NHCS Board of Education Regular Board Meeting | July 12, 2022

001of the board of education is called to order mr clark will you please call the roll miss justice mr mcmanus here miss walker here miss craybill here miss adams here mr wildebore present mr bullier here so welcome to the new hanover county board of education's july regular board meeting thank you all for joining us in person and in the remote viewing audience we value and appreciate your interest your participation your advocacy on behalf of all the students and staff in new hanover county schools i hope you have noticed as you um at the board of education recently approved rules of decorum posted on the call to the audience page on the front door of the boe center at the sign in table at the table in the back where the agendas are um and an

002excerpt exerted on the screen now so do i have a he can go ahead and put that up um but i know you all can read but i hope that you will follow along because since there were a few changes and additions to what i have been announcing every meeting since my first one in january i'd like to call your attention to them and read them out loud the call to the audience rules will be called will be described when we get to that part of the agenda um it should be in um are you looking for it okay it is i'm sorry it is um if you look at call to the audience that's where um a handout is i reorganized it just a little bit for easier posting but that's where it is

003okay so first respectful behavior please silence all cell phones during the meeting remain respectful and courteous to all in attendance this includes the board of education members and the new hanover county school staff refrain from using language that is lewd or obscene shouting calling out and or making disruptive noises during the board meeting is prohibited approaching the diocese without invitation by anyone other than staff is prohibited use of signs at board meetings signs are permitted but can only be raised to accompany a speaker during his or her allotted call to the audience speaking time signs cannot be raised in obstruction to the views of members in the audience or as a disruption to board proceedings signs cannot contain lewd or obscene wording or images these rules of decorum are not an exhaustive list and may

004be revised as needed they apply there you go they apply to all official meetings that are conducted by the new hanover county board of education all attendees at board meetings are must abide by these rules of decorum disrupting or disturbing meetings and or engaging in threatening behavior may result in consequences including but not limited to removal from board meetings and in the case of threatening or severely disruptive behavior being trespassed from new hanover county board of education disruptions to our meeting will not be tolerated just as they are not tolerated at any other local governmental body meeting where there are no listed rules of decorum just rather common courtesy and common and professional uh professional courtesy that said her general statute 143-318-17 people who are disrupting the meeting will be asked to leave if this

005happens these those people can view the remainder of the meeting via live stream on new hanover county schools tv and on new hanover county schools youtube channel i ask on behalf of the board that each of us do our part to contribute to a successful and non-stressful meeting by treating each other with dignity and respect throughout the meeting no matter what our thoughts and feelings are about an issue or about a particular person or group so that the board can remain focused on completing the governance work necessary for our students staff and schools to be successful on the agenda you please note that the estimate and i'm done with those you don't have to keep scrolling thank you on the agenda you will note the estimated times for each topic as a courtesy to and

006respect for the time of my fellow board members the new hanover county school staff and to the community at large i intend to stick as closely as possible to those estimated times to keep discussion focused and on point you can watch the countdown clock on the corner at the upper right hand corner of the large screens to see how much time we have left to discuss each item okay so thank you for listening and thank you for indulging i won't read those um every single meeting but since they were new i wanted to make sure that everyone got them moving now into board business is there a motion to accept the agenda is there a second second um all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay the emotion is approved next on our agenda

007is our invocation i'd like to call to the front the honorable james h faison iii fifth district court judge and pastor of burj chapel missionary baptist church good afternoon may we pray almighty god the father and the god of our lord and savior jesus christ and the god of abraham isaac and jacob we come before you on this night oh god acknowledging your power your love your mercies and your grace all of which are without limits we also come tonight acknowledging our need for you as we navigate the daily issues of everyday life we also acknowledge oh god our need for you as we embark upon the taking on the duties of public service and that we will carry out our duties with integrity and honor and with the wisdom that you provide we ask

008you oh god to anoint and bless this board tonight as our superintendent and the board and all of their discussions that you would lead and guide them in their discussions and lead and guide them in their decisions so that these decisions will produce positive outcomes for the students their parents the teachers faculty staff workers and all affiliated with the new hanover county school system you do these things oh god and we shall be so ever careful to give your name the praise for your worthy of it all and it's in the name of your son jesus the christ we thank you and we pray amen amen amen thank you judge faison so next i would like to call to the front miss krista faison who is the assistant principal from new hanover high school and

009she will give us a most fabulous rendition of the national anthem do you want to come up here to the front yeah faces all so they can see you do you need help with anything okay uh [Music] hmm [Music] [Applause] and just in case you recognize that there is the same last name proud father went first and then um wonderful daughter went second so thank you both for being with us this evening um next um stephanie walker our board vice chair will lead us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance of america and to the globe for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we can be seated okay next up is um a one of my favorite parts about our board meetings is where we

010get to recognize some outstanding folks within our school system um miss clay i am excited to share that our communications and outreach division received 10 national awards to the national school public relations association the division's mission is to tell the stories of our students and staff and share the good work they are doing and we're so proud to have received these recognitions they were awarded one excellence in newsletters award three excellence in writings excellence in podcasting excellence in videography a merit in writing a merit in marketing and two merit and videography awards congratulations to christina beam russell clark chase fulton kevin hubbard caleb price anita baggy myself caress clegg and josh smith chief communication officer if you guys would come up to the front for your great job communications oh my goodness [Applause] our next

011recognition we are thrilled to announce that a new hanover county school student has received a scholarship to attend space camp through the astro girls 2022 scholarship the astro girls scholarship fund was created to send young girls from underrepresented minorities to space camp for free i would like to invite leanna harrison nelson a rising 4th grader at science academy recipient of one of two annual scholarships created by aerospace engineer and rocket scientist tiffany davis leanna [Music] [Applause] the scholarship is worth thirteen hundred dollars and leanna will be attending space camp during the 2023 year and we'd also like to recognize her mom who's here with her and assistant principal dr stephanie willis of snipes academy of arts and design congratulations leanna [Applause] congratulations to mr norris's class at sunset park elementary school for winning a nationwide

012math competition through splash learn the series of virtual games allow the students to practice math concepts in a motivating way while also gearing up for end-of-year assessments among over 200 000 classrooms nationwide and 400 000 students the students at sunset park placed first we are proud of these hard-working sharks and their awesome teacher today with us we have mr norris principal diego la hockey and jack representing his first grade class [Applause] hmm [Applause] board chair vice chair members of the board of education and dr faust that concludes our recognitions of the evening please give all of our recognitions another round of applause [Music] [Applause] okay um next up dr barnes with um administrative introductions also another favorite part of mine now we wish you the opportunity to introduce you to all the new staff for

013new hanover county schools that are that are coming this summer so these are just some of the highlights for you like to start with introducing ashley sutton she has served as our interim chief finance officer moving into the chief finance officer position and she has uh previously been a chief finance school officer at duplin county schools so i guess you can just wave from where you are i think we are quite familiar with miss sutton correct over the past couple months thank you welcome not attending tonight the new principal at the career readiness academy at mosley is lauren nussfinger nalepa who was previously at hal pre-k so we're appreciating her moving into that role i'd like to introduce mr samuel smithson mr smithson served as an ap at marvin ridge middle school in union county

014he's been a social science teacher and a head coach at the central academy of technology and arts at marvin ridge high school and he'll be going to myrtle grove middle school sorry okay thank you guys i'm excited to be here yay welcome to the beach next also not attending is lord dewalt mr walt is our new director of curriculum and instruction and she is currently the director of teaching and learning with durham public schools and she'll be coming in next week okay next up watching welcome next up we have the assistant principal at ashley high school ms meredith harris she's been serving as the department chair for exceptional children at ashley high school and she is a principal fellow from east carolina university so meredith hi i'm really excited to be here i graduated from

015new hanover county schools in 2010 and i'm excited to continue my journey with new hanover county schools very good congrats congratulations also not able to attend is a name you know already miss lauren keflanidis is the new executive director of elementary schools and she most recently has been the principal at bradley creek is she with us nope she's not attending this tonight you're watching congratulations lauren also in our executive director of schools support and the secondary schools is miss penny presley she is not able to attend she's closing out her work in charlotte mecklenburg city schools and she is the executive director of educational leadership at cms for the past several years also with us tonight is the new assistant principal at masonbro elementary school ms melanie ryan who just completed her administrative work and

016has been the instructional coach at alderman elementary school thank you i'm very excited to start my journey at mason we are too thank you [Applause] and last but not least a late breaking that uh had to cancel this evening miss andrea sidbury uh has served here before she most recently was the assistant finance officer with sampson county schools and she is now going to be the executive no the payroll supervisor for the finance department so thank you and welcome to everyone welcome thank you so much dr barnes okay um next up on our agenda is the superintendent's report dr faust noon good evening uh we're having a couple hearing issues hopefully you can hear me we can hear you good we can see you good okay um first congratulations again to our award-winning communications department

017john well done most appreciative and most thankful for the work that you do so i want to start with very good news governor cooper signed the 27.9 billion dollar state budget into law on monday the district will benefit from salary increases and bonuses from the state budget specifically assistant principals teachers instructional support staff will see an average increase of about 4.2 percent depending on the years of educator experience principals will see an increase of about four percent non-certified staff will see an increase of either four percent or the amount necessary to get the hourly compensation to fifteen dollars per hour as for bonuses teachers performance bonuses for grades three through eight math or reading will were reinstated and will be based on the school year 21 22 results teacher performance bonuses for ap ib aic

018and cet continued based on the 2122 results and principal performance bonuses will be reinstated based on the school year 2122 results next slide i'm happy to report that we continue to fill vacancies at an incredible rate attracting the top educators and classified professionals from around the country last month i shared we were 96 fully staffed for certified positions we're now 98 classified staff was 94 fully staffed last month and now we're at 96 we have 20 schools with zero teacher vacancies and only five schools that with that have three to five i'm sorry and only five schools with three or more teacher vacancies we will still have three district level administrator vacancies principal ship at gregory bradley creek and the chief of edi position all three positions are will be interviewed for this week finally

