NHCS Board of Ed. Regular Meeting | June 7th, 2022

001i'm good over here oh yes josh can we move oh ready okay um good evening everyone the june 20 20 the june 2022 regular meeting in the board of education is called to order miss bowie will you please call the roll good afternoon stephanie crabill here stephanie walker here stephanie adams here nelson boyer here judy justice here hugh mcmanus here and pete wiltobora present okay so welcome to the new hanover county board of education's june regular meeting thank you all for joining us in person um or in our remote viewing audience we value and appreciate your interest and participation and advocacy on behalf of all new hanover county students and staff as usual we have a packed agenda um you will note the estimated times of each topic on the agenda that you found at

002the front um as a courtesy to and respect for the time of my fellow board members the new hanover county school staff and to the community at large um i want to stick to these times as closely as i can so that we can keep our discussion focused and on task you can watch the countdown clock up in the right hand corner of our screen so you can see how we're doing with our time if it is the will of the board and we do not finish some discussions tonight because of our time limitations then we can always discuss finish the discussion at another meeting i also ask that each of us do our part to contribute to a successful and non-stressful meeting by treating each other with dignity and respect throughout this meeting no

003matter what our thoughts and feelings are about an issue or even a particular person or group our board needs to remain focused on completing its governance work necessary for students and staff and schools to be successful as we work through the agenda i would like to reiterate that not every topic or change discussed tonight must be said in policy in order to achieve the desired outcomes and that consensus agreements are always acceptable disruptions to our meetings 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 rather just coming courtesy and professional courtesy in action that said for general statute 143-318-17 people who are disrupting the meeting will be asked to leave if this happens those people can view the remainder

004of the meeting via live stream on new hanover county schools tv and on the new hanover county schools youtube channel before we get started i'd like to ask everyone to go ahead and silence their phones right now so that we don't get stuck with those calls i'd also like to take to pause for a moment of silent reflection in honor and remembrance of the 21 souls who died and the 17 who were injured during the horrible shooting at robb elementary school in uvalde texas just two weeks ago we want to share our peace and prayers and condolences in solidarity with those families their friends fellow students and educators and the community members who are left to pick up the pieces and also with our students families and educators and community and those across the country

005thank you moving into board business is there a motion to accept the agenda move to approve the agenda okay is there a second second okay any discussion [Music] okay all in favor say i i any opposed great okay so now moving on to our invocation i'd like to welcome to the podium um is it going to be in person i'm sorry um reverend george holland i'm sorry sorry rabbi george holland at bate hillel messianic synagogue thank you madonna master of the universe our heavenly father we ask that you bestow upon us today the spirit that you have given us and let your wisdom prevail among each one of us i ask you lord to be with each one of the members of the board of education and give them wisdom and how to decide on

006the various situations that come before them and i ask you to help us as people to accept those decisions in and everything we do ask that your will be done on earth as it is in heaven in yeshua's name amen amen thank you thank you very much okay next national anthem we have um rising 10th grader tanaya tune we'll sing our national anthem oh say can you see by the dawn's early light once whose broad stripes and bright stars were so gallantly streaming and the rocket red glare the bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that our flag was still there oh said us vans are spangled land of the free and the home the will somebody give that girl a slice of pizza because she certainly earned it please join me in

007reciting the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all now the all right so next on our agenda is recognition and introductions um so first um the we are going to introduce our kate fear board of trustees appointee i'm looking around the room over there oh okay thank you didn't sweep yet last week the new hanover county board of education conducted interviews for our appointing to the cape fear community college board of trustees per our board policy 2660. we had outstanding candidates as per our usual but one candidate rose to the top he is a local man from a family of educators and education advocacy a former public school

008teacher as well as a higher education instructor as a consultant he has written and delivered specific training programs for large corporations and small businesses alike and is very committed to workforce development opportunities for our students and for our community he is also involved in several non-profit organizations please join me in congratulating mr ray funderbunk iii as the new hanover county schools 2022 appointee to the cape fear community college board of trustees his term begins on july 1st 2022 and runs through june 30th 2026. so mr thunderbolt go ahead and stand up [Applause] okay so next i'm going to turn the recognitions over to caress clegg from our communications department good evening madam chair vice chair members of the board of education and dr faust we have a couple recognitions who were not able to be

009in attendance today so i want to start the evening off by recognizing them our first recognition is our blue ocean competition winner the blue ocean high school entrepreneurship competition is the most pretty prestigious pitch competition for high school students in the world it is a virtual entrepreneurship competition that attracts the very best high school age entrepreneurs from all over the world every year individuals or teams pitch their innovative business concepts for thousands in cash prizes congratulations to ella king student at isaac bear early college high school for her work on millennia battery she won second place in the competition and a 750 cash prize if you have not yet i encourage you all to go on our new hanover county schools facebook her video is up on there for you to see her pitch idea

010and we congratulate ellen our sec our second um recognition who is in it who is not in attendance tonight is miss delores overby principal at wrightsboro who recently completed the distinguished leadership and practice program a year-long leadership development program for practicing school principals from all regions of the state the program is is designed and provided by the north carolina principals and assistant principals association and sponsored by the north carolina alliance for school leadership development congratulations miss overby the following um attendees are in attendance tonight and we would like to start by recognizing the bradley creek battle of the book bradley creek competed against teams from the from seven counties to win the regional battle of the books championship this is the first time a new hanover county elementary school has participated at the regional level

011at this time join me in recognizing and congratulating members of the team that are with us tonight we have coach kristen kelly annette jansen and students ben gainer amelia kraxa and jennings kakoski [Applause] i had the opportunity to be the moderator of their of their time so i got to watch them two times when they were competing locally and regionally and it'd be very exciting to watch our hometown folks excellent [Music] next up we would like to recognize our rock-a-mee winners roccome is a non-profit organization that exposes minority students to stem annually they host a large event called the jamboree to provide middle and high school students with a platform to compete in 15 engineering challenges gain exposure about six local engineering companies and learn about four local colleges this year the district is pleased

012to recognize the nhga students who placed in their competitions this year first up we have eli smith jalen bowie [Applause] mao corin atwood [Applause] cohen locklear [Applause] and adrian gaines [Applause] also winners but not in attendance with us tonight were jade jared and bocan amir johnson angel tran isaiah hunter caleb robles daniel mims and jackson saunders congratulations to these individuals new hanover county schools is excited to announce the 20 students selected to attend nc governor school the governor's school of north carolina is a five-week summer residential program for high school students integrating academic disciplines the arts and unique courses the curriculum focuses on the exploration of the most recent ideas and concepts in each discipline students are selected to attend through a competitive district and state process after being nominated by their school congratulations to

013the following 20 students julian hill from hoggart high school tabitha lack from hoggart high school [Applause] micah mcquisten from ashley high school shannon parks from laney high school [Applause] jade payton from c-tech emery radford from new hanover high school and timothy shibley from hoggard high school also attending governor's school but not in attendance with us this evening is megan brosnan melanie carr anna scott davis leah field ariane foreman tessa hardison sean hessen sahil patel stephanie perez elizabeth rose claire sandusky ava sawyer and ezra heinberg that concludes our recognitions for the evening thank you to all of our students well that is about as exciting we can as we can get you all enjoy your summer away at governor's school okay so um next up is some administrative introductions with dr chris barnes usually people leave

014until i start talking but yeah so we uh appointed four new principals last month and we brought them here to introduce them to you i want to start with inviting christy tennis brown to come up christy tennis bound is currently the assistant principal at hoggard high school has served as an exceptional children's teacher and i wanted her to have a chance to say hello hey good evening thank you for the opportunity um to be the principal at elementary school i'm currently out of high school so i'm excited to go back to those little people that i used to teach a few years back so thank you for the opportunity [Applause] next up i'd like to invite danny little danny is currently a principal at princess anne high school in virginia beach and he's retiring from

015virginia and coming down here to be in charge of laney high school so damn good evening i want to thank you for this opportunity i am very excited to join the staff at laney but most importantly the staff here at new hanover county i hope that i can share my prior experiences with you and that together we can continue to excel with student achievement thank you again for this opportunity to become a bot thank you next up we have sarah buchanan sarah currently is the assistant principal at noble middle school and has also been an assistant principal at williston and she will be taking over at ogden elementary thank you so much for this opportunity i'm a graduate of new hanover county schools from hoggard high school and mr mcmanus was my principal um so

016this has come full circle my family is here tonight i made them get dressed up so i have to give a shout out [Music] so my husband stephen is actually a principal in pender county and then i have a son who just graduated and is headed to nc state he's a graduate of laney and then my other two boys are also students in the county so i'm just thrilled i live in that community i know the families my own child is going to be in fifth grade at ogden so i am just thrilled over the moon thank you so much for this opportunity and last but not least i'd like to turn your attention to the screen and introduce you to debbie debra calvert debbie is an experienced principal from maryland and is coming down

017here to work with us as well debbie can you hear us i can absolutely um hello to everyone thank you i want to thank everyone for allowing me to join your meeting virtually tonight i appreciate as everyone has mentioned the opportunity to become a member of the new hanover county team and i'm certainly looking forward to achieving the superintendent's vision over the next several years so thank you very much for the opportunity thank you [Applause] thank you dr barnes that's always one of the highlights of these june meetings is meeting our new some of our newest employees and walking them too and so i hope our beach community out does virginia beach communities so and it will so okay thank you um next up the superintendent report dr faust sure sure first i want to

018start with um thanking all the parents and um students for last week we had and last week and week before we had high school graduations and getting to celebrate with all of the students as a parent of a graduate i understand it was probably one of the most sad and happy feelings that i've had that is what we prepare kids for is for them to graduate and and even i was sharing with um my my wife and my daughter's like i don't know what i'm going to be when i when you walk across the stage and i was in work mode so i had to go back and watch the video so i'm sure when we drop her off in college it'll be a totally different type of experience um i'll say for me and

019not for her but just knowing what it takes for to get a student from kindergarten through high school i applaud parents um because it's a lot it's a lot with all of the things that they can do and what you want and what you just you know you have to help them um reason uh but we made it we made it we made known still that you're you're until how many that we made it across but um we did it um what i really want to talk about um is also our hiring retention we have been talking about hiring retention and our district is doing a beautiful job i have to commend our hr department i have to commend our recruiters i have to commend our employees who are actually giving recommendations and telling us

