalk because there's no sidewalk that's in place where you could have that there the only thing that comes to mind for me is to have the flashing lights that are on the stop sign indicating that school is in session speed limit drops down to 35 and have it there any so i open that up if you have you know further thoughts about what we can do to guarantee a more safe environment there and let me add that also i learned from mr wildebore a few days ago that that mr anderson said that he would at least have a school bus that would pull into our development take the kids across the street to get there but uh you know

093that's that's that's an effort and then to be appreciated that they did that but i open it up to get your uh your very insightful thoughts that you might have and your position that you're you're doing here guaranteeing the kids a good run okay thank you sir ms crable please so um that is a dilemma that we have faced at many of our schools you know as far as that goes and um unfortunately our hands are tied on some of these issues but i'm glad that mr wildebore pointed you to eddie anderson because the school board doesn't really handle those kind of issues you know that is what his job and we would work with um the safety department at here at the school system you know mr locklear would be would go out and

094do that we can request traffic studies um of our county commissioners um our county um um road management group um getting lights in even at laney high school when we have a lot of when my son went there it took a while to get stop lights where you need them so it is it is a a more broad effort than than what this board can handle the um but eddie anderson is the right person to do um our you know glenn locklear our safety person um the school can and um the school can work on protocols you know with that we can work on you know trying to get the school zone you know the the speed limit down in school zones to make that happen so it's not it's not what you want to

095hear and it's not what i want to hear but it's a long drawn out process that we have to go to the d.o.t because they're not our roads mr mcmanus did you have comment the hurdles with the city the county and state are obviously overbearing uh if i understand correctly i think mr locklear retired and mr silverstein at the back is our new safety director so don't you turn on look at that gentleman right there and he'll raise his hand and i think he'll do everything humanly possible to address what you said it may not be able to do anything but i know he will try and that's part of his responsibility oh yeah that was gonna be my follow-up to you have you spoken to dft at all as we said what he said

096and and they've done a study like a road study on speeding and uh i guess usually what happens is they do the traffic study but and they also see if there are any accidents that have happened along that stretch i like the idea of maybe reducing the speed limit but i don't know if that's a separate study yeah we're not allowed to do that [Music] there's nothing quite like god on earth like the north carolina department of transportation um it is a it is a tough hill to climb but um i will certainly i'll reach out um i'll cur i'll encourage our county commissioners to do the same because i do share your concerns with with piner road so thank you let's take one more from in here let me get one from the middle

097and i see i see everyone will get to you i promise hello everyone um with the recent reinstatement of mask mandates in our friends in california um i guess my question is for you after we know the results of masking our kids and locking down for two years and the state of our academics and mental health what is your intention if it comes over this way are we masking our kids again are we locking down let me go mr wildebore first well as i have been throughout the time i would i would be against masking i don't see everything i've seen shows that masking especially the regular cloth mask is about 25 20 the health department if you remember i asked that exact question they said at best they've seen 20 effective so i can't

098see any positive to it as far as locking down we wouldn't be locked down you know that might be a county commissioner thing we that's not our in our purview but uh that would be my stance on it okay ms crabill we have not had any conversations as a board about that in fact i was really surprised when i saw the level of the number of questions about masks um on the list because we have not talked about it um even though the the numbers are um are have risen a little bit into the medium risk factor you know we haven't even talked about that but you know any student any teacher any community member any time in our school is welcome to wear a mask if they so choose but that is not on

099our radar miss walker i would say um i know typically we have been paying attention to what the state state federal level what they do they've just retired the strong the toolkit yeah so i don't see an indication from our state government to really kind of um i guess put us back in the position where we have to vote on mass all the time i look at it like it's like this like when we first started it was different it was people didn't know what was going on and a lot of people were getting sick and dying but like i and you know unless it's some kind of uh i mean i'd have to look at the data but unless there's some kind of really terrible variant that comes it just wipes everyone out i

100don't i don't see us doing it um at least i'm gonna speak for me okay mr boyer yeah i don't ever foresee uh supporting a lockdown um i think people know where i stand and i was anxious to get back um but uh with regards to masks as ms walker said i mean i can't i don't see a scenario or that's anywhere close that would have to be something pretty extreme for me to uh to reconsider okay any other comments on this question miss justice well i think mrs welcome mentioned it we know so much more now we've got the vaccinations we've got the boosters we just know so much more and there's nothing coming from the state that we have any concern with so at this point after what we've been through i think