019the instruction and accountability division is creating an online resource to make it easier for parents to navigate the curriculum content in real time so actually that means that parents or whomever will be able to go to our website and see our standards pacing guides and the map of what we are teaching in our classes these resources are known as the scope and sequence and provide an overview of what is being taught in each class as well as a timeline for parents to follow links and additional resources will be made available and we will have the projected or the project project completed and posted in our website by august 15. so um we have some that are i'm ready now we're wanting to roll it out all at one time so if you give us to

020august 15 you'll be able to see all of our courses this includes my report thank you so much thank you dr faust appreciate that so next up is the board chairs report like to start off with um just letting everyone know that we no longer have to take a mandatory mass vote um each meeting that that ended in school year 2122. um i would just like to take a moment to describe the town hall that is coming up on july the 19th so as you know the new hanover county board of education voted to hold two town halls events in 2022 the first is scheduled for this tuesday uh well a week from now july 19th from 5 until 7 pm at the board of education center the audience capacity will remain at 170 people

021the same as for regular meetings the new hanover county sheriff's office will support the event and visitors will pass through a security checkpoint upon entry the event will be live streamed josh smith and john white a professional communications specialist will serve as moderators the town hall will be in three parts first will be a panel discussion where pre-solicited questions from the community will be asked communications has been so has been soliciting questions since last week across multiple platforms similar questions and themes will determine the questions asked of the panel next portion of the town hall will be an event q a where questions that have come in during the event itself and likely as a follow-up to earlier questions that have been asked a qr code will be displayed on the large screen throughout well

022these large screens throughout the town hall so that people there can know the number to send their questions to and then finally there will be an audience q a where audience members are able to ask their questions directly to us board members will have three minutes to answer questions in all three of these parts so i hope that explains um the an outline of what we plan on doing um next month we're not next month next week yes okay so all right so next up on our agenda um is information so first i'd like to call up to the front um is this um you dr mason no shannon smiles i'm sorry i'm not used to seeing you this early in the evening [Laughter] so shannon shannon's going to give us a report for the

023pre-k district-wide student data thank you so much thank you for this opportunity for me to share with you services provided by new hanover county schools for our youngest learners preschool so i'm going to focus on last school year 2122 we served 918 students important to note that in 2014 we served 415 students we are now located at seven public school sites and ten private sites we are now serving three-year-olds in 2014 we were only serving four-year-olds so it gives the opportunity for some of our three-year-olds to have two years of high quality experience in preschool before going to kindergarten we do use a curriculum support from board members in the district and the community that's how we do this and we do it through multiple funding sources we're the contract administrator for nsc pre-k state

024funding we house the head start federal grant and we also receive county funding for slots it cannot be done in one sold force for funding it has to be multiple funding sources so next slide please next there you go we do use a curriculum it's evidence-based it's state approved thank you there's more clicker there we go so and it is in alignment with the standard course of study for north carolina so um we have additional curriculums this past year that we implemented some district initiatives and some ongoing we use conscious discipline for social emotional learning to promote that self-regulation and self-skills letters which is a new state initiative for the science of reading for literacy support foundations for literacy support in eureka math for mass support which is in alignment with our friends in kindergarten

025and we do assess we use a formal formative assessment teaching strategies gold through ongoing data collection and progress monitoring covering 38 objectives in six learning domains so what does this look like in literacy so the children are writing their names they're knowing letters to the alphabet phonics recognition parts of the book how does it look like in math sequencing patterning numbers counting and so this authentic observation system helps us get to know the children well what can they do what do they need help on what are their interests what are their strengths what are their needs and how we drive our instruction to engage learning on based on their interests and what it is they need and want to learn the purpose is to observe authentically and to document children's development and learning over time

026we support we guide and it plans our just our instruction when we use informative assessment and we do three check points a year beginning of the year middle of the year and end of the year so what are we looking at we're looking at okay how are we entering what what spectrum are we entering when we enter preschool at three or four years old so what are the areas that we're blowing how can we provide support systems in early intervention to get that child up to standards and expectations and we look for those children that are accomplished okay who's succeeding how can we enrich that environment and get them to continue to learn on their pacing so we take formative assessment and data and we record this into the platform with artifacts such as anecdotal

027notes observation notes pictures and we do our checkpoints three times a year so this slide is specific for those children who are now going into kindergarten this upcoming school year for public schools only so this looks promising you're blue it looks kind of blue all here but your blue is for emerging and the purple which is the the taller of the graph that is meeting growth expectations so it does look promising so we took this data and we connected it to new hanover county school strategic plan so we want to increase our goal is to increase the number of preschool students meeting or exceeding the expectations and teaching strategies objectives aligned with the north carolina early learning inventory that is done in kindergarten the beginning of the year so we want this data at the

028end of the year to have 75 percent or exceeding so moving forward and looking forward so what now so we are going to provide support to teachers and administrators for the implementation of the core curriculum and we're going to do it well we're going to provide professional development we're going to create experts in the assessment system so that we're collecting high quality data from these students and authentically and with fidelity we know where they're going and where we need to take them and we're going to increase data dives and we're going to start earlier we're going to increase that contact with our administrators and our teachers and we're going to inform instruction and we're going to provide hands-on pd and ongoing plc's so for this upcoming school year we are expanding our program by six

029classrooms through county funding which provides us with nine public school sites and a thousand and eight students for next school year so i'm so proud to my team and i are so proud to be a part of the school district family pre-k 12th grade and i wanted to allow some space for any questions comments thoughts or talking points you want me to dance mr boyer thank you madam chair ms miles thank you very much i know i've really enjoyed over the past four years one of the highlights for me has been getting to work with you and with your team um projecting forward you know we just came out of a tight budget but it looks like you guys are scheduled and slated to grow even more and to even more sites i know pre-k

030is a big focus of the commissioners so can you talk a little bit about what you project moving forward and sort of the commitment that the school system is going to have to make to you know meet the moment and meet what the commissioners are trying to do here in new hanover county with early childhood education so excellent question and i can speak briefly about that there is a drafted moou to contract for these um six additional classrooms and our hope is to be up and running by august so it'll be 180 students um and included into that budget is support for those teachers teacher assistants we have two adults in the room at all times for low ratio and high quality to support our professional development to support instructional teams family specialists to be

031that liaison and and to continue with the data tracking we track data not only on academics and instructionally driven but we do the health nutrition and all those statistics that are important with child development so within that mou there is support for those fundings for growth thank you and so we will be serving at blair and murrayville thank you miss walker yeah thank you so much i i love this i i mean i'm a huge i know that's why i was gonna dance i'm so thrilled i think this is gonna help a lot i know um in the past we've had a huge wait list do you feel like this obviously has been alleviated somewhat do you know i mean have the weightless gone up and down i know since we've got more classrooms they've

032gone down a little bit but the need is there right i mean well thank you miss walker because there's so much work behind the scenes before we release these students to the experts and superstars in those buildings um so much work and we're we're doing another placement on thursday so it is a qualifying program um very hard coming out of covet knowing those exact numbers but i feel very confident that we're going to with this this expansion be able to offer more slots for three-year-olds which will give them that two-year experience so yeah early intervention is less prevention awesome thank you again thank you so much for this invite i appreciate your question one more question okay thank you madam chair uh first of all i want to uh agree with everyone on the board

033that i think this is outstanding this is wonderful thank you for all your your hard work and your team's hard work um are we fully staffed at this point uh how we are we looking up we hired all the new teachers we'll need and uh teacher assistants and um to the best of my knowledge um classroom staff have been recommended high quality awesome yeah of course excellent of course yeah we are going to be taking that lead we're going to mcmanus just comment the accolades that are well well deserved um just your personal presentation marina speaks times about how it off work this is so crucial so thank you and hopefully if we can do anything to keep this going that's not just let us appreciate the support the community involvement that's where it starts

034thank you very much for your time okay um next up on our agenda is policy 4302 update um and 4302 for those of you who don't know is the use of seclusion and restraint ms farnham thank you good evening good evening i'm going to share some things that i have shared before with regard to i can't do both i can't see you with these on or off um i'm going to share some information that i've shared with you before and also give you a few updates so um some of this is going to sound like a little bit of a reminder but i need to frame it in this way so in alignment with your strategic plan of establishing learning environments that are of course supportive culturally responsive and focused on building relationships and community

035our team that has been auditing and working through our processes has continued to do this work our our work is really evaluating necessary changes of course and the increased fidelity measures along with discontinuance of ineffective methods one thing that that i want to highlight is that this is incremental work incremental steps to reduce the use of and really to reduce or remove the need for this as a safety measure we're not quite there yet however this is the work that's going on a trauma-sensitive approach of course backed by evidence-based research we know focuses on the brain-based and brain-informed practices that really utilize staff skills in the prevention of crisis situations as well as responding to our students who are in crisis due to stress and trauma we are operating under plans to continue and expand

036this work we have contractual partnerships going on now with lives in the balance and with expanding our trauma-sensitive schools training this has been a little interesting to do this through some of the budget um budget work but we're we're we're fine this approach most specifically though relies on the relationships that staff have with our students and their ability to really understand that difference between intentional and adaptive versus male adaptive responses to stress this is that work of regulation we have regulation programs already in place but we're talking about it continually expanding that so our continued work requires our review of each school's school plan for the management of student behavior per policy 4302 we know that 4302 are the use of seclusion and restraint is it's the regulatory attachment to policy 4302 which is the

037school plan for the management of student behavior which says that every school creates their school plan as a part of their school improvement plan which we know those are are being completed now they're due in the district by mid-september and to you in october so that continued work really requires us to spend some time looking at what the schools have created as their plan for the management of student behavior this ongoing work helps us inform the next steps of any use of seclusion restraint but i will mention that all administrators in their summer leadership professional development later in july will be further exploring this specifically documentation of incidents debriefing models and enhanced training will be reviewed for increased fidelity towards the strategic mission i do want to to highlight the the changes that we know

038and our team is working on and we're incrementally seeing this to fruition the our teachers and support staff need to be included in this professional development and carrying out these policies as they are written as their plans are written from their school level and the dramatic changes that we are focusing on are really three shifts one an improvement in understanding any and all factors related to challenging behaviors of our students the next focusing on the mechanisms creating mechanisms that are proactive versus reactive and are collaborative versus unilateral our administrators later in the month are going to be seeing more of that in our guidance and and they're prepared for those changes and then thirdly really creating structures and processes so that our students and the adults that are supporting them are solving the problems together