020hey this is someone that i would love for us to come and work here so one of the things i want you to to know is that at a certified staff we're 96 fully staffed of the 21 95 so 2195 certified staff we are um and this is the beginning of june um and we are only we only have four percent that are that are not hired and one of the the tasks that i had i've been sharing with hr is that we hire early um your best candidates are early and we want to make sure that we can get those individuals here um making sure that we can get them into our pd we can acclimate them to our district and so kudos to to that um the other part is the classified staff

021so we're 94 police staff um out of the 1413 um we are we have 90 uh vacancies and then something that was really really big um if you do a lot of research and study research as i do um i will say that i am a math junkie um statistics all that good stuff i love it um i can't say that about everyone but i love it my dissertation was in quality i did qualitative analytics and those type of things um sbs of any sbs fans i mean we're okay i'll put my hand down yeah beginning teachers um we retain 90 of our beginning teachers and so if you know anything about the beginning teachers that's your your um three day your one to three years one five years it's tough it's tough because individuals

022do leave but we were able to retain 90 of our individuals we have 11 schools right now with zero certified vacancies 11. that's awesome that's awesome that deserves an implant um [Applause] we have 18 schools with one certified vacancy just one that's also good now these are the bragging rights um new the district vacancy comparisons because we wanted to take a look and see what were districts doing around us what did it look like and so new hanover county of course we did ours at 24 500 students we have um 169 total vacancies onslow county 27 300 students they have 319 vacancies right now pitt county 23 400 students they have 287 vacancies right now of brunswick county 12 500 students they have 119 vacancies and pinter county 9 700 students they have 173 thank

023you hr for the work that you're doing continue to do the great work and we will continue to celebrate [Applause] okay thank you okay so since we've last met the board of education celebrated the 2022 teachers and principles of the year we are honored to have certified and accepted for high school graduation over 2 000 students in nine separate ceremonies we also celebrated with fifth graders and eighth graders as they prepared to transition to the next levels in their school career the board has also had the opportunity to hear from student leaders about their interest in becoming officially involved in their education by using their individual and collective student voice to advocate for themselves and their peers we are truly excited for where this opportunity will take them and will take us june is national

024pride month since 1970 people have organized events and activities between june 1st and june 30th to celebrate the freedom to be themselves and to bring an end to stigma stereotypes and discrimination in this month and in every month new hanover county school celebrates and values each and every one of our students and staff and we remain committed to supporting the dignity and equity of our lgbtq plus community so that concludes my report next up we have a report from the gifted advisory council i'm an annual report dr faison and her her person in the know good evening board members superintendent faust staff members and visitors my name is cara johnson and i'm the chairperson for the new hanover county schools gifted advisory council i've had the privilege to serve on the council since 2014 and

025i've worked with the other members to support and advocate for our county's robust gifted program i'm a trained educator including an educational background in gifted education however my role on on the council has been that of primarily that of a parent of three students who have been served in the county's gifted education program although the important work of the gifted advisory council was unfortunately paused during the coveted pandemic i am happy to report that we have become begun meeting again and working to support the excellent work of our gifted specialists and to educate parents and others involved in local gifted education tonight i would like to highlight some of the council's current work and plans as well as ask for your continued support of this important population of students the north carolina legislative statute known

026as article 9b mandates identification and services for aig students stating specifically that these students require differentiated education services beyond those ordinarily provided by the regular education program this legislation also requires local education agencies to develop plans related to gifted education which are rewritten and reviewed every three years in this year of revision our council of parents community members and educators reviewed the drafted plan and provided important input and feedback to the county's writing team to strengthen and improve key aspects of the plan we were happy to support this important revision we are working to diversify our council through publicly advertising opportunities for community members to serve on the council and are pleased to report that this year for the first time we added student representatives from our local high schools these students bring a critical

027voice and perspective to our meetings and we are thankful for their service as a council we recommend and fully support the continued funding of one full-time aig specialist at each new hanover county schools elementary and middle school and also urge the consideration of supporting a full-time gifted specialist at each traditional high school although each school has a unique and diverse population of students all schools serve both identified gifted students and high achieving students and the elementary specialists also serve all k to third grade students through the important nurturing program this nurturing program is especially critical to continue to identify those students with potential and often those from underrepresented populations that may not be identified solely through traditional testing in a modern climate where equity and diversification are key components to thriving and successful school communities

028the council believes that reducing and removing services that gifted specialists currently provide within schools is the wrong direction for our county eliminating positions and asking schools to share specialists will negatively impact the number of students that our aig specialists are able to serve what those impasse impacts most certainly felt strongly in the k to third grade nurturing programs again we urge you to reconsider their proposed budget with which eliminate some of these critical gifted specialist roles and instead consider the impact the specialists have on every student within a school as well as the critical services they provide to this unique and important population of students at the high school level specialists are in some cases test was serving over 800 identified students which as you can imagine is not ideal when considering how to best

029meet the individual and unique needs of these students the council believes maintaining a gifted specialist at each school and providing a full-time specialist at each high school is key for implementing our plan and continuing to serve our gifted community in the most effective way as a council we look forward to the 2022-2023 school year and increase our efforts to monitor the gifted program and advocate for our gifted students and students with high potential we also look forward to increasing our efforts to educate and partner with parents and community members about the unique needs of these students thank you for your time and thank you for your support of new hanover county schools gifted education program thank you ms johnson we appreciate that report and we will that is required as part of the approval of

030our aig plan later on this evening so thank you very much for doing that for us okay so um next up is call to the audience and so let me get there so thank you to all who have signed up to share your comments and concerns with the board tonight as we have stated before we welcome your engagement um from the school community and from the community at large there are several items we need to cover before we get started with call to the audience poor per board policy 2310 the board allows up to one hour of public comment for call to the audience please speak on the topic that you signed up for on your call to the audience sign up the public has asked this board in our school system to be more

031transparent and truthful and we are respectfully asking that you do the same please refrain from using profanity derogatory language and other slurs in your remarks or you will have to be asked to sit down and perhaps leave individuals may stand with at their seats in in support of a speaker or stand alongside the podium while that individual speaks but always must be kept clear at all times for fire code regulations no one at any time is allowed to approach the diocese we must respect the rights of individuals who have come here to address the board as well as those who have come here to listen and be more informed audience members should refrain from yelling out and or responding to comments made by speakers during call to the audience violators will be given one warning

032and if this if the behavior continues then they will be asked to leave as a reminder saying again disruptions by any person or persons at a public meeting will be subject to action including removal from the meeting per board general statute 143-318-17 so with that um let's go ahead and call up our first speaker um christina mercier i'm sorry but i need to get my glasses on and i need to get a copy of the list so please go ahead good evening my name is christina mercier and i'm the current president of the new hanover county association of educators i'm here tonight to speak about the budget proposal you sent to the county commissioners for over a month i encouraged members and non-members alike to contact the commissioners to motivate them to adopt the full

033budget as requested we aren't required to do this but we believe in the power of public education and we know when it is fully funded students learn for some students this is access to wider variety of courses in accelerated learning and for others it is access to basic needs both are equally important regretfully i have to say that from conversations i've had with people who contacted the commissioners most got no response or a response from one commissioner that was entirely unhelpful and discouraging my question is this why are the county commissioners so disassociated from the needs of the school system why are they insisting that funding the schools would mean an increase in taxes many entities must appeal to them for funding why is it the public schools who bear the burden of being the

034reason for the tax increase and right now you're probably thinking why isn't she asking the county commissioners these questions this is my answer you are the entity who applied for your budget to be funded did you advocate with the commissioners to fully fund the budget have you invited them to visit schools are you facilitating regular meetings between the commissioners and educators and support staff are you creating an ongoing working relationship between the commissioners and the school system or is there an adversarial relationship except when it's time to submit a budget request every month i either attend or listen to the board meetings and i hear the public and the board speak on a variety of topics that are really false flags either topics that cannot be solved at the local level or topics that have

035been decided decades ago by legal precedents like removing books from school libraries tonight i call on you to be full-time advocates for public education create working relationships with those who fund education be present in the schools and always be motivated by what is best for the students you serve thank you thank you sandy aisles yesterday the star news headline said seclusion in a school closet the story was sparked after a father spoke about his son's experience with seclusion at the may board meeting the story explains how a five-year-old autistic child was secluded for minor offenses such as walking backwards down the hall and taking a pen from a ta how many times did your child walk backwards down a hall or take an item from someone did you lock them in a closet i would

036hope not as these are normal five-year-old behaviors the child certainly was not dangerous for over a year i'd asked you to investigate the use of seclusion in new hanover county schools to change our policy and adopt proactive solutions i even sent you a copy of a civil rights complaint from 2012 the ocr those er said students were placed in seclusion for disruptive and disrespective conduct this appears to be inconsistent with state law and district policy end quote 10 years later we are talking about the same concern ms barnum stated that we can end seclusion and that it can be traumatic now the burden is on you to make this happen if we can do better we must do better dr faust last month you mistakenly stated there was nothing else new hanover county schools could

037do about seclusion and you essentially dared the board to end the practice why did you fail to share the numerous alternatives such as a contract with lives in the balance which unlike the use of seclusion is evidence-based and is effective at solving behavior problems tonight the board must change our policy to require written parent consent and end the practice completely for the 2023-2024 school year this can be done and must be done we have solutions it is up to you to enact them thank you thank you miss owls pepper oh loretta stackhouse [Applause] good evening thank you for the to the principals teachers teachers aides counselors and staff who have worked diligently over the past two to three years to greatly reduce the usage of seclusion and restraints since the 2018-2019 school year the results

038reflect proof that commitment to training and use of alternatives to seclusions and restraints can make a difference now is time to change the policy the policy needs to be changed to reflect what is really happening and making sure that the parents are kept knowledgeable of the process i support ending the use of seclusion rooms by the school year 2023-2024 let's stop traumatizing our children thank you [Applause] evening i'm pat bradford i signed up for the budget and i will speak to that but like the predecessors who have spoken i urge you to stop blocking children in closets stop stop traumatizing them you have no idea how many years of therapy these children are going to need for what you have done to them you really need to do this tonight you need to do it

039for the start of the school year not put it off three years not study it any longer you need to do it but the the budget you had some disappointing news with the county commission i expected it as you figure out how to do this budget don't eliminate staff it's so demoralizing for those who are currently working wondering am i going to get a pink slip or not it further erodes morale and it further erodes the students opportunities to learn now if you have programs as dr faust had mentioned that you have people positions with no program that's another whole deal folks are actually working every day working with our students don't cut those positions find another way thank you thank you ms bradford melissa mason [Applause] hello thank you my name is melissa mason