101we need to be looking forward to what the future lies and not be focused on the past uh we'll deal with that when that happens but right now we need to focus on the kids academics and what we're trying to do that's really what makes the most important thing to i think all of us okay let me come back around though because i want to give equitable opportunity for everyone if we could if we could and with that john let's hit someone from online this question is what data is the district using to justify increasing sros in schools especially since the safe school grant data is missing good point all right mr scrabble as i mentioned in my first thing is we are using um there is no data that says you know x number

102of incidents in your school we're going to you know ramp up our sro numbers we are using sros to help us be intentional about having extra people in the building um to help us with um you know just in the building that they're not there to be armed guards and do patrols they're there to be um supportive um measures um in our school system um they they would respond if um we had something came in let's say on our say something app and it was triaged from the center that we need to reach a law enforcement but there is no data that suggests and and a right a student to sro ratio okay mr boyer yeah thank you two quick data points uh you know sandy hook and vivaldi i want a police officer in

103every single elementary school i think that's important um put to ms crabill's point and i think this is also an important point you know we want them there for the extreme but we need them there as well for community enhancement we talk about community policing we talk about a different way of policing and it really starts with making sure that our youngest citizens are building that relationship and having the respect for law enforcement and letting our law enforcement understand the needs of our community okay miss justice there's a lot of different perspectives it's obvious people are seeing it from certain perspectives i've evolved over the years i started working with sros back in the 1990s i've worked in elementary schools middle schools and high schools with sros i think it's a very valid concern especially

104with the younger kids that that the sros to some to some groups are not that comforting and even knowing them on campus without because i don't think a lot of them has necessary training i do believe they need the necessary training are necessarily in in the schools making the children's families lives better i mean it's just a fact i i know this from talking to parents uh in certain you know in communities that aren't as as normal as not normal that people are used to observing in general there's a lot of low-income communities that have an awful lot of violence and the kids do get traumatized when they see the sros in the school so if we're going to do that we need to be very aware of that and have these sros be very

105well trained to understand the kind of perception that children have and they certainly don't need to be talking to kids about any kind of situation at home whereas they can get information in involving law enforcement outside of campus this if they're going to be in there they need to be doing it especially with elementary schools in a very special way because it isn't all cut and dry and say there's just good guys and bad guys there's a lot of shades of grey and uh i have evolved i do believe now from reality that kids do get traumatized some kids in some certain schools for sure get traumatized when they see law enforcement in the schools and i know also from speaking to the families that the law enforcement has a time inquired about their relatives

106and that's not a necessarily healthy thing for a kid to be dealing with thank you ms joseph appreciate it i'm going to put a pin in this one just in the interest of getting to other questions and if we have time similar to some of the questions we'll come back and go back here in the back yeah good evening i want to circle back around to the seclusion rooms just a couple of things first of all i think mr buller said 70 percent of the people in our prisons cannot read i don't know the exact numbers peter could probably tell us uh but there's a large percentage of those people in our prisons who were secluded as small children in elementary school secondly this was brought up at the board meeting last week about getting

107so that we are not using the seclusion rooms by the beginning of next school year i want to know why you can't set a timeline it was specifically said at the board meeting oh we can't set a timeline why not mr mcmanus fair question dr varum is responsible for as she was with reducing the suspensions of under eight with taking the time to meet the assurance of people's understanding everybody needs to hear the same thing at the same time that usually rather than everybody going out and having ten meetings and they all say something different her goal is to meet and as she's already started with every administration in the individual schools and then with the staff maybe sometime collectively to talk about how we are going to deal with the reduction and seclude and

108what we will do but that's going to take her time if you just cut it off then you're going to have all types of problems because there are no alternatives there are no agreed alternatives everyone doesn't know the limitations of what they should be doing and what they're not what's recommended so her her her whole purpose is to meet with all of the faculty all the administration and once she's done that then it comes back to the board for us discussing and i might add it's already been reduced from her work done already considerably [Music] other thoughts misjustice and it will continue to be reduced considerably and my goal and i think most of the other people's goal though is not set in stone apparently if some people are saying it's not i i would