039so look forward to more updates as we review the plans that are submitted from the schools based on policy 4302 and then necessary updates that come behind that with these regulations okay does anybody have any questions for um miss barnum i think great misspell i have a question i just i think that we had discussed that that it had to go through policy committees the 43 or 2r that would be the process once you guys are ready and then that would come to the board that way yes absolutely because the regulation would definitely need to be adjusted in accordance with um what the schools have created in line with 4302 yes mr mr walker mr uh mr mcmanus sorry so in essence what you're doing is after the workshops the pretty intense of this summer

040then they'll be given time during the beginning of the year to find out what works in their particular environment but doesn't to make adjustments that's necessary under your tutedage that's your heart but so really appreciate what you're doing and how you're doing it so that we're not putting them on the bus so to speak anyone involved in this process but no matter where you are and then we're thinking it through and giving it time for everyone to be adjusted i guess is the best word so thank you right and i will be done do you have maybe a goal next um well our goal is always you know yesterday or as soon as possible um but the goal is to make sure that our staff feel confident in the skills that they're using and believe

041that they can all be successful our staff want safety in the classroom no question where we can reduce any use that wasn't needed that i feel like that that work is well underway it's the it's preventing those crisis situations for become from becoming those crisis situations and again it's relying on the relationships of our staff and also the professional knowledge while they're working inside the classroom but we we have to utilize their voice in this process while we're giving them the best tools we can in their toolbox thank you thank you okay thank you mr worldwide another question first of all i want to thank you again for all your hard work uh so you'll be meeting with the principals the end of this month when would you anticipate meeting with the or training or

042ec teachers and other teachers so we have ongoing training but we are working through contracts again with lives in the balance and we have 10 schools that we're we don't have that contract set yet but it's it's working we it's always interesting finding that budget code but we have it we have a budget code um and then our our next work with trauma informed schools um my team actually wrote a a grant for that work and we're working with the provider to set that professional development up so professional development calendars are also i know you know are also fun to to try to find the time but but we are well underway with making sure that those tools are are working for our staff right thank you so i don't have a timeline um but

043i will i will provide you updates regularly as as we're doing well and if you remember one milestone that um ms martin mentioned to us was um school improvement plans that they're not due to us until they're due in end of september to um her department and um um dr faison and then um we we get them in october so that should be you know that is one milestone that um that we really don't want to rush but okay thank you so much we appreciate your time thank you thank you so much okay so next we have a very exciting presentation um from the wilmington chamber of commerce about career and leadership development academy so i've got um dr faison will kick us off and welcome natalie english um president and ceo of the chamber

044of commerce and laura brogdon primavera um director of programs and initiatives so take it away ladies well i just wanted to introduce these ladies but um i did so yeah no it is okay we have an exciting program and i'm not going to steal their thunder and um it's a great partnership and collaboration and um we're excited and you're going to be too and i'll turn it over to them okay thank you thank you patricia thank you madam chair members of the board it's exciting for me i've had the great fortune of representing business for all of my career and i'm not going to tell you how long that is because it'll age me it'll date me and i don't want to do that because i look younger than i am but um the biggest

045issue through all of those decades of representing business has been talent and access to workforce that's ready to work and so for years now i've had this vision of how do we make sure that we're we're supporting our school system and our educators in in creating that the awareness of a pathway to success a pathway to prosperity and it matters to me it's like it's like a uh it's innate in me to to want to help people be successful and one of those ways that we do that at the chambers to create a climate that's friendly to business because business employs people if you employ people they get out of poverty and so it's a it's a it's a continuous cycle but one of the critical components is talent development and so it's probably been

046six or eight years ago i heard about a program in another community because that's what we do in the chamber of commerce businesses we get together we share ideas we call it instead of research and development our r d is rip off and duplicate and so i heard about this program and so what we're what we're creating is different and i can't wait for laura to tell you some of the details but it's similar and so we decided that to create that pipeline that we need and the awareness of the pathway to success that requires some people to even be aware of what jobs are available i remember when my son who by the way just graduated from hoggard he's going to unc charlotte so i'm excited about that he also though when he was

047nine swore he was going to be an nfl quarterback right and and there was nothing i could do to change his mind there was nothing any teacher could do to change his mind then to my surprise in early high school years he was going to be in law enforcement and i was grateful that he had that calling he's transitioned yet again and probably will another five times i mean he's he wants to go into broadcasting which is what my father did and i did before i got into the chamber business and so it's kind of a natural for all of us in the family but i say that because his his ideas changed the more he got exposed to what opportunities there are and we talked about lots of others those are just the key

048three so if we're not exposing kids to the opportunities in their backyards when i got to wilmington five years ago i heard you gotta leave wilmington to get a good job you gotta leave one you can go to school here but you gotta leave to get a good job you can come back after you make your money that's just not true anymore there are a lot of jobs a lot of growing businesses in our community so i'm gonna let laura talk to you about the career and leadership development academy that's been created we're going to start with 47th graders next year this next school year laura next school year that's like next month it's tomorrow for some of our kids um first of all i wanted to thank dr faison and katrina and richard and

049demarcus without their support um and on the student and faculty facing side of things building this program wouldn't matter um so thank you for this i'm i've been really enjoying it i can't wait to see where we end up august 8th 9th 10th um so we're going to start with applicant interviews the candidates the 7th graders will have a conversation with a leadership wilmington alumni where they're going to receive feedback on how they executed the interview process so what they did well what they could work on and what they should try next time so that's going to be working on those oral communication skills and then we're going to have an orientation on august 20th on a saturday so that the families the parents can come we'll have the opportunity for students to get to

050know one another because there'll be five students from all eight middle schools and then their families will also gain a better understanding of what's going to be taking place over the next eight months industry sectors and employers that we're going to be working with and explore careers with are in digital technologies warehouse and logistics life sciences and pharmaceuticals hospitality real estate architecture and engineering manufacturing energy and clean technologies and film and if any of those sound familiar that's from the recent new hanover economic mobility report and so we are starting with that information and building this program from that students are going to develop what we call power skills um others call soft skills but we call them power skills and we're going to be working on critical thinking and communication teamwork leadership work ethic

051all of those things that those employers want those employees to have not only during the one-hour leadership session each month they're going to be learning about things like financial literacy dressing for success public speaking skills active listening but they're also going to be challenged to work together to write a blog after each session in a team of five um and put together a final presentation for their schools and that will also help us with our marketing because they're going to be sharing with those sixth graders what they just went through over those last eight months and then as they enter eighth grade they'll be serving as leaders and ambassadors and mentors to those seventh graders to continue furthering those leadership skills there are visions for future programs for high school students and also reaching every

052seventh grade student in new hanover county more than just the 40 we hope to pilot with this year and we're happy to answer any questions um ms adams i'm fired up about this i'm so excited so thank you natalie thank you laura for for you know making this happen and thank you to the new hanover county schools team i mean this is an incredible partnership and and you're right everybody said you couldn't work here i remember my husband saying that you know 10 years ago when we moved here it's like we're gonna have to find a job from outside of the area you know um but it's great to be at the beach for a few years so this is great it's about creating from within um i guess those are fantastic industries that you're

053targeting and they're right in line with what our needs are how are you recruiting the companies or are they coming to you when they've heard about this and said hey how do i get involved um i've crafted a very nice introductory message overview of the program and they are quickly turning around to schedule zoom meetings to learn more are asking how they can engage i don't know how much further deep so they're they're stepping up not only to help provide the curriculum i say that with quotation marks but but also to be mentors in some of the programming and then and then financially they're interested in helping to fund this businesses care deeply about what's happening with our kids because they are the future workforce thank you miss justice uh yes uh so you say

054you've got five kids from all at eight middle schools and what is the criteria and how do the kids know to apply we'll have to defer that one to patrice mrs the staff team helped us with that part of it come on back up oh my okay the counselors sorry the counselors and the principals are working to identify five students we left the criteria i'm going to say loose because we wanted to them to have the opportunity to reach those students that they thought would best serve this program so we are not necessarily reaching for the students who we always reward or those students who we um work with because they are more of a challenge we wanted to help students sometimes that are not they're they're the middle students that we sometimes don't have

055particular programs for but we did leave it loose for them to identify the student and so they're working on that process now so um it is the counselors and the principals um who are bringing that to us so the students themselves aren't informed you're you're identifying the students and then you approach them as opposed to the students knowing about the opportunity yeah because of the limited numbers you don't want to get too many students excited about a program that at this time we can only serve five so we didn't want to do that we're hoping that um as you know the numbers increase and as the word gets around it probably will look different the next year but to get a number of middle schools excited about a program when we could only at this

056time select five we wanted to be careful about that mr mcmanus thank you i understand everything has to start somewhere at the beginning but this absolute to me and i believe most people it's so vitally important that the young of these students have an opportunity to at least taste all the chocolates in the world i know which ones they like or not and sometimes they come back to it i know we talked about this a long time ago so i'm really excited i do hope that this weekend expand this because five students for not that's beginning of a positive it's the beginning so we want to prove the concept mr mcmanus and then we're running i know you two are not about that thank you thank you yeah i just wanted to echo some of

057the sentiments that my fellow board members have said madam president miss rodney rivera thank you guys so much and i share your vision you know we always pay lip service to the idea of well you know you don't have to go to college and we don't really do anything to show people what that might look like so you know if you're told you can have beef but all we have here is chicken well then nobody knows that they might love beef and so i think what you're doing is introducing a new staple into the diet of new hanover county schools curriculum and my goal would be to see it expand to all seventh graders and and let every single kid have a taste of what can be outside of a four-year college so this is

058a really exciting day and i thank you guys so much dr faison thank you this is a really exciting exciting uh movement so thank you very much thank you mr boyer what we didn't mention is we we don't intend to just expose them to the sector but to all the types of jobs and what that ladder might look like to get from that entry-level job with a high school degree or diploma to every level and how they can better themselves and and the companies that'll actually pay for that for them so really exposing them to all those opportunities the um so i wanted to add in there too the the areas that you picked obviously it sounds like we have you know the vertical articulation through cape fear community college and uncw so that we