040i'm running for the school board and today i'm demanding an answer what is the status of the investigation into the wilson seclusion case last month we learned that scott wilson's son was secluded 27 times at masonboro elementary for 1961 minutes which averages to approximately 73 minutes each instance that's in case you didn't know over an hour according to cpi standards this should have triggered an investigation we also learned that the wilson boy who suffers from autism and adhd was being secluded for disciplinary reasons it's a clear violation of county policy which states seclusion is only to be used when a student poses an imminent threat of harm to himself or others his seclusions were not properly documented as required by law a false report was presented to this board claiming there had been no seclusions

041during the 20th 2018-2019 school year at masonboro the school district also claimed in response to a records request that mason bro no longer has a seclusion room but records show that eight seclusions have been reported there this year under general statute 115 c 307 115 c 288 and 115 c 276 making false reports is grounds for immediate termination when are we going to see some accountability are the teachers and staff responsible for the seclusions being investigated or disciplined what about the cpi trainer what about the principal what about the superintendent this is just one example of the systemic abuse being perpetrated by our schools against our children thank you miss mason leslie posey good evening adolf hitler pol pot kim jong-un joseph stalin these dictators all started their march to power in the same way

042banning and burning books that disagreed with their agenda those who desire power fear literacy new or different ideas there is a small but vocal community today who are trying to exert this control they don't want children reading books that broaden their minds help understand their peers who are different or help those children who are different understand themselves virtually all challenged books are about or by people of color or members of the lgbtq community apparently some people do not want their children exposed to these books or ideas in the 1982 supreme court case island trees school district versus pico the court said quote students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate and such rights may be directly and sharply implicated by the removal of books from the

043shelves of a school library end quote to give you an example based on current arguments in the country if mrs smith does not want johnny to read my name is ruby bridges because she's afraid of its content fine it is her right to tell the school that johnny may not read that book but based on the pico decision mrs smith does not have the right to say that my child may or may not read that book so remember this the supreme court has specifically ruled that books may not be banned from school libraries most of us do not want to live in a dictatorship and dictatorships begin with banned books thank you miss posey barbara [Applause] incidents isn't it this is good [Music] sorry just a moment can you see the box this box represents

044new hanover county schools and it's possible positive messaging genuine fluff is worth touting and can be festive fluff is harmful if it conceals serious problems people can sometimes be like glass they look pretty and seem fine but are fragile they can chip or shatter into pieces sometimes people ask for help but who's listening messages are necessary to connect people if there are no messages sent or received there is no connection if messages are lost or gummed up people can be seriously harmed this has led to the chaos that you have inherited chaos continues the public becomes agitated and vocal regardless of how much fluff you pile on you must look and sort it out to figure out how you came up with this mess since the seven of you have been on one board advocates

045and victims continue to ask for help 172 people have spoken during calls to the audience some are black some are white some wear pink somewhere blue some are neutral they have sent you 425 messages 27 kindergartners waitlisted for the spanish immersion program continue their education your time is up i'm sorry thank you um next up yolanda hernandez [Applause] okay the um merritt blaylock merritt's he's here i've been a wilmington resident for 17 years but this is my first appearance before the board and my comments tonight are about policy 4302r so the seclusion data from last month showed that schools that participated in the behavioral leadership foundation's training had a dramatic decrease in use of seclusion rooms over the past four years and i infer from this that there are indeed positive behavior methods that can

046be used in place of seclusion rooms and i think the actual problem is funding and scheduling the training for the seven elementary schools that use seclusion more than once the past year i believe that you can change policy 4302r tonight and use next year to work with those seven schools and then close down all seclusion rooms for the 23-24 school year thank you for your time um before our next person comes up i'd like to remind you that if you are going to be standing in support of a person you need to come up to the podium and be with them or be standing out of the aisles thank you okay so next up is claire pasqualoni sorry if i've missed your name it's my first time thank you good evening it's my first time

047addressing the board of education i appreciate it i'm here because i was concerned about all the articles i've been reading in the newspaper about our community as a retired pediatric nurse i was alarmed to hear this recent story about the seclusion room i have had disruptive behavior patients seclusion is not the answer all the time and for this young family to have it occur 27 times was outrageous i hope you feel that outrageousness for that parent that child everything they will have to go through from here on we imprint every time we talk to our kids and i don't think that's the right message so i'm going to ask you to update i'm trying to read this i'm sorry um to update the um policy 4302 r we need to change it by this next

048school year by showing how we can deal with these disruptions in a more humane way the thing is even though we've just decreased the number of seclusion cases it's still totally unacceptable it's not getting the right answer to the problem if you do something 27 times without success you might try something else thank you [Music] good evening my name is karen o'keefe i've been a resident of wilmington for over 20 years i want to congratulate the board on rescinding out of school suspensions for children ages 7 and under i am speaking here today in op in opposition to the seclusion of children in our schools i support ending the use of seclusion rooms by the 2023-24 year which will give this school board the opportunity to find positive behavioral alternatives thank you gail major okay

049natasha two good evening allow me first to state that the statements i make are not reflective of my employer they are statements that come from a concerned citizen and a parent outraged american and the founding charter member of the new hanover county charter moms for liberty that will be launching at the end of this month however since our friends in the media made such a big deal out of it of me being escorted out of last month's meeting over broken rules of unwritten rules of decorum over speaking the two-minute time limit i think i'd like to share with you exactly what i did do for the city of wilmington and our citizens for 10 years eight years i was a wilmington firefighter and hazmat tech that's right i was one of the folks that suited

050up in the level 8 hazmat suit and responded to chemical biological radiological nuclear and explosive dangerous environments i may know something a little bit about personal protective equipment but i'm not here to talk about that either i'm just letting you know that i'm going to engage with this board on a monthly basis if not more to ensure that parental rights are insured they're protected and the parents don't have they have a voice that's all i have to say thank you [Applause] i'm here tonight to talk about the use of seclusion rooms in our schools last month dr faust gave you a choice the first option is to quote let the individuals who are in in these buildings every single day use their expert knowledge the other option he said is to stop doing it he

051said there's no other option i disagree these options are not mutually exclusive we can honor the expert knowledge of our educators and build upon it so they won't need to use seclusion rooms at all the behavior leadership foundation's training is a plan a plan that's already in place and there are at least over a half a dozen other programs that address the behaviors that we're all concerned about one program is from lives in the balance it's called collaborative and proactive solutions or the cps model and i am certain that miss barnum can answer questions tonight about this humane and compassionate program stop putting children in padded closets start treating all of our students with dignity and respect change policy 4302r let ms farnum and miss cole help schools implement the plan and the use of

052seclusion rooms starting with the 2023-2024 school year thank you [Applause] why are pornographic and sex books being allowed in our public schools what person or what people approve of this material to be put into our public schools who thinks exposing our children to this material is a good idea i came across a particular book in my alma mater and it reads this take her out back we boys figured then hand on the titties put it in her coin box put it in her cornhole the um mr shive help me out here are we allowed to read that kind of stuff i mean can we just excuse me excuse me i am talking with our legal counsel excuse me only you're not allowed to talk to the audience so i'm i think that that is lewd

053we already let another person read from a book that we didn't even have in our library and um i i didn't think we should do that either so i'm i'm would like to not allow excerpts you can skip the words and just say there's something in there well someone approved for this material to be put into our schools and i found it in my alma mater can i just read it excuse me only the speaker can speak not ask where the book is let's see whether it's actually in our library or not yes i'm going to address that in the speech thank you all i want to get resolved right this minute is that i would prefer us not to read explicit material we can we can deal with those issues and we will but

054if you would just skip the lewd words and we'll know that there's 10 lewd words in the passage that you're reading that's all i'm asking we do not need to have these words read we already allowed it once and i should not have that's insane excuse me ma'am if you don't be quiet you're going to have to leave ma'am ma'am all right i need you to sit down i need you to sit down they're standing in support they're taking away your time mr jeter jeter webb thank you for the correction all right go ahead okay so that can be okay anyways what i just read can be found on page 39 of the book called out of darkness that can be found at my alma mater new hampshire high school ashley high school and holly

055shelter middle school long story short the book is about anal sex i do not want our children reading about anal sex sex i want you people to focus on education i want you to teach some math english science biology athletics the whole nine yards etc etc this material should not be in our public schools it needs to be out so you want they want to they want them reading lgbt propaganda brainwashing marxism racist racist stuff but the cat in the hat was canceled by cancer culture please tell me how much senses that make that makes absolutely no sense no sense and then they want to ban this and they want to ban that but they want this brainwashing material about six to reading children as young as five kindergartners that is completely outrageous this material

056needs to be out of our schools and should not be in our schools schools we will change that and we will do everything in our bodies to fix that this garbage must go thank you mr jeter webb um robert tompkinson robert tompkinson debbie abram abel good evening my name is deborah abel and i'm a retired teacher i've watched with interest the movement this year of our of our students finding a way to have their voices heard i've read the posts watched the videos listened to the discussions on the edi committee and last week i had the honor of being here in person for the roundtable discussion of student voices i was blown away these students are so impressive they worked together so well they listened carefully and they responded thoughtfully they shared the mic they

057gave everyone an opportunity to share in a safe environment i didn't talk much i really just wanted to hear what they had to say i'm so excited about the opportunity for them to be an authentic part of this board of education they'll bring that missing element as stakeholders in their future their representation of the students of new hanover county has the potential of making this board so much more effective and relevant for the students that you were elected to serve i'm hopeful you'll you will allow these students representation on all your committees and a seat on this board the students that they represent deserve a place here and beyond that i hope you would allow them an authentic voice really listen and collaborate their perspective is so important the voices of all the students they

058represent are relevant to every decision that you make i look forward to hearing our student voices on your platforms thank you miss abel angie [Applause] a year ago we showed up to fight for inclusion for our trans students and the board actually passed policy 3620. is it possible that those students are more at risk now the bullying of our lgbtq plus students should not be tolerated as we have seen in our pride groups the misinformation that is being purposely spread is dangerous and the fact that the litigation team for the board is re-victimizing victims of sexual assault by forcing psyche vows to prove that victims of sexual assault are not traumatized discounting valuable testimony to protect pedophiles over students at the height of an election year it's a beautiful campaign slogan to say that campaign