109like to as a board make the decision to do it in a 23-24 school year i think we've discussed that a lot and that is that that's the way the training is heading in all the schools that that is an issue so there is a set date it's just you can't a lot of things you can't set in stone but that's what my goal is miss craig final comment i just wanted to sort of pull together what miss justice and mr mcmanus said the reason that we're not setting a time right timeline right now is because we value the input tremendously of the teachers and the principals at the schools and miss barnum has asked that she has the opportunity to do professional development with them get their input um and allow them to work

110on their school improvement plans which aren't due until october so that because we value the input of of our staff is why we're not jumping the gun that's why i'm not jumping the gun on setting a date thanks all okay let's go back to the audience good evening and thank you for having us tonight my question is regarding infrastructure particularly at pine valley elementary school that building was built in the 1950s and is a sitting duck for a school shooter i say that in part because the gym is outside kids go from room to room outside an sro cameras are nice helpful but the infrastructure built is not there i know that the bond failed because of cost of you know supply chain all of that we spent like a hundred thousand dollars to get

111it looked at and what could be done it was going to be on the bond the state didn't do that what are our next steps for this because again it's a really problematic layout for it to be a safe environment for violence at that school thank you miss adams would you like to start with that one sure um i share your concerns and if you look at our schools anything that was built post columbine looks very different right the campus school was very popular pre-columbine as we look at the pine valley upgrades and the new building that's going to be built they presented plans six months ago right and it would have a singular entrance however it's a u-shape so they are looking at the safety options because that was one of my questions because

112the walls that they were looking at were it looks like a lot of glass and so my question was is this going to be a safe situation with school shooting in mind and they said that due to the way the building would be positioned due to the way that the the bushes are around the property and the fence that would be up on the property it would be a safer environment when that is going to happen i'm not sure where we're at right now okay miss walker well i um i guess two thoughts with uvalde i think it's very fresh on our minds like the worry about it um and i've i listened to the news last night and saw the very tearful conversations that were having i know after that happened that we were

113informed that they were the the sheriff's department is going to go to each school and look at it look at each school and maybe um figure out how we can make them safer or an apparent actually came to me also um with worry over it because you know we had some incidents last year where you know there wasn't a place for there weren't plans for place people for kids to go should there be an issue i know with hanover we had the shooting and then hogart i think we had a firecracker incident i think i think it's important that we probably do at some point you know work on this discussion and look at each school and see you know because it would be great if we could have pine valley built tomorrow but we're

114not going to be able to so i think it's a good idea for us to look at the plans for each school okay let's bring us home quickly miss justice wow when the hospital was sold the main selling point was the schools it's in the signed document signed by our county commissioner's chair and the people that bought the hospital that that money could be going to facilities number that was the number one use i have been told repeatedly not to talk about it i've been told repeatedly no that money is not supposed to be there but it was in the sales document okay 300 million is sitting there right now they use some of it because of what happened at new hanover we need to get and it don't it takes a super majority four

115out of five to release that money but we can have those new hanovers the facilities the the upgrade on that what's going on in pi valley i think it's mary c williams too whatever the other school is this is a need now this is a danger to our kids and for people not to recognize that that was promised and it's sitting there in a bank it needs to be used now and we need to be talking about it i know they get sick of hearing me say it but i'm just going to keep saying plus it's sitting there all right i'm going to move on to the next question thank you miss justice and we'll take one from there but let me see a show of hands if you have one in the queue and

116i'll come around so i'll go one two three okay so john please this question is when will the district publicly report out-of-school and in-school suspension data during the 2022-23 school year the 20 what school year this year 22 23 that's next year this one coming up we can't do it no let's assume that they meant they mentioned they meant what we just did correct yeah i hope so please we can um we can put that on the agenda oh i'm looking right at you like you asked the question um we can put that on the agenda you know any time and so that is something that uh ms farnham has committed to reporting with us quarterly um and she has not missed a date yet so um we're we're just waiting for you know end

117of year data you know to come in so that's an easy okay any other comments on that one all right mr welch i'll come to you thank you this would be a another follow-up to out-of-school suspensions um how long will the district continue to support the schools that were involved in this past year's behavior leadership plc mr boyer yeah like so much i think it that timeline uh is going to be dictated by the needs of the individual schools there's no cut off date there's no it's just as the schools need support they're going to have it from our central office staff and our administration yeah i was just wanting to piggyback on that is that we are not we are not doing programs with a start in stock i mean this is a lifestyle