059could keep them here if they chose um or they can go off and you know do whatever um two things um so one visit um per month do they is that during school like on a thursday afternoon or a thursday day or i mean so that's worked into their schools their school schedule sure madam chair with the idea of the chamber of commerce in 2017 adopted a strategic plan that included creating additional leadership development programs similar to leadership wilmington that would touch different groups of people and so this is one of those responses to that desire by the chambers board in this case we decided that we needed to help build those skills um in the younger back in the back further in the pipeline and and so yes the idea is they would meet

060once one day a month and we're working in partnership with the school system staff to have them transported safely we they they are making us abide by everything we have to and we are happily doing so to keep the children safe and protected that sounds good the um as a graduate of leadership wilmington i love it i mean i want to go back and do remedial you know and do it again so much has changed since 1999 um when i did that so talk about dating um one thing too could you um tell us just briefly like how long has this been in the works you know um i know that our superintendent um is on your board so um the and i'm sure he's i can't see his face here but i know he's

061beaming because this is exactly what's up his alley so about about how long has this been going on well in my head it's been going on for about 12 years and um and so you know it took an opportunity uh to be in my position which just happened five and a half years ago and then the opportunity of finding the right team members and laura has been on our team now for a year and then the right superintendent to answer my call when i called with this crazy idea in march [Laughter] and he introduced dr future would i and and we just started running so so it depends on who you're asking um i think they would say yesterday i say 12 years ago well it sounds awesome and i'm glad i heard you say

062uh mr trell's name too because some of that is you know definitely our in our cte curriculum so thank you so much for coming and um i'm glad we got you worked in that you didn't have to like drive down safely to get here not at all thank you so much thank you so much for being here okay um next up is call to the audience um before we get started there sorry okay all right yeah five minutes go ahead hang on guys i'm sorry five minutes yes out of here foreign um next on our agenda is call to the audience um i already read through um several of the the newer um complaints i mean newer complaints the newer written rules of decorum um i do want to add a few more now that

063we made specifically um in respect to call to the audience um your speaking time is limited to two minutes and you will be able to see your time up there on the clock speakers must keep their remarks within those allocated time frames and at two minutes they will be asked to sit down speakers who sign up for call to the audience must be present and cannot yield their time to anyone else if the speaker's name is called but the speaker is not present for the assigned time slot the speaker will be placed at the bottom of the list and called again at the end speakers can offer comments and criticism directed at substantive ideas actions and procedures of the board or individual board members but in the interest of maintaining civility and decorum speakers are

064to refrain from personal attacks and insults directed at the board individual board members members of our staff and members of the general public as i indicated before signs are permitted and can be used to accompany the speaker during their allotted call to the audience speaking time those bringing signs in support of a speaker can stand with the speaker during the speaker's designated time as long as the person holding the sign does not block the center aisle the sign holder may also stand at their seat and hold their sign signs may not contain lewd or obscene wording or images after call to the audience is concluded signs cannot be raised in obstruction of the view of members of the audience or as a disruption to board proceedings these rules of decorum are of course not exhaustive

065and may be revised at any time i'd like to just remind you that the general statute um that i indicated before says that you are um if you are not lost my place um any person who willingly interrupts disturbs and disrupts the official business and who upon being directed to leave the meeting by the presiding officer me willfully refuses to leave the meeting is guilty of a class 2 misdemeanor all right so now that's going to happen so let's just roll right in to our you see your names up there you see the clock up there peter rauwicz shirts and pants and blouses and slacks belts and purses and shoes suits and dresses sweater vests and halloween party costumes these things go in a closet kids don't belong in a closet in school these things

066go in a closet putting kids in a closet is cruel sheets and linens a pillow that fits in electric blankets and quilts soap and shampoo a box of tissues and multi-vitamin pills these things go in a closet kids don't belong in a closet in school these things go in a closet putting kids in a closet is cruel i know you prefer to call it by another name seclusion room or a padded closet they're really both the same mops and buckets to rinse the suds with vacuum cleaners and brooms laundry detergent and dryer sheets and clorox for the bathroom these things go in a closet kids don't belong in a closet in school these things go in a closet putting kids in a closet is cruel putting kids in a closet is cruel vote to end

067the seclusion rooms [Applause] that's a tough one to follow thank you for having me tonight good evening board tonight i'm here to announce that constitution day wilmington will be celebrated downtown on saturday september 17th it's going to occur concurrently with the american craft walk festival where thousands of people are expected to attend constitution day wilmington is an unaffiliated non-partisan local grassroots group our goal is to renew awareness about the u.s constitution and its content through musical and dramatic arts entertainment interactive activities like our we the people wall and the constitution quilt as well as a star-spangled scavenger hunt and through distributing fun facts about the constitution ultimately we are commemorating the signing of our nation's founding document in 1787. so why am i sharing this with you well there's a 2004 statute designating this federal

068holiday and it carries a congressional mandate that requires that schools receiving federal funds from k through higher ed must hold an educational program about the u.s constitution for its students during that week the u.s department of education website states we encourage local officials and educational organizations to conduct ceremonies and programs that bring together community members to reflect on the enduring strength of our constitution so this event helps serve that purpose and we're prepared to generate volunteers to read and lead in schools to help bring compliance with this statute in new hanover county we need your help in spreading the word about the event and in helping generate support for it we would love to have new hanover county schools students artists bands dancers junior rotc to participate and i'll be sending an email later this

069week with the details and our website is constitution day ilm.com thank you very much thank you miss gates next up yolanda hernandez [Applause] yolanda hernandez gail major good evening haven't seen you in a while i got two strikes at the last meeting i was at miss crabble i was felt special i'm here today i was hoping i'd see dr faust as you know i'm still working on the fingerprinting for all in new hanover county and if i'm updated correctly i think we just have new incoming teachers with that said it's been a year now i think it was a year in june so now we're going into 13 months but we still have not taken care of that business so i urge you to do so because now where we're at is as i had

070told you numerous times in the past we were going to be taking it to the state level it's there now so i'm representing facts task force 2.0 we will be looking at the fingerprinting we will be looking at books we will be looking at curriculum we will be looking at mental health we will be looking at people the law firm is looking at fingerprinting right now so i'm giving you that information i have asked you to come to the table numerous times in this 13 months and all i get is the runaround i'm done and we're moving forward [Applause] good evening i support ending the use of seclusion rooms by the 2023-2024 school year the data for the county as of march 31 for school year 2021-22 reflects the use of seclusion rooms as 148

071times down from 899 times in 2018-2019 school year restraints were used 95 times down from 33 times in the school year 2018 2019 vast changes in use have occurred with the change in mindset and change in policy 4302 aura by school year 2324 the county can end the use of seclusion rooms and restraints with the following exceptions if there is an emergency situation and a seclusion is necessary to protect the student or other person from imminent serious physical harm after other non-physical interventions have failed and the student's iep describes the specific behaviors and circumstances in which seclusion may be used and the parent has provide written consent please change the policy 4302 aura thank you thank you miss stackhouse natasha [Applause] good evening i am natasha t which i'm sure all of you remember i'm

072representing hanover county moms for liberty i'd like to talk tonight um about the pornography books in our schools even though our da's deemed it protected by the first amendment i'd like to inform you that's not the case um child pornography is not protected by free speech amendment and those who support it and promote it and allow it to be available to our children are in violation of federal laws and like to repeat some of those laws to you that you're going to be in violation of um 18 u.s code child pornography 2252 18 us code 2252a sexual exploitation of minors 18 us code 1466a obscene visual representations of sexual abuse of children pursuant to the 18 us code child child pornography is defined by federal statute as any visual depiction including photograph film video picture

073or computer or computer generated image or picture whether made or produced by electronic mechanical or other means that features sexually explicit conduct and the production of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging and sexually explicit conduct there are several books on our shelves that do this i would say more than a handful i'm sure you don't want your children reading that it is your responsibility as a parent my responsibility as a parent to teach my child about sexuality not the teachers moms for liberty is dedicated to fighting for the survival of america by unite unifying educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government we will hold decision makers like you accountable or we will work to replace you with liberty minded individuals we will stand spread

074awareness and understanding of limited role of government and we will stand together against government overreach and intimidation tactics thank you mr robert fellaini how y'all doing i'm here for love our children my name is robert bellamy uh i just want to tell a story um back in the day i was a kid i got into a lot of trouble i was placed in the room and uh i didn't know what it i don't know if it was a seclusion room or what i just knew that i had to wait there in that room could you hold for one second if somebody got a phone on okay thank you appreciate that sorry okay uh i get my time back yeah i mean it's not he stopped it all right okay i don't know if i was

075placing his kids uh in the sacuzzi room um for what matter was uh i just knew i had to wait for the principal to come in with this paddle because back then you know the kids would beat me and um the things that went through my head was not intended for a kid at my age i wanted to hurt someone i wanted to hurt myself i felt alone i felt as if i was not loved i wanted and then it didn't make me any better at all i became worse you know um signs have invented cell phones and today there's no need for phone booths i believe in science thank you very much thank you mr bellamy um laura axe time did i get that good okay i practiced thank you hi um i'm speaking

076to you for the first time i'm a parent and i worked in a public school for four years i come from a family of educators and have tremendous respect for those who work with children i know we can all agree that safety comes first and that every child every life is precious god makes no mistakes so school should be a place where everyone feels safe and everyone teachers staff and children treat each other with kindness dignity and respect some need more guidance in this area than others we all develop at our own right we're not born with maturity or the schools and the understanding of how to manage ourselves learning self-discipline and honoring one's self-worth our lifelong efforts so school must also must remain a safe place where children feel they belong and where all

077work together to create an environment of positive interactions threats shunning rejection and isolation only increase a child's fear and are counterproductive at best punishment for acting out or loss of self-control does not equal fair or respectful treatment for a young person school professionals as well as staff deserve additional training in specific language methods to de-escalate disruptive behavior let's give them more of the tools they need to be positive role models especially in highly charged challenging circumstances equip them better to teach each child to respect themselves and each other shutting them away doesn't help them feel that they're a precious gift from god please vote to change policy 4302 r and end the use of seclusion by the 2023-2024 school year thank you thank you miss next time chris sutton how are y'all doing that was