059candidates support victims of sexual assault yet they oppose the federal law that protects them in title ix you can't do both dishonesty about a survey that has given us valuable information for preventing gender-based harassment and discrimination which includes sexual assault is contradictory if the district truly stands behind the progress that we have made with regard to title ix why are you complacent with lies that put our students at risk for once take a stand and protect students make a statement of intent by speaking the truth and refusing to tolerate oh my bad to tolerate attacks of sexual assault racist homo transphobic behavior i applaud the pride month recognition i do but those are just words grooming is when someone builds a relationship of trust and emotional connection with a child so they can manipulate exploit

060and abuse them example michael kelly it is not grooming to create a safe space for lgbtq plus students to learn upholding the federal law that protects students from being outed and compromising safety is not the same as holding secret meetings and indoctrination stop exploiting victims for personal gain educate yourselves fund title ix and edi and if you have a seat at the table use it to protect and do what's best for all students thank you miss caney [Applause] i'd like to cede my time to dane britt he was unable to sign up that's okay with y'all yeah he could sign up at the back you don't have to succeed your time huh i'm sorry he doesn't have to see this time she said okay he's going to see your so what do you want me

061to do you want me to just speak later in life and speak now or i'm confused i'm trying to let you run it go ahead all right let's go ahead and save your time that's fine but you said he can just speak at the end no yeah i was going to say you were allowed to sign up but you missed the sign up is that what happened so we did or because we didn't hit the number go ahead and six just go ahead and and gift your time and then we'll come back to you next month thank you sorry my name is dane britt as you know i've met a lot of you personally now i have a 501c3 nonprofit charity called stunt shows for kids inc [Music] we do shows at elementary schools private

062schools daycares anywhere that wants the show it's completely free to anywhere that that wants the show and we take messages of anti-bull uh bullying is where it started it most recently we've been doing get fit with dane britt dane britt motivational talks that we've been doing with kids and things like that like i said absolutely free to anyone who wants it i come in i do some motorcycle tricks there's a parkour team that does it with me it's absolutely an amazing show we've taken it all over the place and we've never had a single problem with it until we invited the new superintendent to one of our shows about two years ago so he was invited so that he could see at murray elementary where this show started how wonderful this show is and how

063the kids absolutely lose their minds and they remember the message i know this because i see these kids 10 12 15 years after they've seen me and they've gotten this message and they stopped me because they're working behind the counter at chick-fil-a or they're working behind the counter at lowe's foods and they say hey i remember what you told us about anti-bullying and it stuck with me this is the way this should be but it's not been that way i put on this show i invited him initially they told me i couldn't share videos of it on my uh my business page because i teach firearms to civilians to military to law enforcement i teach it to to all levels of it so it's not like something i'm just doing on the side this is

064something i do as a profession and we do fundraisers through this which benefits me being able to do these shows i um i can't stress enough that i've jumped through all the hoops that y'all told me to jump through outside of taking those videos down i've gotten the insurances that you told me to get and now it's going to you guys have come up with your insurance every time i've met what you told me to do the goal line has been moved at what point does this become out of control and and it becomes obvious to everyone else not just me that maybe your best interests are not necessarily in the kids but in voting for d's and ours that would be democrats and republicans thank you mr britt um [Applause] good afternoon i'm here

065today to gird and support the need for protecting the children in our schools as i walk into here today i see how there is only one point of entry for the public and there are multiple armed guards in the name of the sheriff's department just who is that security for and why are they here and not at the schools all right is that security for the staff in the building the public who surround me or for the select group before me right well everybody knows the answer to that and the proof is the simple fact that these guys weren't here half an hour before this meeting started okay schools need to be set up in a better defensive posture and teachers need to be able to defend their students and themselves if they see a

066need to a constitutional sheriff would agree with that and even offer the training now at the beginning of school last year or excuse me at the beginning of last year there was a shooting at new hanover school new hanover high school it's my understanding that julia bozeman wanted to give 362 million from the hospital sale to the school system for increasing security that was shot down and port city united was born a 37 million dollar social worker police force why not give two or three of those guys to walk the halls into schools all right just brainstorming here that's an idea changing gears there's been a cover-up culture concerning the michael kelly and peter frank debico for the last 20 years and now we have board members and insurance companies trying to deny justice for

067the victims of sexual assault and battery that brings us to the fingerprinting issue of the staff all right everybody needs to be fingerprinted in the system right not just new hires make that happen thank you okay that is the end of our call to the audience did anybody tell me your name are you yolanda i am okay go ahead thank you i'm here tonight to talk about the abuse of seclusion restraint in new hanover county schools but first remember that your own out of school suspension data showed that 18 percent of the elementary schools school children were african-american while this population represented only 60 percent of um represented 60 percent of suspensions thank god you finally changed that punitive policy well look at this seclusion data that miss varman shared last month this past school

068year there were 180 48 suspensions 99 of them were african-american students again 18 of the school population is african-american but they represent 67 percent of this is seclusions i'm asking you to vote tonight to change policy are end the use of seclusion rooms starting with the 20-25 school year that gives you all of the next school year to provide additional staffing resources and training to implement positive behavioral practices in our school buildings hopefully that will get that will address the disparate application of restraint policy this year's data shows that 52 of restraints were on african-american students this pattern is emerging that is emerging is very disturbing i request that you stop talking about equity and actually do something about it please thank you thank you very much okay well but now that does conclude our

069call to the audience um portion next up on our agenda is closed session do i hear a motion to move into closed session pursuant to let's see let me get to it all of the items listed on there to talk about personnel matters and other such matters as a journey client privilege move for closed session pursuant to the statutes okay is there a second a second all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed okay we are in closed session [Music] so today we've partnered with numerous adult allies within the county and within um local organizations also students from student equity teams and our student voice project as well as students who were simply interested from middle schoolers to high schoolers within the district first this morning we were explaining um what student voices um

070the goals that we're trying to achieve and the processes that we've already gone through to orchestrate this and this round table today and then we're going to use this afternoon to gather insight and recommendations and try to get a lot of help to form this policy that we're going to try to install later this summer within the board [Music] when i when i was walking in here i thought it would be a bunch of adults talking and hearing what they're saying what they're going to apply but also having the adults hearing what the students want to hear the concerns and their thoughts and ideas that they're actually taking consideration i feel like student voice project is really important because it helps reach out to different students from different schools that we didn't have the chance

071to talk to and our adults and leaders who actually are helping us run a county in our schools to hear each other out [Music] all of us are trying to push the same motive push the same idea and if we can not only get adults like counselors and teachers and not just students but if we can also get parents and community organizations to come together and help with this i feel like we can not only change the school but we can also change the community and the people in it [Music] i feel like we can not only change the school but we can also change the community and the people in it [Music] hi my name is tiffany johnson i am the school counselor at blair elementary so i have worked in various educational settings

072for over 14 years now a year and a half ago i decided to go back to school to become a counselor i want it to impact students in a different way than what i have in the past how's y'all's day going good good everything's going better very good i'm glad you all worked it out hey girlie i do see a positive reaction with the work that i've been doing with the students so like when i'm coming in the building or i'm walking throughout the building everyone's saying hey miss johnson hey miss johnson i have certain students who stop and they just do these little five-minute check-ins with me and then they're good so that's really fulfilling you know to come in and even to walk around the building and you know that the students know

073who you are and they and you also know that if they need you they're going to come to you you're okay come on come on you're okay dust itself off thank you queenie for helping hey squeezy how are you ready come on let's finish these last laps i get up every morning to come to blair to support our children i never wake up in the morning and say hey i don't want to come to work today oh i don't feel up to it i look forward to coming here every day and making a difference in each of these students lives are you excited [Music] hey my name is sean myhand i'm i work with the new hanover county schools technology department and today we are handing out devices at new hanover high school total we've

074got about 1500 devices probably more so the process is as follows we go to the classroom we get the devices ready we call it the student's name student comes get the device we have them sign their paperwork we put a label on their charger with a clear sheet over it hand them the charger hand on the laptop and make sure that they can sign into the device properly so these students are going to have these devices for pretty much the rest of their high school career it's amazing to think that we are able to provide them with the technology that some of them might not have outside of school this is going to be great because not only do they have access to the technology but it's also something they can take with them from

075school home so they can continue their work if there is something that they want to look at and they want to learn more about now they have the technology to continue to learn about those things so it's a great way for them to have access to resources that they might not otherwise have access to [Music] so today we are receiving instruments from some of our community partners and organizations national pawn is one of those and they've had a great relationship with us over the years we are accepting a number of instruments today a large number of instruments today that are going to be going into all of our schools to help our students uh mostly in our middle schools way back when i was in the sixth grade i wanted to play in the school

076band and it was a lot of money in my parents budget to rent a used instrument for me and so my mother was a great bargain shopper and she found a 15 corn at a yard sale and i played that all through high school and about 12 years ago i was walking through one of our stores and i noticed all these instruments hanging on the wall i thought to myself there's a lot of kids in the way worse position than i was and that we could do some good to give these instruments to the local middle schools where we have stores and they could allow kids that may not be able to play in the band to be able to play in the band i think this is a really great testament to the work

077we do here in new hanover county schools that we have community members that are so touched by the arts in their youth that they want to give back now to our arts so those relationships are very important to us and we're very happy to have this donation today i'd like to give a shout out to all the band geeks out in the community that have an old instrument in their garage attic basement closet they're not playing please go donate those because it's such a neat [Music] hi my name is candy robbins i'm the school social worker at castle hayne elementary school and i'm also the elementary lee school social worker for new hanover county schools how i got started my uncle who was teaching in new hanover county schools he taught for years we had

078a conversation and he was asking me what do i plan to do and i said i don't know he said have you ever thought about going into the school system and i said no not really and what he said was if you can change the life of one child or make an impact in the life of one child then you're doing your job and that just resonated with me and so it really got me looking into working into the school system and now i'm here all right keep acting my dear i hope to see you on the big screen one day in movies remember the little people okay i love looking at the faces of the students when i get to school i may get a cute little smile or a wave or a hey

079miss robbins or hey miss candy fist bump and that really makes my day when i come to the school and see that and also getting recognition from my colleagues working with different school social workers around the county i really love and enjoy doing that also you have a rabbit what's the rabbit's name link blink oh blink what color is your rabbit whether it's housing food you name it and we're here to help we are the change agents and we're trying to make a change in the lives of the families and students that we serve [Music] i'm a school social worker here with new hanover county schools and what we do daily is we try to connect with students and eliminate any barriers they're facing at school that can look like many different things so we