118change it's like we're not going on a diet you know we are changing how we eat um we're not restricting ourselves so there is no intention of um as far as i know the schools that are are getting that that that extra training and extra support will continue to ask for it and the best thing about what they're doing is they're sharing their story and they're bringing that to other schools so there is no there is no plan to cut them loose you know the we're going to continue to support them and bring more into the fold mr wildeboard and i remember way back when when i started teaching it was like every two years we started something and we dropped it we started and we dropped it and nothing ever went anywhere so i

119think it's real important we do continue a good program like this one and support it you know because i think it's the best thing for our students so we just need to continue to support our students who support the schools so that they can you know as i said before if a student's not in the classroom they're not going to learn so let's keep them in the classroom let's keep him learning any closing comments on this topic or this question okay i'm sorry i'm used to holding hi everybody um good to see y'all tonight it's nice to have this conversation finally after so long um we've been to the meetings and we've heard about this pornographic material in the schools and you've heard the parents concerns for months on end now and yes our sheriff

120went to the d.a and had him review one of the north carolina general statutes which was 1419.15 and he indicated in that that there was some exemption from being personally liable for harming the children because if you were an employee of the school you were exempt if you were doing a duty of your employment but there are federal laws as well in the u.s code section 18 that deal with obscene materials to minors which supersede that i guess my question is we haven't heard any feedback from this board regarding the pornographic materials we know we're not allowed to read or reiterate them to you because they are lewd and you know pretty offensive does this board support that material in our school libraries miss justice i believe in the first amendment i believe in our

121constitution i also know that these most of the children out here have this in their hands they can get just about anything and so to keep you know directing the situations to schools maybe you should be talking about it in your home and uh teachers don't sit in front of classrooms and read pornographic material to students there are permission slips that are sent home if there's books that are have controversial material and parents have to you know they have the option of bowing out if they want to and once more you can call the teachers if you're concerned we're we are educating our children this is 2022. the best way to have a child read something if you don't want them to is to tell them that and then suddenly they're going to be running

122around looking for it okay i think we're doing a really good job we have programs in place if parents have concerns and they're working well that's honestly this is something that i've been in schools for 20 30 years there periodically it pops up and it seems to pop up mostly around election cycles okay hands mrs i would just like to say that um that this this board um i think i can speak for us that we don't endorse pornographic materials in our school system and we do have um which we explained at a board meeting um a system for how to report materials that you don't like or that you think are questionable the the principal you know um you submitted to the principal the principal looks at it um you can appeal it can

123go to the school system the school system you know we'll look at that um i have been talking with some principals um around you know over the summer about how many people have filed reports and there have not been that many um i just was at a school today um doing you know parent drop off and they were talking to me about because i do volunteer in their library and they have a a flag system if a parent says i don't want my child reading judy b jones which i couldn't believe i heard that that's on the flag list but they have it flagged on your name so there are a lot of different ways to do that but also to your point about um the against federal rules so um i there have wake

124county had this exact same thing happen in their county that we had happen in our county their d.a ruled the exact same with that and it's not all school employees but school librarians in particular are the ones who are protected by that first amendment right um to do that so i just wanted you to know and then and um mr david and the the d.a um i spoke with them as what in wake county is there has been no case law where this has ever been brought forward as a lawsuit and nobody has ever been found guilty of putting pornographic materials um in a school school librarian so there is no case law and it's being handled the same across our state okay and so this is a fairly not new topic but this is

125a topic and it is fairly one of the hotter ones i want to do away with the timer a second give ample opportunity for this board to express what they need to mr blair thank you thank you miss crabal i definitely do not support pornographic materials in our school system in 1996 the supreme court heard a case brought by the aclu there was a public library that had pornographic materials and the justice in that case said you know i don't know exactly what porn is but i know it when i see it and there are plenty of times where a book for a high schooler could have a sexually explicit scene in it not be pornographic and also be a valuable learning tool that can happen uh so no i mean magazines videos no i

126don't support i don't think anybody supports having something like that in our school system somebody found something like that in our school system i urge them to get it out immediately call somebody let us know about it but you know pulling a passage out of a book i mean without context i i trust our administrators and our librarians to put in appropriate material mr waterboard well um again i guess from an elementary uh perspective we you know had that come up to to to me where somebody would say there's a questionable book and the thing i always go back to teachers is there not another way to teach this besides this book if it is questionable if there's a if there's a question after the problem and one thing i i've heard that you know