078way louder than i was expecting um first thing do y'all mind changing the sign up for call to audience that's out front to be pulled when the called audience actually starts because apparently the time changes in some people it's caused issues that's actually why i seeded my time last time is because he couldn't find the sheet he thought it had already been pulled sometimes before 30 sometimes pulled it 45 minutes into the meeting um i exceeded my time and i hope that we can we can make it where people concede their time again because sometimes things do come up in a hurry where someone needs to be heard that's more important and if i feel like my minutes are better served by another community member i feel like we should have that ability some of

079the things that i was going to speak of last called audience i was going to bring up you miss adams storming out that wasn't really cool you storming out of the budget and gridlocking it that was mighty childish you deserve come on now that was ridiculous another thing i was going to bring up the fact that faust created the admin position instead of letting the edi committee bring it forward and then speaking about the budgetary constraints that we have which now we know what triple digit jobs potentially on the line that should have occurred that conversation should have occurred before that was created lastly i've never approached you all that i've had issues with outside of this board meeting i've never showed up to your house i don't approach you when i see you at

080a grocery store so for mr bullier to show up to the election where i'm out there election hearing walk up and start heckling me talking about oh you're mr constitutional master right tell me what what amendment this was right you and i had a long conversation then i brought up the fact that rocky jeter webb you sat there and didn't say anything you didn't call a point of order you didn't take up for it and what did you say it's not my job to control the meeting and then what did i tell you yes it is she might be controlling decorum but you are supposed to call a point of order and considering what you teach at a collegiate level you should have known better and then you said i didn't know what was going

081on so my last with my last 10 seconds i would like to request y'all please get more parliamentary training because that's ridiculous and the fact that you looked at me and said well you still have the courts i should not have to go to the courts to have my constitutional rights honored thank you [Applause] before i call up the next speaker i would like to go back to a comment that we said in our written rules of decorum that let me find it speakers can offer comments and criticism directed at substantive ideas actions and procedures of the board and individual board members but in the interest of maintaining civility and decorum speakers are to refrain from personal attacks and insults directed at the board individual board members staff or members of the general public next

082up is alicia ogundelli [Music] okay um good evening actually these are the data i have a collective at from mrs brown there's two elementary schools six middle schools eight high schools based on data from ms barnum presented in may that is how many schools will not be participated by impacted by the change in the school seclusion policy 35 schools would not be impacted by the change because only had one less student per put in the padded closet during the first seven months or in the past year so how many schools might need extra support during the coming year just one high school it has two seclusion rooms one middle school it has five seclusion rooms and eight elementary schools have five which have already had behavior leadership foundation plc the past year remember how that

083training drastically reduce out of school suspension so stop making excuses about the need for the culture shift or buy in from the staff use the coming year to help a handful of schools with positive alternatives to seclusion just to be clear if any of you were to lock up a child in a padded closet in your home someone will call child protective services on you vote to change policy 4302r and in school seclusions by 2023 and 2024 school year thank you for pretending to listen okay the next cooper good evening i'm here on behalf of love our children for policy 4302 r to end seclusions for the 2023-2024 calendar i want to talk a little bit about the pipeline to prison that does refer to school discipline policies and practices that remove students from learning

084opportunities so anytime a child is placed in a seclusion room they are automatically being put through this system that is stopping them from learning seclusion the definition of seclusion is the state of being private and away from other people and we all experienced a pandemic here where all of us had to be isolated and we know the effects that it had on the world a lot of people grew into great depressions and they were adults with fully quipped minds having grown we're dealing with children who don't get it and we're also secluding children at this time who were still getting adjusted to returning back to school and after being isolated from the world now they're going right back into school with the same isolation i brought this shoe box in just as an example of

085being shut away from the world and this is what happens to our children when they go into seclusion rooms they're locked away from everything there has to be a better way there has to be a listening ear here on this panel to make a right decision and to save a child's life and to prevent them from going through the prison to pipeline school system makes some sense you're here for a purpose do something right [Applause] pat bradford good evening have a literary reading this is from one of the nine books that the new hanover county sheriff's department investigated and forwarded to the new hanover county district attorney's office for a ruling if any laws had been broken and neither the sheriff's department or the district attorney refuted that the books were obscene or inappropriate for

086k-12 from all boys aren't blue a boy is recounting his first hand experience you you then ask me do you feel that yeah but i laughed and said get your hand off my butt you giggled that's not my hand you're lying i said you then place both hands on my hips as we lay side by side there was still something poking me you were fully erect at this point i was nervous we're gonna get in trouble you can't tell anybody okay you said you promised that you're not gonna tell anyone i promised i have to skip over the part that's so sexually graphic because i can't say it in this meeting later in the text it says this the whole time i knew it was wrong not because i was having sexual intercourse with a

087guy but that you were in my family these boys are cousins in the story and this is incest and this book is found was found in ashley high school now pavementeducationproject.com has 10 such books found at the ashley high school five at new hanover seven at laney two at hoggard here's where it gets really disturbing one is found at blair elementary one at bellamy one in ogden one in porter's neck one at snipes one at holly shelter two at murray one at middle grove two at roland grise two at williston and one at gregory you have the power to change the policy that allowed these books into our schools and our school libraries um are you tired of sammy yet i'm tired of being here 18 months i've asked you to stop secluding tiny children

088at first you ignored me you probably thought i'd just go away but i'm still here i'm no longer the lone speaker on seclusion restraint tonight past like the past few months we have many people here to speak asking you to end the use of seclusion beginning the 2023-2024 school year the community is united on this we're not united on much so every issue seems to be polarized but not seclusion we don't want our children locked in rooms black white young old republican democrat nobody wants this in our schools and yet the only reason it still happens is because of you because you have not changed the policy you have not set the expectation that children in new hanover county schools will not be locked in padded rooms we want solutions we want practices that allow

089our children to learn we want staffing so that our children can be supported and taught skills so that they can thrive and excel in school we want our children particularly our children with disabilities to be treated as human beings to be included in the classroom and respected by their teachers and peers as parents we want to be believed in iep meetings when we bring concerns to the district we don't want ieps that dehumanize or blame our children or ones that rely on abusive and traumatic practices like seclusion which only deny our children the right to learn we want our children to be seen and understood we don't want our children locked in rooms and treated as animals the community is united on this so why isn't the board the community wants you to act with

090urgency so why haven't you what are you waiting for change the policy end seclusion do what we elected you to do thank you thank you tracy tracy bannon hi my name is tracy bannon and i'm here this evening to speak about the constitution constitution day holiday september 17th is designated as constitution day and citizenship day to commemorate the signing of the united states constitution in philadelphia pennsylvania on september 17 1787 both constitution day and citizenship day were merged to form one holiday citizenship day was moved from may to coincide with constitution day on september 17th the purpose of constitution day holiday is to commemorate the creation and signing of the supreme law of our great nation as written by our founding fathers and to honor and celebrate the privileges and responsibilities for both native-born and

091naturalized united states citizens the law establishing constitution day holiday was created in 2004 with the passage of an amendment by the late senator of the great state of west virginia robert byrd to the omnibus spending bill 2004. i have given this brief history to ask if you are aware there is a constitutional mandate attached to this 2004 omnibus spending bill congress mandated all schools receiving federal funding provide education about the constitution on constitution day and citizenship day september 17th each year from k-12 we have researched and found while some schools in new hanover county do use the curriculum some do not how may i and many others like me assist in new hanover county becoming compliant 100 percent with the omnibus spending bill 2004 mandate my goal is for each federally funded student in new

092hanover county to be given a copy of the constitution of the united states of america and to teach it in the context written by our founding fathers almost 235 years ago the united states constitution is not an antiquated piece of parchment paper it is one of the most amazing documents on earth thank you miss um bannon aaron cogan melissa mason good i'm melissa mason superintendent faust administration continues to push the systematic hypersexualization of our kids and a grooming agenda on this community that is what the word inclusive represents in policy 3540. we the parents categorically reject these policies but dr faust and the powers that be have contempt for community values they have consistently ignored excluded deceived and obstructed concerned parents took nine books to the sheriff but the d.a says state law prevents prosecuting

093school employees for giving harmful material to kids as long as it's part of your job you can show porn to kids it's protected by the first amendment this is an absurd lie obviously which the d.a tells us because we he thinks we're too stupid to actually look it up you can find out more what he's lying about in my blog but really we're tired of the d.a and the sheriff and the schools covering up abuse why do we have to go to law enforcement to resolve these issues how many more obscene books are there why are parents being required to opt out of a curriculum that doesn't reflect community values and no one knows about state law requires sex ed materials to be made available to parents one open house where parents are allowed to

094review the materials but not take them home does not satisfy that requirement in fact these materials have been hidden i challenge anyone in this room to try and find those online because i did some digging a lot and i could not superintendent faust this puts you in violation of state law another in a long list of fireable offenses thank you thank you hey now i hope everybody's doing well i'm here to talk about seclusion rooms that seems to be the topic of choice first of all ms varnam i want to tell you how much i appreciate all the work that you're doing and the incremental stages that you're taking i think you're doing very thought provocative focused changes on it but even in school improvement team plans you have to have a target date every

095objective had to have a target date so it's been a year and a half since we've been here asking you to change your policies we've been working with you the community has made that clear i'm asking you to take action to end the use of seclusion rooms in our schools you have the power to do it you have the power to do it to now i'm asking you to vote at the end of the to end seclusion rooms in all schools with a target date of implement implementation of july 1 2023 at your august 2nd 2022 meeting you can do it you can take the vote to end it then put 11 months into changing your policies changing your procedures implementing your training fiscally responsible support for the support staff so they get that training

096and then you have iep time adjustment 11 months you can do it so that you're ready to roll out with the changes july 1st of 2023 that should be your target date that you need to vote on it because you can't change culture if you don't set expectations we had expectations to have our target dates when we had our school improvement plans and if we didn't meet them that went into our evaluation you can do it it's enough suffering for children i've worked in the school system over 20 years i see what school seclusion rooms do they're traumatic and they are not therapeutic make the change thank you and by the way my library talk constitution every september 17th ms anderson your time is up thank you drifton helena's drifting helenez leslie posey good evening