080have students that have barriers in the home and the school in the community and we try to identify what those barriers are and meet the student and the family where they're at we try to wrap around supports to ensure that the student can be successful at school because ultimately what where our goal is we want them to graduate high school and be successful either by moving on to college or gaining employment we work collaboratively with other schools as well we have social workers throughout the district elementary preschool middle school high school and we work with a lot of the same families on a daily basis so we're constantly collaborating and talking with one another about how we can best support our families i kind of fell into school social work it's a relatively new profession

081it's often unrecognized because a lot of people don't realize the impact school social workers have on our district but we definitely are um out in the community we hit the ground running we have some of the most hardworking social workers that i've ever worked with i started working in the social work field i worked in mental health community mental health and i saw a need in the schools where we could better support our families and really connect with them and work with with all the agencies involved so we work with other schools as i had mentioned community members individuals families we partner with lots of organizations in the community to eliminate any barriers that our families and students are facing school social workers really work to empower our students and in addition to empowering them

082we often bridge the gap between the school the home and the community and make sure that our students feel supported and they feel connected here at school hi i'm tammy brissel and i've been with new hanover county schools for 30 years the biggest thing i've learned in my career in education is that you have to be flexible things are ever changing curriculum is changing instructional practices are changing leadership is changing so you have to be flexible and go with the flow even recently with the pandemic there's always something changing and it's just very important to be flexible so one of the biggest things i think people can take away is to always have high expectations high expectations for yourself and high expectations for the students that's very important in education and also to be fair

083and open-minded i believe that i'm a very fair person and someone easy to talk to so i hope that's a takeaway and that people remember me for that and for being passionate about education for any new administrator i would think i would say the most important thing is to find your people find your friends find your colleagues that you could talk to you could collaborate with you could vent with it's so important to find those friends because we're kind of a one position we're a lonely position so having a cadre that you could count on that means it all i mean i've had the best cadres over the years the best colleagues that are family friends now hello my name is dr maria madison and i am retiring from the educational system after 31 years

084the greatest takeaway from being an educator over the last 31 years is the impact that i have made on students staff parents as well as the community over the last past weekend i had the opportunity to meet again two of my former students who are now going to be beginning teachers here in new hampshire county schools i believe in something that my sister gave me and i put it on my desk when i became principal it says live with passion love deeply and laugh out loud and as a an educator principal over the last couple of years loving your students loving your job is so important and if you love your job it will not seem like it's work at the end of the day everyone has the ultimate goal it's all about students and

085the impact that you make on them over time and if we continue to have that mindset as educators we will continue the journey of educating students and providing a quality education for them hi i'm sharon de charm and i've worked in education for about 28 years now i think the biggest thing especially these last few years is expect the unexpected i think we've all been through that in the last few years and be flexible those are the big things because any day can bring about anything that makes you have to think quick on your feet the key thing that i've learned over the years being in principal is surround yourself with with strong leaders because you can't do this job by yourself you've got to have some good facts on your team to work alongside

086you come on guys let's go let's go let's get there i would hope that just remembering that all the decisions that have to be made to keep in mind that we're here for the students as far as working with leaders is to think outside the box and and be a good problem solver hi i'm dr krista holland and i'm retiring after 30 years in education as i reflect on my career i think one of the most powerful lessons that anyone can say that they've learned from me is that when you have a voice and an opportunity to be a voice for children and families for teachers and also for your colleagues you need to be bold enough to use it we cannot lead in fear as i reflect on my career i could say that

087i've learned a lot of lessons from working with children and working with teachers and working with my colleagues but i think one of the most powerful lessons is personal to work in this business you have to be resilient and resilience begins with putting yourself first sometimes so the most powerful lesson that i've learned is i need to put on my oxygen mask before i put one on anyone else you cannot lead others when your tank is empty i have one piece of advice and it would be to ask yourself this question at all times is this decision what's best for children or is it what's best for adults and if you can't answer 100 that the decision is best for children you need to make another decision grammarly helps you work more efficiently which makes

088accomplishing your work goals easier than hi it means everything it is a complete shock and a surprise that i am so appreciative and honored to be able to represent masonville elementary and the district as elementary educator of the year and it's just i'm blown away right now it means everything to me and i hope it means everything to them they deserve everything that they can get and it's just nice to see that i can kind of be a voice for them and advocate for them and help their voices be heard [Applause] this is a tremendous honor i can't um i can't hardly even put into words how i'm feeling right now i'm just so honored and humbled and everything i do i do for the kids and i'm here for them and help them be

089successful i'm just honored to be able to represent all of the amazing teachers and students that i work with and highlight the wonderful things happening at trash middle school because i couldn't do it without all of them we're one big family [Applause] yes this award has been um a crowning achievement to my career in engineering i um i always dreamt that i would one day be able to pass along what i learned in the career of engineering to the next generation and this this kind of like is a proclamation that i'm able to do it and do it successfully well i think even winning the ashley high school teacher of the year was a big affirmation and one that the students and my colleagues fed off of it put me in a category of the

090top tier teachers here at the school which i'm really proud of and my hope is that this continues to foster that much more goodwill amongst my colleagues and my students both present and future so lyceum academy was founded over 20 years ago by gordon massengill it's a program that was piloted in the middle of the state and then they brought it here the goal of the lyceum program is interdisciplinary learning it's getting our students involved across the subjects learning both inside and outside of the building we've been here at hanover for over 20 years we're very proud of the history that we've had here we've had a lot of former students that came through lyceum actually become faculty at new hanover we've had a lot of students be very successful at the collegiate level in

091all different shapes and formats from the ivy league down to local community college level to just entering the workforce [Music] one of the things that i've benefited the most is time management so one of the things that we have in lyceum is called recitation so you can choose to take it your third or fourth block and it really just lets you set a time aside to do your homework and once you're in college you're going to have to establish that yourself so lyceum helps you build those skills already so once you go into college you're already prepared for time management so when it comes to ap testing it's easier because you have a whole year to master the content and you have teachers available to help you in terms of like college preparation coursework wise

092i'd say our teachers make sure that it's definitely more rigorous i've taken other ap classes here at new hanover and i'd say lyceum definitely does a good job of not only preparing us for the ap exams but preparing us for how what we do in class is going to translate into our college classes lyceum is something where we're able to support and challenge your students at the honors and ap collegiate level so we're helping our students be successful in high school and then transition into those next steps we're really proud of the work that we do with our students we're proud of the success that they've had and we look to continue that tradition and legacy here at new hanover high school with the lyceum academy [Applause] [Music] at the career readiness academy we are

093a small non-traditional high school with a focus on personalization so with our small setting our students get a lot of individual attention and typically that's what they say the program does for them they really come here so that they can focus on their studies and get a lot of attention from their teachers we offer the business administration pathway through career technical education so we really encourage our students to take advantage of job shadowing and internships so we've had students do internships at live a bank we've had students with internships in purchasing through new hanover county schools and so we really feel like that gives them that job readiness and work readiness that they can't get anywhere else i got started with the mosley program about middle school with the e-academy side of things so i

094would do stuff mostly online but also come in every once in a while for a little bit and that went pretty well and i decided to stick with it through high school because i just it worked for me and by doing that i've gotten pretty great opportunities like the ccp program getting early college work done with k-fear and this really great internship at libo through ms kirby the career college counselor there it's a great time like it's more difficult to fail your classes than to pass them here the teachers are great they're very supportive the staff here is very supportive [Music] [Applause] [Music] so iv dates back to the 1960s it was a program named the international baccalaureate program as ib that was started in europe by a group of educators inventors and thinkers who

095wanted to challenge how traditional curriculum kind of evolved beyond the traditional classroom based on country and culture so they developed this curriculum called international baccalaureate that they pushed into all of the different continents with an aim of uniting the globe through education and ultimately making the planet a better place i think in the ivy program you sort of get a chance to begin almost like a college major early so i love politics and so i've been able to focus my studies no matter what subject area it is into politics in some way so like with my math i was able to learn about politics through the lens of math and with our with our ee which is the extended essay i was able to do it on global politics and so i learned a lot

096through that that i wouldn't have learned elsewhere ib really does focus on the global level in really any of the classes in my art class we usually talk about like lots of contemporary issues that span a global significance in the art world and in the real world with other courses such as like biology where we discuss ethics of current innovations so it's really a great global program [Music] isaac bear early college high school is part of the north carolina school operative innovative high school we give an opportunity for students to come and get fast tracked into life after high school so part of the program that we have here is mainly geared to first generational college students to give them an opportunity to get that jump start as i was saying into college so once

097you enter isaac bear as a freshman you spend the first two years working with our high school curriculum it's an accelerated pace and at the end of your sophomore year you begin to take college courses classes with our partner the university of north carolina wilmington it has honestly been a phenomenal program both in regards to the curriculum and my peers you end up just forming a really strong connection with your cohorts it just it makes you feel prepared to pursue anything you want to do isaac bear is really good once you start getting to that good work schedule you're gonna do great i had i honestly had a really fun time here the community is actually really small they're only like what 70 children here that come in like every year and it does help

098that like you know we only have ninth and tenth graders but i really like the small community and it kind of just i just like that yeah since coming to isaac fair it's definitely been like an adjustment like because there's definitely a lot more work but i've gotten used to it and i think there's definitely a lot of opportunities here for everybody [Music] the stem program at laney is primarily designed for students who have a strong interest in science technology engineering and math and we also have students who are strongly interested in the medical areas we offer five levels of project lead the way engineering courses including aerospace engineering and we just added architectural engineering as well in civil engineering when going into high school i was easily chose this school because of the stem

099program i've been able to play how high school sports at high level been able to get a high education as well it's been unlike anything i've seen at the county i really like the stem program i started my freshman year and i think it's great because for people like me and many others that want to go into the medical field engineering and stuff like that it's a good foundation for later and it's like a stepping stone for college and things like that we do many things we have clubs like science olympiad or c perch and we have refresh meetings like stem activities with coach lee or like environmental club the biomed side does like meetings after school and then the engineering side which is the side i'm on we do refresh meetings [Music] so if

100you are a strongly motivated student and you are very interested in the stem areas and you are planning to go into a stem major as an undergraduate please check out the lainey stem program or contact me ellen sally [Music] so the marine science academy we have extended the program to be all four years we find that that supports our new hanover county students the best the marine science academy is an 11th or 12th grade program and we're finding that those students are really settled into their home schools at that time so we opened it up students can now come for biology and ninth grade and they will be an ashley eagle and then they'll continue on with chemistry and ap environmental science in their 10th grade year today we are at the aquarium at fort