127one school that this one is is banned we have a concern at this high school but it's in two other high schools well i think we need to have communication one of the things i think we really need to focus on throughout the county is communication so that you know it is shared between one high school librarian to another high school librarian that hey just let you know fyi this was a concern at our high sc our library i am definitely a proponent of the first amendment but again we also have to protect our children mr mcmanus bring us home i think rather than taking a the divide which we obviously are in about so many things in this country and in each of the school districts in our state and country my understanding is

128that a parent can notify the principal if they do not want their child engaged in a particular class maybe that's something dealing with sex and or and or a book and to me that resolves the problem if the parent reports to the principal of then i want my child involved in this particular book or this particular class then the principal will help have that child play somewhere else because i don't think we'll ever win an argument or we will discuss it who's going to how do you judge this book i mean everybody's all over the place so there's a we have something in place to deal with that or you have to identify the principal in your child's not be responsible to read that book and or be in that class okay thank you all

129come here hello i have two children in new hanover county schools one is at mary c williams and the other is at ashley i have not received any communications about changes in school policies for mary c williams i did get one from ashley about the new one-to-one computer program and i was wondering if there's a way for children to opt out of that program entirely my son has some special needs and he has done terribly in online learning computers do not help him learn and he will not benefit from this program and i also wanted to point out in the network etiquette section it says while each user has the right to free speech all are expected to abide by new hanover county board of education acceptable code of conduct and then there's about 12

130bullet points restricting free speech so the specific question is can they opt out of the okay miss adams so it's my understanding with the one-to-one it's not just about doing classwork it's not about necessarily virtual learning a lot of what is happening in the classrooms it's for testing purposes and having access to the devices it's more than just a virtual remote option um so i'm not an expert on the opt out option but what i do understand about this is that there are many purposes for what the device can be utilized for if the concern is you know your son doesn't learn well in that remote environment that's definitely a conversation to have with your school and and share those concerns with them and they can talk through the specifics of the program and how

131that device is going to be best used for your child this year okay uh mr whatever please i would uh and also recommend that you maybe call the principal and sit down with mr mccarty and just explain your concerns um because you know i think that he would definitely be willing to work with you miss justice i just wanted to say something about the first amendment due to the fact i taught civics for years and my kids would bring that up all the time why does it say this and it doesn't say that uh the first amendment the reason i said that was because ben david he's more than an expert and you know his colleagues they've determined in fact it's been nationally determined how that applies to the situation in schools there's times where

132first amendment has also been decided like one of those 12 bullet points is probably dress code or possibly about language there are times when it doesn't apply to schools because of safety reasons so that's not a simple question to answer but the reason i made that statement the reason it applies to libraries because that is that is set legal precedent that is not unless something changes that's the way it is and so it's called you know due to the first amendment that's why that statement applies okay thank you and miss craig we'll bring you something um i um mary c william parent i didn't catch your name so i apologize for that um the um not all principals have sent out theirs i mean your school did but not all schools have done that yet

133um miss adams did um refer to the fact that the teachers are the principals are having a leadership retreat um monday and tuesday where they're going to be you know networking with each other and talking about you know what kinds of things are going to go out um and in what format the communications department we'll be helping with a lot of that so don't don't worry right this minute but it is school is a month away um so you should be getting some information you know from your schools shortly thank you all let's take one from john i'll come back to you who else is in the queue okay so you then you then three okay go ahead john so much focus has been placed on underperforming students can you can you discuss plans for

134students who are succeeding academically that's great that that speaks to our aig program that we all already you know gave comments about is that um so the again to what ms adams was talking about we're talking about growth and so there are um teachers um are skilled and they get um professional development on how to differentiate you know in their classrooms their school improvement plans write down how they best address their their aig learners in their school whether it's a push-in a pull-out um a tag team approach so um everybody you know gets those services um because growth is what's the most important to us okay miss adams dr faust has said many times it's it's not just about growth for our low-performing students a high-performing school could be an a plus school but did

135they grow and and that is a focal point for him and he wants to make sure that even if it's a if it's a low performing school or a high performing school we want to see movement we want to see that our students are being challenged i think that's reflected in the increasing numbers in our college and career promise programs we have a lot of students that are moving into dual enrollment options we have yes the aig programs but it's not you know we've got honors programs as well but it's also if you're a high performing student in a general class the expectation is that you are going to grow and we're going to push you to excellence thank you mr blair yeah two quick things if cape fear community college were an area high