097tonight i want to talk about repetition repetition can be a really good tool for learning some things when i took square dancing lessons our instructor told us we would have to repeat the movements at least 400 times for our feet to really learn them and he was right square dancing is complicated repetition is also good for things like music bands orchestra chorus do a lot of repetition in preparing for concerts i've sung hamilton in my kitchen so many times i could probably sing you most of the play but i don't have peter's voice some repetition gets tiring i'm sure you are all getting tired of repeatedly hearing speakers to ask you to end the use of seclusion rooms you've heard more tonight research shows that seclusion rooms harm children that they have no positive effects

098training and plans for training are in place tonight you can instruct the policy committee to write a policy to end the use of seclusion rooms starting in the 2023-2024 school year i urge you to do so thank you thank you good afternoon sorry about earlier notifications are one thing but media's another so there's a lot of hypocrisy that knows no bounds in this room today and it emanates like a rotten stench from the dice from before me last month this meeting in this meeting i witnessed a concerned citizen being censored for the act of reading from a book that certain members of this hypocritical body felt was too explicit and violated their adult contemporary community standards remember those words the said book was declared by the new hanover county district attorney ben david to be

099protected by the first amendment i do not agree with your handling of that hypocritical situation last month nor with the da's assessment of this book in question the key phrase in all this adult contemporary community standards okay coming off of north carolina general statute 14-19.15 subsection c2 which explicitly exempts parents schools libraries and other governmental and agencies from its purview according to ben david those his office found the law prevent schools and their employees from being charged under the statute assuming that the materials were disseminated as a legitimate function of employment with this within the school system well there we have the real problem you see disseminating pornography in the schools is not a legitimate function of employment within the school system the material lacks serious literary literary artistic political or scientific value for school

100children ben david just gaslighted the entire populace with his words declaring pornography for children of first amendment liberty that i'm like okay you know what it is you know what it is i was a criminal paralegal for several years and i know crime tell us your time [Applause] i think are you mr grover okay he's trying to make his way to the front i think somebody might be in his way i'm here to speak on this ridiculousness of certain members of this board for saying with the left side of your mouth that a man cannot read at a podium from up in our pornographic book that is currently in this district schools because it's too explicit and then with the other left side of your mouth that those books are okay for elementary and middle

101sound middle school children to read i pulled my grandson out of elementary school because that was one of the reasons even high schoolers should be reading non-sexualized material anyway at the end of the day you all know as the adults what a as it was already mentioned quote contemporary i mean a contemporary community standard unquote of behavior is so i'm here to ask you that you stop the hypocrisy and stop the porn from being so readily available in the schools only a small percentage of the population wants to sexualize the children these are bad people these are bad people don't enable bad people pedophilias are bad people sexualizing children children is pedophilia supplying pornography material to school children in the course of a regular school activities is not legitimate literary artistic political or scientific value

102for the students it's pedophilia it's just that simple you all are complicit to these actions if you don't do something about it tonight last month i got up here and spoke and i asked stephanie crabill to step down if she doesn't do something she needs to stick down today tonight before i leave this place you need to step down and you can sit behind it with the smirky smiles thank you mr grover your time is up next [Applause] my name is matt rhodes and i want to talk about some of the issues of school safety in new hanover county i know that that's a topic on every parent's mind right now all around the country for all of the mass shootings we've seen but i'm not talking about that what i'm talking about is the

10320 years that we've had in new hanover county of sexual assault at the hand of teachers and staff of the new hanover county school system right now there is a trial going on a civil trial against the board of education in regards to michael kelly who sexually assaulted students from 1999 to 2019 for 20 years this should have never happened in the first place but what's happening now is the lawyer is trying to say that it is not the responsibility of the school system to protect children that is completely absurd parents in this county drop their children off at all 45 public schools irregardless of age sex race if you're rich you're poor or you're the the working poor that we have here and they trust you they trust the school system and they've been

104let down here's how bad this is the attorney general for north carolina josh stein and it was on the front page of the paper today is investigating this and he said this man posed a real threat we also have a documentary filmmaker keller kerry david who is working on a film called open secret it's only about new hanover county and the sexual assaults that have gone on these children need to be protected the first priority of the school system is not education but the safety of the children thank you [Applause] i'm talking to the parents who know the government schools are corrupt take your children out of these schools homeschool your children public schools are doing exactly what they were designed to do indoctrinate groom and brainwash your kids there's no fixing government schools two

105years parents have been fighting back they still teach your kids to hate their skin they still teach kids to hate their country they still push that put them in restraints and use seclusion rooms they are still giving kids porn the d.a said there's nothing he can do about it so what are you gonna do about it they're still pushing pedophilia children they're letting perverts getting away with molesting your children well it's time for you to do something about it pedophiles are using government schools to sexualize your children kids have been vaccinated without consent in certain schools what are you waiting for enough with the excuses there are members of the community who will help you homeschool your children they've been doing it for years we've had members who have taken their kids out of the

106school system within just the last two years they can help you get started and guide you and what to do go to twocitizensmoms.com and if you like [Applause] the district recently released a statement in support of lgbtq staff and students based on some of the comments and the recent disruption at the library pride story time event this is long overdue years ago we received valuable information through a 10 million dollar safe schools grant that outlined ways to improve structural design and the inner workings of our schools with regard to sel and prevention the great grant data has now been misplaced similar to the mysterious disappearance of years worth of ignored sexual assault complaints how does new hanover county schools continuously and conveniently lose documentation the title ix survey provided more safety data reflecting the dire

107straits of our lgbtq plus students and sexual assault victims the county denies that their negligence put families at risk at a public library event while the school board puts victims of sexual assault through traumatic psychological evaluations in an attempt to exhaust them and cover up crimes after over four years the civil suit against new hanover county schools will likely be pushed back further while we wait for excuses and deflection lives are at risk suicide has taken lives with regard to both sexual assault and lgbtq harassment if the public wants to be outraged channel your anger into supporting victims of sexual assault and refrain from confusing the situation with blatant lies if this board truly wants to do what's right for children acknowledge the past transgressions and put an end to the gross tactics of your

108litigation team and torturing brave survivors of school predators implement policy to empower and protect all students use your seat at the table to do good work or risk losing it to someone far more dangerous how ironic that a year ago the superintendent former board chair filed charges against myself and another advocate for simply seeking accountability and safety as we do today you fear involved community activists but those that attack young children for reading a story about same-sex parents and those who protect pedophiles don't seem to scare you at all thank you miss katie [Applause] is neil case in the room okay it was mistyped on here sorry it happens good evening how are y'all doing um how many people in the room know the definition the actual proper definition of the word mitzvah anyone mitzvah

109it's hebrew bueller no all right great well there's a book here called me and earl and the dying girl and pursuant to this text even though it's fiction not a very good example of it the only dying i'm interested in is faulkner i'm about to lay doing such because this book is hot trash mitzvah is hebrew for colossal pain in the a-s-s that's actually not the definition of the word mitzvah how do i know well for one i have jewish ancestors i'm not a practicing g myself but my ancestors were in particular isaac bear you may be familiar with the isaac bear early college founded by my ancestor the actual definition of mitzvah is a good deed done from religious duty i wonder what the bill and melinda gates foundation has to say about that

110since they've given in excess of 124 million dollars across all 50 states in the union to prop up these early college preparatory schools including but not limited to the isaac bear early college so help me understand overstand and understand why books like this you guys think it's funny you know what else is in here the n word over and over and over again but if i say it i'll be escorted out of here why is that get it together and also too your seclusion rooms they're corny you need to stop thank you miss case christina [Applause] tonight i want to talk about our lgbtqia youth and suspensions no matter my position over my career i always accepted students as they were and expected the same for my class while they were in my room at

111the very least they were to adhere to the idea that if you have nothing nice to say remain quiet however i know that once the students left my room i could not control everything that happened to them sadly not only were they potentially targeted by their peers but also by other teachers and adults it's obvious that education is needed in regards to lgbtqia youth for both adults and students i'm frustrated by some of the beliefs students have expressed but i am horrified when adults in positions of power not only share the same outdated beliefs but also express and reinforce them to a younger generation i worked for the last quarter of my career at an alternative school dealing mostly with students who had been suspended i cannot tell you how many times a student who

112got in a fight told me they did so because that boy is gay or some similar reason often they would go on to tell me the other child didn't actually do anything to provoke the fight except apparently to exist as their authentic self the instigator chose to provoke the fight due to the belief that a gay person is a predator and they were letting them know ahead of time not to mess with them conversely i've also had lgbtqia students who had gotten suspended for fighting it was rare for the student to have actually started the fight but they were sick of being bullied and picked on and decided to fight back ultimately if a student got enough fights they were recommended to attend the alternative school long term and more often it was the lgbtqia

113student who was referred versus the bully using the idea that the smaller environment was safer while this is likely true the bigger question is why punish the victim of the crime why can't the school system educate staff and students on how to simply accept others as they are there are many ways that people are different and you know it's a legal protected class in the united states we need to do a better job because the students deserve it thank you thank you [Applause] mt lincoln mt lincoln okay um is has yolanda hernandez come in okay has aaron cogan come in okay has drifted helena's come in okay that concludes our call to the audience so next up on our agenda is um closed session do i hear a motion could you get that thank you

114do i hear a motion to go into closed session um pursuant to the statutes listed on your screen move for closed session pursuant to the statutes is there a second second mr wildebard um all in favor say aye aye any post okay we are in closed session uh board members huh okay we are back um i need to make a motion to um change our agenda to include a second closed session at the um after new business pursuant to the the reasons stated for the first closed session do i have a second sorry any discussion all in favor say aye any post okay we will add um closed session after it will be item number 16 after new business okay so next up on our agenda is the cons uh approval of the minutes so

115moved move to approve um are you moving to approve all four or are you moving to approve one at the time move to approve the minutes is written all four yes second okay is there any discussion all in favor say aye all right any post okay so the minutes um all four minutes as presented are approved next on our agenda is our consensus items do i hear a motion move to approve um news to prove nelson is there a second second second miss adams um any discussion okay all in favor say aye aye any opposed all right all those items are passed next up on our agenda is old business fiscal year 2022 2023 budget resolution um miss sutton good afternoon everyone so i bring before you included in your board packet is budget resolution