101fisher and so i have my marine science academy students ami biology students here and they are all getting to participate in a behind the scenes tour and review for their quiz tomorrow [Music] the ashley marine science academy has actually like helped me i've been interested in marine science most of my life and i thought i wanted to go into bioengineering and because of this program i've actually been able to narrow that down to more of biotechnology and actually get a chance to get an internship at the center for marine science here in wilmington and that's given me a better look at what i want to do for a career you get a lot of real world experience in this program like i said going to internships and going to uncw and working with all these

102professors and just people who have been doing this for a really long time and miss thompson herself has been doing it for quite a while so it's really great and she definitely helps you try to figure out what's the next best step for you so that's really great it's just a really great program to be in you get to experience a lot of cool things and get some great opportunities so i definitely would recommend it anyone [Music] see tech's the best place on earth we love to be at sea tech we have are in our fifth year of operation we're still in our infancy as a school we are serving 240 children this year up from 44 just five short years ago we've lived through the pandemic and the hurricanes and all the things and

103moves across buildings and we're still standing and growing and getting better every day we have children that will be able to earn certificates diplomas or degrees from cape fear community college at no cost to their families they will also graduate with a high school diploma and one of the things that makes us unique is we were created to fill the gaps in the workforce so our children get hands-on opportunities early on in a career field of their choice and we provide four separate academies here on campus where our children are learning construction trades they're learning cyber security medical terminology pharmacy tech culinary and hospitality we've got a big plate from for children to choose from it's a smaller environment it's more career-based so then people focus on you more they want you to succeed and

104then they give you advice on your career choices people hear more about your future about what you want to do here one step ahead into like your future your career that's one of the main reasons i did transfer here i needed that family type connection to learn better and you're really close with like all the teachers and the other students here that was a really big thing for me ctec is like in a really a really amazing school and if people are like debating it then they definitely should come [Music] well wax is a cooperative and innovative high school and it is partnered we partnered with cape fear community college our students can graduate actually with a high school diploma and a two-year associate's degree and they can also graduate with some type of credential

105so they have many options our current school size we have about 250 students in grades 9-13 the majority of our students graduate in four years and they can go on to any of the state schools most of our students stay in-state unc charlotte unc chapel hill nc state and unc wilmington are probably where most of our students transfer to and most of them are able to either graduate in two or two and a half years with their bachelor's degrees [Music] so i chose wex i actually like teetered on it because i had lots of friends going to traditional high school but i wanted to go to wex because the fact that you get an associates when you graduate without paying for it is insane and i really want to go to college so that was

106like the best step for me i also chose it because i was really intrigued by like the environment of the teachers like so the class sizes are very small and your teachers are there to help you i'm one of those people who's a hands-on learner and if i don't have a teacher with me to teach me i don't learn very well so like the fact that your teachers care and want to help like you walk through the process was super awesome [Music] i really like wix i you know whenever i did come into school in ninth and tenth grade it was like i was coming to a second family almost because the teachers there they really do want you to succeed so like they encourage you to answer questions and to also ask your peers

107questions all my classmates are really helpful and also helping me deciding what i wanted to do in the future yeah most mostly just everyone's just really nice welcome to new hanover county schools i'm dr charles fowle's superintendent it is my sincere pleasure to welcome each of you to our team you've joined an accomplished school district in one of the most vibrant towns in north carolina we have wonderful diverse and inquisitive students we attract and retain top educators and we enjoy the continuous support of an engaged school community with your expertise and dedication as professional educators new hanover county schools can become a model of academic excellence and the top district in the state of north carolina you can expect boundless opportunities to contribute to the support of our students while continuing your own professional development

108to do so in a pristine beach community is an additional bonus as you join our team i want you to remember one thing students are our collective priority i firmly believe that all students can learn and our job is to create and offer a first-class education in a safe and inviting setting no matter the position you hold it is up to all of us to ensure that our students all of our students are learning and achieving in a safe and supportive environment i look forward to meeting each one of you and to hear about extraordinary work that you'll do strive for excellence every day i wish you the best and remember it is up to all of us to provide the highest quality education possible to our students they deserve nothing less than our absolute

109best i know that you will do just that welcome to the team [Music] we are so excited to celebrate all of our teachers of the year and our principal of the year finalists tonight at our educator of the year celebration so our teachers and principals are nominated by their peers to be the teacher of the year at their site or a principal of the year nominee for the district they all submit portfolios and we have a committee of 14 people who review those portfolios and from there we've identified 11 finalists for teacher of the year and our three principal of the year finalists hendrick hoyt of wilmington has been partnered with new hanover county public schools this program is a program that we started 10 years ago in a way to recognize what the people

110do every single day in education educators touch every single one of us every single day they touch our community it's just it's near and dear to our heart we're going to continue to figure out ways to help education we're going to figure out ways to recognize educators because that's what it's all about join me in congratulating mr christopher madden [Applause] i was once told that every season of difficulty is also a season of preparation i can't promise what lies ahead but i know that the perseverance shown in these past two years will make a stronger and better equipment for the challenge thank you for this opportunity it is truly an honor [Music] congratulations it's receiving o'neill cte teacher at ashley high school you are the 2223 new hampshire academy of the year to get an

111honor like this to receive accolades from the strength of nominees and new hanover county schools the professionals that i work with that ashley and throughout the county is just really really humbling and from the bottom of my heart i pledge to keep the fight going and thank you so very much [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] my name is jeremy matthews i'm in orchestra and scripture at denver middle school i'm introducing our high school wall county orchestra conductor dr jim wadlow he's a native of oklahoma he joined the faculty of meredith college as director of instrumental activities in 2007 he conducts the meredith college philharmonic meredith sinfonita and college opera and musical theater and productions he has conducted over 90 musical and opera productions at the professional and college level a

112strong advocate of music education he has conducted over 250 guest appearances and clinics in public schools across the country let's welcome dr wildlife okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] good [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] and one um the things that's unique about this is that for this high school group the entire thing is done with the color which means they don't lose the bow that long and we were talking about this in the orchestra earlier today but many of them have not played a piece that's entirely pizzicato since their first year of playing and it's actually quite difficult what they're doing um it requires quite a bit of technique and quite a bit of concentration and there's

113many things that they tend to do with their instruments there's a lot of special effects in this that they simply never had to do on their instrument this is leroy's [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] to rehearse that without a conductor just a little bit of financing some time but it takes an enormous amount of concentration and then extra just to take extra awareness one of the things that we do at the college that i teach is we try to do a composer from a south american country every semester and they're not necessarily as well known but they write some really some fantastic music down there that unfortunately really never leaves the continent the next composer i'm going to do is one of those composers really young guy born in the

114early 90s he's a cellist it was gabrielle he's from brazil and if you look at the title in the program all that mess of portuguese translates to sky and clouds so imagine of course i chose this i was going to get to do [Music] so imagine this this is supposed to represent a lazy day at the beach on the west coast of portugal [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i would like to echo what ms franklin said it's so exciting to be back i think the last time i did this was eight years ago and it's so great to see the state of the union um i just really would like everybody to take a second again the teachers of all of these kids [Applause] students those of you on stage and those

115of you who played earlier i hope you realize that what you have here is special and that you are a part of something that's special because not every community has what it is that you have here it's been a joy of pleasure and privilege to work with these women on stage for the last few days we're going to end with something that's completely opposite of the style that you just played this tournament we're playing is really and the best way to describe a lot of this is just its controlled this range from the stern and wrong area which translates to the story and stress it was about a 15-year period in the late 1700s where composers started taking chances musically and you'll notice that this really is everything that you're about to hear it's about

11615 years before mayfield that would have a really profound impact on his style of writing that would become more popular this is a really obscure polish composer that deserves a far more often than he does thank you all so much for your support of your students and thank you so much for having us out this has been a fantastic two days working with everybody [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so hmm [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] good evening welcome i am so excited to welcome us all back after two years we are finally back with the new hanover county schools orchestra festival tonight how about that i am jackie booth i am the supervisor of k-12 arts education for new hanover county schools and i

117am so excited tonight to see all of these wonderful musicians at work what you're going to see tonight is a culmination of a lot of work and rehearsal in our classrooms every single day and in fact i'd like to thank our holly shelter orchestra for showing us before the show just a little bit about what that looks like in a classroom thank you all right um it's been a little while so i got to look at my little notes here tonight we cannot do anything that we do here without you and your support of these students so thank you so much for being here and supporting our arts programming and supporting our young artists that is super important so thank you parents family advocates everybody at the end of tonight's show your students will meet

118you in the lobby we please ask that you all wait for the whole show so that our students can watch each other perform and learn from each other as we go through the night but they will meet you in the lobby at the end of the show without further ado i would like to start tonight with the holly shelter orchestra and we are going to flow right through every single group so that we get in and out tonight i hope you all enjoy and here's holly shelter thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] to [Music] oh [Music] yes [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] um hmm [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] um [Music] so [Music] [Applause]

119[Music] [Applause] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] can everybody have their seats so we can get started he was just in there oh there he is he has a broken toe okay um apologize for us going over our time folks i'm really trying to keep us on track we had a couple um things that we had to you know plow through on so thank you for hanging in there with us and i i apologize again for um our tardiness um next up is approval of the minutes do i hear a motion to approve the minute let's um do we want to do all three one time okay um approve the minutes as presented do i hear motion okay um nelson and adams is that what i heard okay okay um any discussion okay all in

120favor say aye aye okay any opposed okay great um next on our agenda is consensus items um do i hear emotion too to to approve items a through a.d um on the consent agenda move okay is there a second for that second adams um any discussion yes i would like to uh pull item a item a okay um anything else yeah i'd like to pull out all the budget ones the budget summary report year in budget amendment and then the budget amendments okay you know that these are for this year's budget not next year's yeah i just have questions okay all right so that is um w y a w y n a a okay um anybody else okay so um all in favor of approving consensus items with the exception of a w y

121n a a say okay all right so now let's get um personnel report item a or letter a um yeah uh are we supposed to have a discussion here because i would like to you pulled it so whatever you want to do well i didn't get it until an hour or two ago and it's 23 pages um and i would hope this wouldn't that would get more noticed i don't want to vote on something i can't look at that's that's that's simple that's you know i was elected to do a job and that's what the constituents expect me to do is when i am things are shown to me that i look at them and then i vote on them mine's not up there yes ma'am but go ahead so i was able to access