136school it would be the largest high school in new hanover county that's how many people are taking advantage advantage of college and career promise we also have you know programs we have wex wilmington early college high school and isaac bair but i think it's important to note that new hanover county is unique in its aig program a lot of our locally funded positions are aig positions because this community has said with one voice we want to make sure that we are servicing not only the low performing but also the high performing students and our county has committed uh to that okay miss walker um in this county i know new hampshire as so county schools there are a lot of opportunities for for students that feel that they're advanced or that they want to push

137themselves academically or i guess in cte programs the opportunity is there my daughter graduated three semesters without a college credit if if the student wants it and the student wants to figure out which path they want to take i'm the opportunities are there and i just think that you know if they need help figuring out where to get that information email the principal email i mean what's that counselor yes sorry about that um and i i think that um the student will find what they need thank you so we're coming up we're rounding this event out so anita and the board members i'm going to ask let's go to two minutes let's get concise let's make sure we get everybody's questions in um and we'll kind of tighten it up a bit and i was

138coming where was i coming how are you um first i would ask that everyone go to the north carolina report card and look at what it says about our school system and our individual schools i also want to just point out one thing and raise ask the question and i'm going to take one item and that's the north carolina math one performance and it says that only and reports that only 90 percent of well it reports 90 90 of our students are not ready to use the knowledge that they had if they were going to leave school and have any kind of career career or college and i'm going to report that that's are not prepared so only 10 of all the students that took north carolina math one would have been prepared to leave

139our school system and have a career a college and i think that when we have a statistic like that we haven't pandemic level issue in our school system and i think it re requires us to have a wall room like effort to bring about change just as if we know we have a school that have nine percent proficiency in reading we should have failures not an option for us and i would like to know how do we move forward from where we are as a school system to rethink what we're doing and make sure that we are serving our children well we all can look at the data and where we are is the pandemic level as at a pandemic level failure for some of our students the ones at the top and the ones

140at the bottom all right rapid fire here we go miss craig i don't have the statistics committed to memory but dr faust did if anybody remembers he did send this information about math one in one of our thursday packets and i just can't remember i know it's a focus area that he's very aware we had math camps this summer at the middle school and the high school level we had students that we had more students that wanted to come to that than we had space for so it is something that we are identifying with we are looking at in the middle school level making sure that the kids are ready to come in and succeed with math one and looking at options such as if you do not pass math one in the first semester

141and we immediately try and get you into math one the second semester so that you are ready to do so there i can't commit all the strategies but if you want to know more i would email dr patrice faison and she can give you more of the details about math one but it is something that is on our radar thank you for noticing that one of the things they did is up in the summer they had after school programs so they were in the moment of preventing failure and to that point we do have after-school tutoring um and during the school time tutoring in their special protected times that they've set aside for tutoring okay uh and uh miss justice last 45 seconds a couple things uh we've got a new program we're doing district

142wide now that we just started i believe it was last year called a recommend from the reports i'm hearing is a lot more effective as far as lower grades are teaching the fundamental basics that you're going to need so by the time you get to the middle school in the high school you won't be this failure rate another thing is i totally agree about the after school and even morning programs we used to have them here during the 90s we talked about this i don't know where they went but those you know that's something that as the future as a board progresses we need to look at instead of these cobbled all these different programs are cobbled together we need something district-wide in my opinion and i've heard it from the community too district-wide for

143multiple reasons both in the morning and night and that's one of the areas they could focus on is reading and math in those programs in a way that's constructed because there's also ways that don't work you know that thank you ms justice thank you guys so much i love this conversation about um about academics because academics and academic performance are a symptom of health or illness a kid who is healthy a kid who is thriving has the opportunity to self-actualize has the opportunity to do better with his life or her life and so when i think about who is failing i think it's very common to expect and reasonably so predictably that those children are black brown and or poor and so when we look at this data we look at the data we know

144who's failing what are we going to do to rectify that situation and this is why i believe an edi worked because we're not just training pupils we're training people and until we understand the people we can't we can't get the end result so two questions number one i think it would be awesome if we had more transparency in data and that we have reported more regularly even quarterly as to what our numbers look like in our school system academically and otherwise discretionary discipline and i think another opportunity that we would have is what are we doing uh what's the process right now to hire another edi position because that's position's not just about touchy-feely kumbaya that's about how do we make these how do we bridge this achievement gap that is undeniably there ms crabble