116for fiscal year 2022-23 and this information is provided to you includes the beginning budgets for the state public school fund local current expense capital outlay fund enterprise fund and this resolution was developed using the plan that was shared with the budget at the last board meeting the revenue estimates for this budget were based on the county approach appropriation we've received state planning allotments we had at that point in time along with other current funding levels of other reoccurring revenue sources resolution includes a raise of 2.5 percent or the 15 dollar minimum paid hourly compensation at this time i'm requesting your approval of the resolution as presented um okay um anybody have any questions or message miss walker i'm sorry miss justice the 299 as this is this in addition to already the budget we were

117talking about previously i'm sorry is it two i'm sorry i forgot about the microphone is it 299 million is that is an addition to the to the state allotment so this includes um the state allotment but based on the planning numbers that we received as dr faust had mentioned the state budget was passed yesterday and so that those numbers are going to change so i will be bringing back a budget amendment that will put us in line with what the state budget was that passed yesterday so i will bring that at another board meeting okay yeah that's what i'm trying yes so this so this is a temporary on top of okay this was based on the planning numbers we had at that point in time we were working on the budget this happens um

118i just would like to move to approve the fiscal year 2022-23 budget resolution as presented by the sub second second okay so is there any more discussion okay um um mr clark would you call the roll let's just make sure we have this miss justice i'm not changing how i feel before no mr mcmanus yes miss walker no miss adams yes mr wildebore yes mr bullier yes and miss craybill yes okay so that passes um resolution passes five to two thank you thank you miss sutton okay so next up on our agenda is policy evaluation of student progress ms barnum actually you know what is this supposed to this is one we've already approved right now through policy you have this has moved through policy okay this has um not been shared with the full

119board with the link okay right yes yes okay so just been through policy for coming to us first okay yes thank you sorry about that and and dr faison is coming in with the second part okay with the regulations yes just so everybody knows the this was kind of like a little bit of a compute not confusing but this is a two-parter yes yeah and one cannot go without the up right yeah the evaluation of student progress um aka grading there we go yes aka grading um and again i want to echo the thanks to the um grading practices committee that came together um thank you for our board member representatives on there um mr mcmanus mr wildebore thank you ms craybill for coming to one of them and helping seeing us round it out

120um as you will see the language um the recommended language for policy 3400 is up on the screen i also want to and i know dr faison is going to mention this i want to um also echo the thanks to the team of teachers and other folks who looked at this again and again with us our committee was made up of administrators students teachers parents community members and also some of our community providers and so this this work has has really come from many different angles with lots of input lots and lots of input as you will see this is really focusing on an evaluation system of students effort growth and academic performance of course i'm not going to read all the lines but i want to highlight that in the fourth paragraph teacher shall

121evaluate student performance in a timely manner provide appropriate feedback to parents teachers shall allow students who are failing of course opportunities for intervention and support to demonstrate mastery and improve their grade you are going to hear more from dr faison on how that looks again at the before we get into the performance codes the last of the fourth paragraph students and parents have the right to appeal failing course grades and the standardized grading practices procedures and grievance processes shall we utilize in accordance with 3400r that you'll be seeing and then if we can scroll to the grading scale for 312 there we go um we have in here interim grades or quarterly i have to choose whether i'm looking at this one or that one we're still on a 10 point scale looking at quarterly

122again for grades 312 and at quarterly you can see that a student that receives an f that is a 50 or there's an incomplete to be lower for a grade lower than a 50. final grades for semester or yearly depending upon whether it's elementary middle or high school final grades the f can be a 0 to 59 and then incomplete for specified circumstances the the rationale behind this and you can see that the previous grading scale is redlined the rationale behind this is students with that are operating through in the midst of their coursework will maintain an opportunity to recover but they will also work under behavior contracts as you're going to hear more for final grades their earning is their earning given that they've had every opportunity to recover the grade and maximize their

123growth and unless you have any questions mr mcmanus and there's documentation involving the parents so that there's no lack of contact we're going so i don't know if you want to operate on these separately or let's hear them here and then come back and do the voting that we need to do thank you all right so as julie said um i want to thank the teachers i think um i can comfortably say that we have spoken to um about a hundred to 105 100 to 125 teachers and they were liaisons for their schools every principal and most of our assistant principals um on this work and i really thank them for their um work because this is ours that's the biggest thing i want you to know is this is the teacher's work the principles

124work so this is a team effort so right now i'm going to direct you to um we're going to start with high school and as you begin to look at high school which one are you are you putting up high school um semester i'm sorry semester okay okay so some of the biggest changes and i'm going to outline this um some of the biggest changes you're going to note is the students will receive the grade they've earned so if patrice receives the 25 she gets the 25 if she earns a 85 she gets an 85. the grade that i earn is the grade that my teacher will record in the grade book also the documentation piece that mr rickman has just um discussed if students are failing a course they are going to receive their

125parents will be notified and the teacher will work with the student and the parent to create an academic contract and i will share that with you a little later the three of them will work together to help the student gain a greater understanding of the missed skills and to improve their academic performance at the end of quarter one and quarter three and i want you to note that we've broken those out and i'll explain why in just a minute at the end of that quarter the student can then get the grade that they have now earned from the academic contract doing those um missing assignments or working with the teacher or if their grade is lower than a 50 they will get their f but it will be recorded as a 50 for the semester

126grade for quarter one and quarter three for quarter two and quarter four the same thing well their student will still get the grade that they've earned if i earn this grade i re this grade is recorded if the student is failing again if they're filling the course the parents will be notified the biggest difference here is there is not an incomplete put in for the student to have an academic contract that's in place and i apologize i forgot to say that part on quarter one and quarter three there is an academic contract that is put in place for the teacher and the parent and the students to work on to help that student improve that grade and the latter part in quarters two and four there is no incomplete nor um is there a grade

127floor the student will get the grade that they've earned i can tell you that the teachers really stress that this is what we've done before this is what we've always done most of you been around education long enough to know that you don't want to shut the door of a student so if they fail that quarter or the beginning half of the year you've given them no hope and the teachers are already saying this is what we've done we just want to go back to it so this is why this has been received with a lot of um positive energy i'll say so that is the semester for high school then when you look at and if we had a semester course in middle school it was served there as well then when you look

128at the secondary year long we're doing the same thing but this time they wanted to make sure and when i say they i'm talking about the team that we're working with is for the semester we're doing half the course so for the year we do half the course for the consistency so here you see is quarter one and quarter two where the academic contract has to be put in place and the incomplete there's a couple things that the principals and the teachers um wanted they wanted to make sure that documentation was there and after that documentation is signed is when the two-week clock so we want to make sure we partner with parents on this so that's the same thing with the secondary it's the same thing as what i just shared with the semester

129the only difference is it's the first half of the school year that the incomplete is put in those two quarters and then the second half that safety net is gone elementary felt we're the foundation we've got to look a little different so elementary wanted to do the grade floor throughout and they wanted to put in intervention plans because they felt like your elementary child the teacher is going to really have to do that support and step in when we think about a middle school student a high school student they're a little bit more responsible so the elementary principles felt adamant we've got to intervene because if we don't catch this this is just snowballing so you'll notice that that looks the same throughout the size on the last quarter there is no incomplete because the

130teachers have to record the grade but they still wanted the grade floor because of the intervention plans and the growth that they are going to see and next i'm going to take you to the academic contract that we've been referencing i think it's important to note that you will note with the academic contract is there is a place for student responsibility and teacher responsibility and these two places make it so both account wholesome accountability and the teachers can record some of the things that they've already done because we know our teachers do a number of things before our students get here okay and you'll see that there is a requirement for student parent and teacher signature and i also want you to note if you cannot reach the parent their next steps so we're not

131just saying we can't we couldn't reach this parent so then we're going to reach to our support services our school counselors our social worker and lastly if we need to we'll get the administrators involved we feel it important to make sure we do everything and show that partnership and if you click on the sample strategies if the teachers were to click on that and i'm going to show you this this is these are just some strategies the next form these are just strategies that we thought of in the instruction and accountability team that teachers already use they're this is not meant to be exhausted by any means but we wanted to give our teachers some ideas the goal was anytime we can take work away from teachers we're going to do that so i i

132just want to say i have been very pleased and coming new to the district i have found found it truly to be a privilege to work with teachers who want to go the extra mile and that's why they insisted on the way we do this and i just i think our teachers have really spoken with this and i'm very proud to sav work with them um and i'm just going to say this mrs dailey mrs bierstad and mrs branch we've been hand in hand with them they've been pulling they've pulled together so many people because they're veterans in the district and they brought in so many teachers to allow us to do this work so i um we'll take questions i'm mr motorboard well this isn't a question for the statement i think this is

133exceptionally well done um you and i talked about it and every question i came up with you answered it so i really appreciate all you did an excellent job so i think you know it may not be perfect but if it's not we'll continue to work on it but i think you guys did a great great job so i want to thank you thank you uh miss walker so i just want to say from the people that were on there the board members do y'all you feel satisfied that this is definitely different than what we had before which was accountability which was um follow-up which was not just letting students just take the 50 and not come to school right right yeah this gives them an opportunity to as mr mcmana said to go through

134and look at you know and talk to the parent and get people involved and and i i mean i've even i didn't see that last piece until just now but you know whether if we can't get up with a parent what do we do we just don't just drop it and say good luck we have other steps in place which is and these are the things that our teachers are doing anyway right so the majority of our teachers are doing this of course you know in every you know you have some that we have to remind these so these are the teachers things that our teachers are doing so um judy what's next well i this is so familiar this is what we've been doing for decades that's what i used to do in the

13590s so and that's what we recommended doing then so basically you know if you're taking like a semester course you're midway through then completes that 50 it gives you the chance to pull yourself back together exactly working with the parents and honestly that's going to be a hard pull please you know we're trying to get the parents involved that's going to make the whole world of difference so i mean what i see is what works and we've known it for decades and i'm glad to see we're going back to it i'm not sure what happened but i'm glad that it's actually going to put something in place that we know works mr mcmanus well i know i was the heartburn in this whole thing but um i'm really impressed i happen to walk in accidentally