122this yesterday afternoon and so my question is just to crystal um when was it posted in assembly i guess is my question the personnel report was posted confidentially under the closed session item of the agenda last thursday as i received additional updates to the personnel report i would update the report as it was given to me by the human resources division so it was found under closed session not under consensus items which is maybe why people had a hard time locating it that is correct ms adams the personnel report was posted under closed session where it has always been posted pending board approval and then upon board approval the personnel report is then transferred under cl under consensus personnel report item thank you for that clarification thank you thank you that was my stupidity well

123i found it under other places as well okay that's why i didn't when i thought it was there i didn't see it it's not that she didn't post it it's just you know i normally look at it in a different location right and we i wasn't informed that it had been moved so i just so what's your what what do you want to do with this miss justice well i'm just not i just don't feel comfortable voting for something until i have time to look at 23 pages of it okay um is there a motion to go forward or motion to approve personnel report as presented okay okay any more any discussion i pretty well told you how i feel i just don't feel comfortable until i look at it okay um anything else all

124right miss billy will you please call the roll miss justice no mr mcmanus yes miss walker no miss craybill yes miss adams yes mr wild boar yes and mr bullier yes okay so that passes five to two um okay um next on to um letter w the budget summary report that was me that pulled down so i just have i just really genuinely want to know what its purpose is for for updating it why why it's on the consensus agenda or is it consensus item so this report is um required to come to the board quarterly and so this is just a quarterly update and this is just a smaller summarized version of what you gave me like a couple weeks ago okay do you want to make a motion to accept it yes i

125will make a motion to accept uh item w budget summary report is there a second american um mr wildebord um any more discussion all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed okay that one passes seven to zero um letter y miss walker so i just i didn't see any kind of attachment i guess this i just wanted an explanation um there's a summary here with main points to record so i mean i don't remember we probably did this last year and i do not remember doing that okay so this is the year in budget resolution is that the one that we're discussing yes so this budget resolution authorizes us to be able to adjust as revenues come in so we'll still receive some revenue between now and june 30th and this resolution will allow

126me to go ahead and budget those funds and be able to maximize our state and federal funds if need be to use up that funding and save local money and then i would bring any adjustments back to you in the meeting in july so you can you can move money around to save local is that what you're saying oh i'm sorry thank you um if we have a position that's not filled in june and then that we would have money left in state funds if they were paid out of state funds and it would give us the opportunity if we have allowable expenses in local to be able to move those to use up the state funds and not revert money back and this is something we do every year it's a year-end close out

127procedure and this is a resolution that we've brought to the board for approval in the past uh yes uh miss justice this is very interesting all right so since the beginning of the fiscal year we've had quite a lot go on and we've had a lot of people leave um and so we're probably state employees and so that money is not being spent for salaries or benefits so that money what you're saying is we can use that money at the end of june instead of local money to pay allowable items correct yes ma'am if there are allowable items we can do that and this is something that happens every year you'll have vacancy savings and you would adjust your budget accordingly and identify normally it would be one-time type items because it's not you know

128reoccurring vacancy savings it's a one-time hopefully we would hire those positions and not continue to have the vacancy savings okay so the money is not going back to the state we get to keep it but we allot it yeah this this um amendment would allow me right to make those adjustments so we wouldn't revert money back to the state okay well this is thank you that's interesting information yeah is there a report you run for that is there i mean a way to know where the money is being moved over is it a easily printable report shareable report so we run the report like i've provided to you and then we look at that by program to determine after all of our expenses have hit for the after all the expenses have hit for june

129so payroll and all of our invoices have been paid we see what where the money funds might be left and then based on that we make adjustments we do that by the end of june you just said right so after we make our final payments in june for payroll and paying invoices that's when we are able to make those adjustments thank you okay any further discussion um did you make a motion we didn't even get a motion yet okay you're just talking okay is there a motion yeah i'll make a motion to adopt i'll second it okay um all in favor say oh is there any more discussion since we just have a mission okay all in favor say aye aye any opposed oh i any post okay seven past seven zero um on to

130letter double a budget amendments yes um sorry i'm just reading it so basically it says in here that you you're taking from funds let's see terrible revenues to so is this kind of similar to what you're doing earlier where you're just um are you taking from funds to pay other things as i look at here's the state local and federal it's broken down and it's got federal fund number one you're taking some essa funding out and gear funding i just i'm trying to understand what these what this means passing this sure yep and so each one may be a little different so i tried to give an explanation of what the amendment was and so for example for the state budget amendment for the most part this is just recording revenue that has come in

131since the last time a budget amendment was brought to the board and so these are things that come through um dpi would would send us different revenue allotments and this is just allow me to record those revenues on our on our budget on our general ledger the local current expense amendment is to record we received 159 dollars related to computer repairs there was some damage and we received some money um to be able to repair that and so this would allow me to record that revenue and it's also allowing us the vacancy savings that we identified in local to be able to use that money to cover some one-time expenses where we saw overages in our local budget that we had not anticipated for example utilities and some contracted services it also allowed us to

132be able to order our instructional supplies earlier so that we one could make sure that we had that those supplies here at the beginning of school whenever the school came i mean i'm sorry the kids came back to school we would have those supplies ready for them which we haven't been able to do in the past but because of the vacancy savings this year we were able to do that also it does take into account some of this some of the adjustments was related to we had already identified some federal and state vacancy savings and so we were moving some things over to those different funding sources to save some local money the capital outlay adjustments by project i had an attachment for that if you have specific questions there the other restricted revenue is

133also is this amendment similar to the state as far as we're just recording revenues that's been received since the last budget amendment provided to the board question you got federal fund here you gave examples that because i looked at the esr funding and some was for the children of special needs and the homeless population are you taking money out of these esr funds to pay for that no i'm recording revenue that's been received from the state do you have a motion if anybody else had any questions well if we make a motion then we can just okay i mean yeah i'll make a motion to go past that okay is there a second second okay is there any more discussion okay all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed okay that passes seven to

134zero okay so now we are through with um consensus items um now on to old business the um the 2022-2023 budget proposal um i guess dr faust and ashley laughs okay so ashley and i are going to try this again and present this is very much an unfinished product preliminary we have not put into the budget on the federal we have of course we learned the outcome of the budget on yesterday and so today ashley and i have been working diligently on on this budget having multiple conversations what i will say is right now we are at a deficit of 17 million with the ask for the current budget that the board voted on um so we're going in as a deficit which would mean in order to balance this budget um without adding the

135federal because federal recovery would have that at our next board meet where we'll do the whole if this were to continue we are currently having to reduce 330 positions so i just want you to know that um before we start that we are at a deficit at 17 million starting off um i will now have but ashley um it's all yours okay um and i also want to just add to that that as we're going through this presentation we're just talking about next year's budget previously when we've come up we've talked about a three-year budget because we were trying to gradually have this increase to fund the raise knowing that we had the sr funds available to be able to do that and then also hoping that the county would gradually give us some increases

136to help out with you know that the budget over the next three years so as we're going through today i want you just to keep in mind and i'll probably mention it later in the presentation as well that we're talking about the budget for next year so these um revenues that we're seeing here the the changes we now have our state planning allotments which we didn't have last time we spoke so now we really know you know the state's only going to fund 15 minimum pay so whatever's over that we talked about it briefly before we have to be responsible for that funding so before you go to next the board members you're probably you don't have a copy of the hard copy we finished this at about two o'clock we had a 3 30

137meeting so that's why you don't have this that feels like it's preliminary we wanted to show you something based on what took place yesterday of how it affects the district thank you and so the next slide i wanted to take some time to talk through what our what we know about our revenue at this point and so we don't have our federal planning allotments yet we hope to have those soon and to be able to provide that information to you at the next board meeting um but i so i'm going to go through and talk through this slide and i apologize for being so small but i felt like it was information that you needed to see some of the detail so starting with what we learned last night the county is actually going to

138reduce us this 1 million 157 thousand dollars 200 i'm sorry 1 million and fifty eight dollars and so how we come up with that number you know when we're talking um to the county or the county was communicating yesterday they're gonna hold us at the three thousand four hundred thirty four dollars per pupil but when the county did their projection of what they thought our student numbers were going to look like next year they're actually using 24 532 dollars as the student number for next year which is 337 students less than what we got funded this year so that's how we came up with an actual reduction from the county the county is missing can we can we just um take the tablet the problem is i just want to ask a quick question okay

139i know but we're not getting but then if we go through an extensive budget while it relates to what's going on so we can understand can i ask the will of the board should we hold questions and and write them on our tablets and then come back to them so that we can get through um is there is there will of the board to do that well is there will of the board to do that okay the miss billy would you call the role i'll make a motion that we hold our hold our questions until we get through please second okay second um any discussion yes uh if you want to hear information and understand it and you have questions you have to wait 10 minutes it's going to lose its effect for the understanding

140this is how it works in a classroom when kids are learning things okay this is not how it works in board meetings all right miss bowie would you please call the roll for us miss justice miss justice yes no wait no wait a second oh i don't want to hold up the motion is to hold questions uh no mr mcmanus yes miss walker no miss craybill yes miss adams yes mr wildebore yes and mr bullier yes okay that passes five to two so um you have a tablet that miss bowie gives us each week so just go ahead and write down your questions and we'll get back to them let's just let her go through it can this be shared so i can see it we don't have it i'm actually we're making copies everywhere

141thank you do okay folks we'll just take just a moment while we wait for our copies i apologize for not having this card it's all right it happens we're just thankful that you got us information in the turnaround time 24-hour turnaround time ah [Music] thank you already [Music] you know if i'd had that i probably wouldn't even ask for that because i could have written on that thing good all right ashley go ahead we're waiting just for two more but we'll we'll go ahead okay next um i have listed and i'm going through the local county appropriation column that's in the powerpoint this is what was approved by the county last night they approved to fund 268 0852 for the charter school payments they are showing so this is addition to what they funded this

142year for charter schools so this was because the county was projecting an increase for charter schools and so that's how that increase came to be they're also funding an expansion of pre-k so that's the 1 million 55 726 you see we're including a fund balance appropriation of nine hundred eighty two thousand two hundred and thirty five dollars and you'll see further in the presentation where that number is coming from i'll refer back to that for you we're currently just for your information in this current year we're using seven million nine hundred seventy five thousand dollars of fund balance in this year's budget so this increase that we're showing on the screen as a fund balance appropriation would bring the phone balance appropriation up to eight million nine hundred fifty seven thousand two hundred and thirty