145okay the um so a couple things there um we do have um each school you know has protected groups at their school and and that's part of their school school improvement plan is to look at the data on you know girls versus boys you know minority versus not um to look at that and there is a report called a failure report and again i'm sorry that i don't know the frequency that that comes out but um dr faust and his team you know do have this report on a regular basis so they're not waiting until the end of the semester to see who's failing they're looking to see who needs to to do that all along um with that and one thing we did find that was um a little disturbing that after the pandemic

146we had even high performing students who were failing um because they were just so stressed out they were so anxious um and so this is not that you know anxiety and you know coping that is not a black brown you know poor issue it's an everybody issue um so we are looking at that and that's what you know to your point about um using you know using our what's available to us and then we are in the process of interviewing for the um chief equity officer the we just haven't found the candidate that fits well in our system ms adams and i just want to bring that back to rebecca that the subgroups dr faust has been pulling out that information and data for us the last couple times that he has been reporting out

147we are seeing it by racial subgroups as well and so as far as transparency i think we're getting a lot better and so being able to identify where we have those gaps is going to be able to help us support those students better but again going back to the conversation about how are we supporting our high achievers as well if we can see that we have high achievers that aren't growing we can support that too but again it's meeting our children where they are and understanding their circumstances and doing the best that we can for each individual child okay and what will likely be our last question good evening board my question is well two questions are why are pornographic and sex books being allowed in our public schools and what person or where people

148approve of this material to be put to our public schools and i also want to point out that there is the website called and on this website people can find the pornograph books that they have put into our public schools could mr jeter repeat the first part of that question maybe speak a little more slowly mr jeter webb why why are pornographic books like in excuse me why are pornographic six books being allowed in our public schools so so we've already addressed this somewhat uh yeah let's let's hit it again to mr bill mr blower yeah again i just i reject the premise i mean um pornography is very hard to define i mean some people might think michelangelo's david is pornography or that you know playboy is not that that's art i mean it's

149very hard to define so i don't really grant your premise but this is an important point as well the board of education does not decide what goes into a library that's that's a management decision this is a governance team and so i think there's a bit of a misconception about how books get placed where again i choose to trust the administrators in these buildings and i trust the community to let us know if administrators are putting things in there that are not appropriate miss justice yes of the things that i'm noticing on is is the people a couple of people have come in later uh and we did mr jeter webb we did answer that question earlier that's what they said i'm sorry you weren't able to be here to to hear it so in

150the future if we're going to do something like this we need to make it more accessible to the people in the community maybe hold it from 6 30 to 8 30 or something along those lines because as i said i've heard so many people that wanted to come i'm just bringing that up and thank you for the question in the sense that you needed to ask it and unfortunately you weren't here when it was answered earlier okay okay i'm going to call an audible and allow similar to what we did at the beginning a minute for any last-minute comments from board members to wrap us up and then madam chair i'll turn it back over to you uh but in the same order miss justice t take a minute to bring us home if you

151have anything you'd like to say well i could complain about the order but that's okay i mean you know you can you can use the form on the link here me complain uh really thank you everybody that's listening online people that did come out tonight um this was a good conversation it was good listening to the concerns about the public and believe me we are going to i know that i'm going to be taking them into consideration and looking into them more and in the future as i said i would like to be able to see more input from the public we are doing our employees are working really really hard for our schools and we have some of the best tools in the world what we need is more community and parent support and

152that shows that there's people here that are concerned and we also need the resources coming from the authorities and it comes from the federal state and local government and so the same parents that we need to be supporting the schools please push those representatives to to support our schools because i mean literally we're something like 48th in the state north carolina is as far as resources for our kids and there's kids all over this country getting so much better we we need to be supporting our kids that way too thank you miss justice mr mcmanus i think the pandemic was the most destructive event in our lifetime particularly in the educational arena there was no rubric to deal with the pandemic it never happened before so we couldn't call anybody or ask there's no rubric