136turned another week and y'all haven't been here so i kind of hung around um i think it's most important that the teachers and the principal because i've watched them i listen to them along with your guidance both of you this is what they wanted and they support it and so it includes accountability it includes all the stakeholders particularly the parents and the student has responsibility and they have chances to make that work and so i really really really thank you one thing i see missing is attendance she's got that coming okay so boyer you want to take um from here yeah sure i'd uh add my thanks to my fellow board members to our staff and i would ask that we adopt policy 3434 our attachments as amended before this board second we want to

137do them both at the same time is that all right okay um any more discussion good discussion just a clarification um this is going in the policy manual okay awesome you and the only thing that's different um from what we normally do 3400 has already been through policy we approved it moved it on um but they felt that 340 3400 r was necessary in order to make us so this is one that the policy committee has not seen um it's first to us um with that so i'm just so we're all clear but um it sounds like you know they've done a really good job in setting that up all right so um mr clark would you please call the roll miss justice yes mr mcmanus yes miss walker yes miss adams aye mr wildebore

138aye mr bullier aye and miss crayville aye okay so that passes seven to two i mean seven to zero thank you so much thank you thank you for your work folks so this has been awesome okay so um next up on our agenda is um mr boyer policy 4400 attendance thank you madam chair yes this is another one we've been dealing with since coven and i think we are ready to bring forward this policy it went through our policy committee and i will turn it over to miss barnum and thank you very much do you want me to go through some highlights of this okay yeah please okay um the the main part of the change in 4400 we'll move to the red line which is section e there's not much red there's a lot

139of blue okay so so to be read that that's okay my copy is red but it's as long as it is lined that's all that matters so we'll go with the blue line just making sure we're reading the same yep okay all good not okay oh all good um so instead of having section e as makeup work you can um still see yes you can still see the lining of the document this section goes into elementary and middle school requirements with regard to attendance um the main focus here is we we also know that a principal or designee can request a conference regarding attendance at any time where attendance becomes a concern to them but specifically um we know that chronically absent students are absent 10 or more of the school year so we have

140to really focus on keeping our students from being chronically absent that has a detrimental effect on their academic performance we also know that we have options within [Music] for any academic or attendance interventions through multi-tiered systems of support or mtss process or framework it's not really a process it's a framework we also know that consistent with our practices continued absenteeism can result in notify notification to department of social services juvenile court or district attorney office through if we find that our families aren't cooperating with our attendance requirements and that's consistent with general statute compulsory attendance law while we know that compulsory attendance doesn't address arriving late or early dismissal we know that those needs or any excessive tardiness or not having timely consistent attendance can also be handled through our ntss process now our high

141school requirements again we understand that we are focusing on having our students with us more than 90 of the school year because 10 chronically absenteeism is is certainly the the mark for us here's our procedure for high school and this is under number two um yep following procedure will be implemented each semester we have a process for first and second absence makeup work is assigned as deemed appropriate all makeup work is completed within a reasonable amount of time then we go to third through tenth absence again a makeup work is assigned as deemed appropriate reasonable amount of time if absences are consecutive we need to be looking into why that student is absent and what support they might need maybe there's a health condition or some other type of need the student or family is

142having parents are notified after the third sixth and tenth absences again consistent with compulsory attendance law now here's the part that's really important again utilize our team of teachers and administrators to be to provide input on this to give us their guidance their their feedback their input eleventh absence for grades nine through twelve for a student who misses more than ten days in a semester shall not be awarded course credit except by determination of the principal or designee but that is only upon careful review of the students records with a panel of individuals that include that student their parent or guardians the teacher of the course or if it's multiple courses the teachers of the courses and any other appropriate support staff such as an exceptional children's chairperson or multi-tier systems of support coordinator so

143anybody else that is helping with wrap around supports for that student needs to be involved in that discussion so keeping in mind until that panel meets that student shall not be awarded credit but then that principal and team or principal designee or team are going to come together when total absences lawful or unlawful exceed 10 per semester further documentation may be will be required and again we want to make sure that we're offering incentives for perfect attendance as well but as you can see that um that part on makeup assignments has been included in the prior sections so i want to make sure i say a team of teachers have provided specific feedback and student support services will continue to provide guidance regarding implementation at the school level so i don't know if you have

144any questions or comments miss justice uh yeah for the absences it says here that 10 days you're going to have a panel convened what if they're excused absences i mean honestly i've had sick children before they were legitimately sick why you know why do we if they make up their work why do we have to have a i'm just asking i was determined that we should have a panel put together if it's legitimately excused and the child's messed up their work so it was determined that the panel still needs to come together to make sure that there's not any missing supports needed for that student so it doesn't necessarily mean that that there's going to have to be new information provided but the team did determine that our recommendation was that panel still needs to

145come together because that student missed valuable instructional time in the classroom they may not have another option but the team needs to come together to determine if there are any missing resources for that student and family given that they have situations causing them to be absent that much it was really a support structure at that point okay all right and i mean that's really valid just having taught high school students in regular times and knowing illnesses yeah work any other comments questions hey mr bullier uh yeah i just asked for a recommendation to uh or a motion to adopt the policy adopting policy 4400 attendance second by mr mcmanus um any more discussion okay mr clark oh miss justice i honestly i'm just who makes up this panel because i'm just concerned about extra work

146when you've got i'm just using an example say you've got a child legitimately say they have i don't know chronic asthma or something like that and they constantly do work and they're not behind but you're still going to have a panel of 10 people come in that's going to be taking valuable time from they're already doing 10 000 things um that just i'm just trying to understand why that needs to happen if the parents have already been notified and everybody's working together i know that you're talking about supports but there's i think there's probably quite a few position situations like that just from having worked with kids with chronic illnesses go ahead um did you want to jump in on an answer um i want to try to figure out which part of that to

147answer okay um in the determination of who makes up the the panel of course it's the student the parent teacher and any other appropriate support staff along with the administrator for a student who um has maybe an individualized health plan they already have a medical condition um if that student is missing that that instructional time i will say that the team discussed really that it would be still beneficial to have that team come together and determine if there was any additional resource that could be identified to support them and and maybe curb some of the absences um even if they were determined necessary but maybe some accommodations can be put in place to allow the student to be in attendance more maybe not some things are absolutely out of everybody's control but this was the

148recommendation of the panel but it was just these folks mr mcmanus i was just going to say i i really like like this and really really appreciate it because i think it has accountability and expectations and the teachers and the principals again they don't make it work because it was their input and they answered your question is every child no one would beat you i'm going to say well they've you know they've been sick for a long time at work they'll be called in yeah and they'll be established where they are with their academics they don't get any further behind oh and i understand that i'm just thinking of extra work and we'll just everybody will be there together to discuss it's the i believe absolutely mr clark would you call the role please all

149right the amendment is to accept policy 4400 as presented i mean the motion sorry miss justice yes mr mcmanus yes miss walker yes miss adams aye mr wildebore aye mr bullier aye ms cradle yes okay so that passes um seven to zero thank you thank you thank you for the work and please um commend your team because that has been a long one coming too okay next up on our agenda um we have um oh mr oh you're going sorry no no you're good you stay he's just gonna introduce you thank you madam chair at our june policy committee meeting uh the committee discussed amending existing policy 3540 and in particular a parent's choice to opt in versus opt out their students participation in the sex education portion of the health curriculum during that meeting

150committee recommended including the words and safety in the title of the policy the committee is in favor of amending the policy for the attached red redline version and i will turn it over to miss faison to discuss those changes and answer any questions okay so as stated we have added and safety in our title we also included that this is beginning in seventh grade but it ends in the ninth grade we also incorporated the two classes that we offer sixth through eighth because fifth grade we have just one class but in sixth through eighth our parents actually have a choice and the biggest things biggest thing that we're asking and the biggest change with this policy is in fifth through eighth grade parents will have to choose to opt in to the courses and one

151of the things that we want to point out is they have a choice in sixth and eighth grade they have a choice between stepping stones or um my life so paris would actually not only opt in but then they will choose which are the courses that the parents i mean their child would actually participate in of course you know in ninth grade it is part of our health and pe course that the students are um receive the reproductive system they can parents can opt out of that particular aspect of health and pe just that component so we are leaving that the same so we want it in fifth and eighth grade fifth through eighth grade that parents make this election not only because of the age of the student but also because they have choices

152in sixth and um sixth through eighth grade but in high school there would be an opt-out because this is already a state requirement and with scheduling purposes so i'll take any questions and miss newman is here as well she had me sorry thank you any questions miss justice um and these i've had some comments from the audience they can't hear you so could you pull your microphone up to your mouth oh sorry about it sorry about that okay um so right now presently it's an opt-out program presently yes between the sixth and eighth grade yes and five through fifth through eighth grade is presently opt out and we want to make it opt-in to give parents more of a choice when that fifth through eighth grade yes okay um i'm not sure how that gives

153i mean they should have a choice one way or the other it sounds like um okay i'm just trying to clarify that yes any other comments okay um do i um move to uh adopt the policy amended is there a second second um any more discussion okay mr clark would you please call the roll miss justice yes mr mcmanus yes miss walker yes miss adams aye mr wildebore i'm going to say because of the as i said before i think it needs to be opt in all the way around so i'll say no mr bullier aye ms craybill aye okay so that passes six to one thank you okay thank you thank you for the work on that as well okay so next up on our agenda is new business we don't have any yay

154um the so next up would be well let's go through um committee reports um i didn't ask anybody you know to do that so we're we have none of those correspondence we have none of those announcements i'm going to go ahead and just read these announcements um the following are meetings in which the board of ed board members are participating the policy committee will meet on tuesday july 19th at 9 00 a.m here in the board of education center the board of education town hall meeting will be held tuesday july 19th beginning at 5 p.m and ending at 7 p.m purple war policy in the board of education center um august the the august regular board meeting will be held on tuesday august the second beginning at five here in the board of education center

155okay so now that that brought us back to the um second closed session do i hear a motion to go into closed session pursuant to the the reasons for first closed session okay okay first in a second um all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay um there will be no more business when we come back except to adjourn just so everybody knows uh why did we have to do i'm ready to go um we are back in um in open session next on our agenda is a german do i hear a motion to adjourn second time all in favor say aye aye aye pose okay we are journey you