153how do we catch kids up it's realism and is idealism and realistically we have kids who come into our schools in kindergarten that are a year behind other other kindergartners with regards to color social skills where their parents work what's their name what's your address we have kids who because you may be thinking about we talk about the kids they're also the most successful as a rule they all drop down notch or two or three mentally and academically why because virtual does nothing for in my opinion professional and personal for the vast majority of human beings unless you're very self-controlled and have a helicopter parent so the reality is how are we going to catch up now three two and three years behind our teachers are trying all right miss walker okay thank you i

154i i think tonight was really good i'm hoping the next town hall is even better and i i like the format because it's very difficult for us as a board to um not be able to respond and that's often time what happens in our regular board meetings we cannot respond it's part of our policy not to um and so these opportunities are really great i will say mr mcmana said the pandemic has been very hard on everybody and especially students and staff and and school board members because no one ever said it was going to be like this when we got here academics are super important and i hope we catch up with that but especially we need we do need to focus on mental health issues as well because i i mean i hear

155that from every everywhere i mean out in society you know with people i know anyway that's the most important thing right now and um in some ways they're equally as important at least i feel that anyway um almost out of time anyway i i look forward to the opportunity to do this again thank you ma'am ms grabel yes so first of all i want to say thank you all who who are attending here with us in person and for those of you who are on tv watching us and those of you who will watch us later um thank you to our sro team who is here with us every month twice a month um every meeting that we have to make sure that everybody fears feels comfortable and feels safe in our building thank you

156to our teachers and our principals and our staff for everything that you do every day and for constantly being you know very flexible um also too i wanted to yeah and thank you all for having grace on this board that we are no different than you in managing our families managing our work um managing our lives in this unusual place we're in and i would like to leave you with this quote um that i saw um if you focus on the hurt and the negative you will continue to suffer if you focus on the lesson and the positive you will continue to grow and that's where i see us as a board going that's where i see us as a district going so um thank you again and keep the feedback coming sometimes it's not

157pleasant but we need to hear it and we need to address the issues so thank you thank you miss adams i just want to echo some of what has been shared thank you for being here tonight um it's really great to be in this venue and to be able to hear directly from you to their point call of the audience is hard you get to come up here and yell at us sometimes say whatever you want sometimes and that's hard because we want to respond and i just want to encourage you that just because we can't engage in that moment doesn't mean that we won't engage outside so please feel free send us emails we do our best to get back to those and and say i'd really like to have a conversation about this

158because if i see an email that says that i'm going to pick up the phone i'm going to ask if you want to grab coffee so i encourage you to engage share your concerns this is how we find out about what you care about and so this has been really great i appreciate everyone's questions this evening and thank you for being here both at home and here in the boe center all right mr wildebore and i'll echo what everyone said first of all i'd like to thank the fellow board members you know i had this idea i think it's a great one uh it it's last time was didn't go very well but this time i think it was a lot better next time might even be better and i do appreciate i've been taking

159notes you know some of the topics we've looked at heavily our safety mental health seclusion rooms academics so don't please understand that when when you even when you come up in a regular call to audience we do listen we you know we take notes we try to talk about we talk about it uh at other times you know um and i think it is important i think what you say is important you are stakeholders the students are our stakeholders you are stakeholders and i i personally feel it's all about the students so i and i i think you know we all feel that way we it's all about the students what is the best for all for our students um you know so we will continue to try to help and and you know make

160things better for our students because the teachers want it to be the best they possibly can be so do the administrators and so do we thank you sir and mr boiler thank you very much and thank you again to my fellow board members mr baltimore this was a very good idea so i give you credit so thank you for suggesting it and uh you know we have seen a lot of change i think over the last uh four years now on the board and you know change is stressful change is really hard but i think what you see tonight is you know the realization of what we had thought about and envisioned a dynamic where this is possible and it's because of some of the the new staff that have come in the communications team

161this event would not have been possible when i came on the board it just would not have so i'm very grateful to you you know to the community thank you guys so much for being here thank you if you're watching on tv i know i hear a lot you know we've been complaining for x and the board doesn't listen please understand when we can't give you what you want as an individual it's because we're trying to balance the needs of 30 000 other people so thank you guys very much for your patience and your understanding all right thank you to the members of the board members of the audience thank you tonight for your professionalism and your grace as we work through this please send feedback i'll read every bit of it we laughed we

162cried we got through it i think it was a good thing and we'll make it better with that madam chair i'll turn it back over to you okay so um the um next on our agenda is adjournment do i hear a motion to adjourn moved is there a second answer okay all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed okay we are adjourned thank you for coming