143five dollars we would also be using ten million eight hundred fifty six thousand nine hundred seventy four dollars of esser funds next year um we would be redirecting um resources in s or related to hvac projects and that's the one million twenty nine thousand seven hundred fifty dollars we would also be redirecting funds related to facility projects and that is one million one hundred seventy three thousand three hundred and seventy one dollars we would be redirecting resources related to ppe supplies and equipment three hundred and fifty thousand dollars redress and resources related to summer learning so that would not be this summer school of course it will be next summer school two million dollars redirecting resources related to after school program that is one million six hundred fifty thousand dollars redirecting resources related to curriculum

144supplies and so that also would not be this coming up school year it would be the next school year 771 dollars and we would also be using um funds set aside in stabilization reserve of four million five hundred fifty eight thousand eighty two dollars and so that gets us to a total revenue change for next year twelve million five hundred and six thousand five hundred and twenty nine dollars and we had some per pupil information we'd like to share with you tonight as well i'll let dr take this part so there was an ask for to show the per people's spending again so i wanted to provide that for you so again currently for the 2020 2021 school year including child nutrition the local funds the federal funds state funds that we spend on our

145schools is to the far right and the total and you can definitely go down and you can see what we spend from the local or what we provide locally and these are what we consider you know including wrap-around services this is teachers in the building clerical in the building this is every employee that works inside of that building and this is the expense for them so you'll see that the the calls for some um and you see the adm which is your annual daily membership and it tells you how many students are in that building that's what the sec the third column is um and then it goes to state that was on a major presentation any questions well i'm sorry i that was the one that was thrown in so i didn't know if

146we needed to stop without for per pupil okay because that was one of the requests i'm sorry the um does anybody have any questions but we'll take a pause does anybody have any questions up until now that we can go ahead and get this asked um miss justice okay i'll start i've got a couple questions but if you want me just ask one okay the county are there projections for 24 000 something or the other which is about a thousand less than ours um you know as far as our student enrollment next year correct what will happen if as the school opens and the students are obviously saying more than 25 000. we will we be able to get or since their budget's already set at that will we be able in any way shape

147or form to get the 3434 dollars for the for the students above and beyond what their projections are in the past they have not made an adjustment during the year but we could certainly request that okay thank you that's a very good could i ask another question yeah it was this is the number the projection number um that they were budgeting us all but that doesn't mean that they couldn't change their minds after the 20 did they won't use a 20 day but they could if we convince them to change them using proper information giving them good information mr mcmanus uh thank you madam chair i want to have a couple questions and then maybe throw in a little analogy before he answers it i don't quite comprehend or understand some of the per-pupil expenditure

148for schools uh jc road which has 23 students if this is still accurate the per pupil expenditure am i correct is 83 115 dollars per student lake forest academy has 32 students the per pupil expenditure is 56 and then third out of all of our 40 some plus schools mostly has 73 and they're 30 000 507 per pupil now i go to new hanover high school it has 1500 kids and they round off 10 000 per pupil expenditure but if they'll go to jc road they get 83 000. laney has nine thousand eighty and they're what twelve hundred and three i mean uh two thousand and three give or take and see tech with 190 kids that they're per pupil is twelve thousand i'm i'm having a hard time wrapping my hands around how we

149spend 83 000 for 23 students times 23 and 56 000 times 32 and we're hard up for money when somebody please share with me how we spend that much money for 23 students so it's expensive to run our smaller schools we'll start there um and of course because we provide the services at those schools this is what it takes to run a school of that size well we ever thought about combining schools to save money i'm just talking a loud because this this 83 thousand dollars per student and didn't you say dr faust that this covers like all the wraparound you wrap it that's services per student new hanover gets 10 8 times as much i'm just playing devil's avenues here i don't get it oh i get it so when we get into budget

150discussions it will that remain well that's part of the allotment so what has been set up for those schools to [Music] commission that's what has been that's this isn't just this is years so it's not it's not been changed what we we're talking two million dollars for those so is it fair to say dr faust that um our smaller schools get all the same amenities and services that our larger schools get so that if they need all the um the elected teachers the social emotional the mts and all that they they get everything that all the big schools get and so it's just just so that's what we're saying so if we take away then um i mean i'm just trying to clarify you so that we know that we're talking about afterwards they get

151everything they get cafeteria people they get custodians they get um excuse me we don't talk from the back from we don't talk the um so is that something that we need to let's help answer mr mcmanus's question okay miss justice okay uh a lot of these services these wrap around services is actually what costs more it's not they don't even have a cafeteria it's a jc road they bring stuff in they do have a cafeteria there well they feed them they don't cook food there we've had a big discussion before that's one of the problems is the food is not well we won't talk about the food at jc rowe right now that's not the point point is to wrap around services things like the social workers the counselors uh this is what these students

152really need in order for them to succeed this is why they're at jc rowe and why they are at lakeside that's why they've been identified that's what costs more like their teachers they'll teach more than one subject they don't have a whole teacher for social studies and a whole teacher for english and that's what it just sounded like you said that's not how it works these specialized these especially these small ones like those two specialty schools with these children that's got these huge challenges it costs a lot of money to have all the wraparound services daily to work with them i wouldn't and a lot of them have one-on-ones and things like that wouldn't you that's what that's what the explanation that you probably needed better than just saying they need the same thing as

153all the other high schools because that's not really a complete answer did that help you well i understand the rationale i don't understand that we can do that given where we are because the kids at new hanover and the other high schools and and ctec also deserve more money ctec we should fill that place up with kids with the vocational arena that's offered there we should have a thousand kids there so i'm just saying i'm having a hard time we need to rethink this i just don't think that's good stewardship for lack of a better word and i know but all kids have challenges and we can meet i don't want to not meet their needs but at 83 thousand dollars per child i'm not the brightest star this guy but i don't feel alone

154anymore okay are there any more questions relating to that this that ashley can answer for us at this point at this job buddy and so many more questions up until this point okay just to share we're just providing information we're not making a recommendation we're just providing information as to where we are at this point in time yes great thank you all right all right so tell us what page you're on so we can we can keep up with you okay so now i am on operating cost increase so this is right behind the per pupil information we just covered so this slide was provided on may 3rd presentation where i was giving information as far as we had gone through our current year budget we had identified some areas where we could reduce based

155on where we thought we were going to end the year and so i gave this high level slide but i thought it would be helpful to come back with a little bit more detail and especially now that we know more you might remember in this slide previously we had included the chief of diversity equity and inclusion position as a reduction on the slide and of course as you see i've taken that out we're not including that in the detail numbers that i'm about to provide so on this slide you can see the continuation of services so we had talked briefly in our work session about the department requests that had come through and we had gone through those requests and tried to identify what we would be able to fund and when we went through

156that list these were the things that came out as items that had to be funded for continuation of services so we're not adding anything new to this budget here we are just trying to cover increased costs from this year going into next year so for example you can see we have a cost for our timekeeping system 156 thousand dollars that was actually implemented this year it was implemented with one-time fund balance money and so we're trying to get that out of a non-reoccurring fund since we know that's going to be a recurring cost we've got 45 000 listed here for applicant tracking and this system will no longer our current system will no longer be supported by the state so we needed a system to replace the state system that's no longer supported so that's

157the increase you see here we also had a hundred and two thousand two hundred dollar increase related to consulting group that we needed to work with here we're expecting electric rate electricity rates to increase 198 thousand dollars we also implemented fingerprinting services and we needed an additional 16 thousand dollars related to that for next year to continue that providing that service general liability insurance actually did not increase increase as much as i originally had estimated we've gotten some newer numbers back i don't have final numbers but i got a little bit better of an estimate on our general liability insurance we're expecting that to go up three hundred and eight thousand one hundred and seventy five dollars our natural gas rate we're expecting to increase 37 dollars we feel that we need to provide sros

158at our middle schools for our athletic events and the cost there is gonna be fourteen thousand four hundred and seventy two dollars we also had an increase in our scribbles contract and so that was going to be 17 and then also we have an increase in renting the pools at the ymca and ywca for our swim teams and that increase was eleven thousand dollars and so we identified these things that we felt we had to be able to fund these just to continue the services that we had been providing and we felt like it was critical to do that and so as we had talked about before we've gone through the budget and we've identified areas where we can redirect current resources and so this slide shows you the different areas that we identified to

159be able to make reductions and so we identified computer equipment and supplies we could reduce 88 500 contracted services we think we can reduce in some of those contracted services to help fund like i had said previously the on the previous slide some of those items a hundred forty two thousand eight hundred dollars reduction in furniture and equipment eighteen thousand dollars repairs for parts and materials seven seventy four thousand dollars reduction supplies materials and food four hundred seventy eight thousand two hundred and forty seven dollars a reduction in workers comp insurance we hope to be able to reduce that twenty four thousand eight hundred dollars workshop expense reduction sixty four thousand dollars contracted repairs and maintenance reduction of fifteen thousand dollars and so this is what we were able to identify so we really start

160we started here this is where we thought we could make some reductions in the current budget to help fund things that we felt like we just had to have going into next year and so even though on this previous slide you're only seeing the 905 000 that's all we were able to find in our current budget redirecting resources we certainly had many more items on our list that we thought were priorities but we felt like these things were mandated or continuation things that we really didn't have a choice we really needed to do these things and so that's how we got to the nine hundred five thousand dollars you see the state as we have talked about before is requiring us to fund a salary increase and so we wanted to go through and give

161a little bit of information related to that even though we've talked about it before i felt like it was good to have the conversation again because we're having to shift the funding a little bit and so as we've talked about before the state is mandating a raise of the higher of 2.5 percent or 15 minimum wage and they're also requiring us to give a retirement rate increase of 5.7 percent so this is the employer piece of the retirement not the employee so we're responsible for paying that for that increase in retirement benefit they're also requiring a health insurance rate increase of 5.4 percent so we're required for that so not um looking at anything related to our salary study um the plan that we have talked about previously if we were to just do what

162the state is requiring us to do it would cost us three billion three hundred twenty four thousand four hundred and thirty two dollars so the only new initiatives we have that we've talked about for next year's budget is to be able to fund the 17 minimum pay with a one percent step for years of experience and so as you can see here we had hoped the county would pick up two million at least two million dollars of the cost of that which we found out last night they're not going to be able to do that and so we've shifted all of that um expense over to esser and so that would shift six million three hundred seventy five thousand two hundred eighty four dollars over to esser for next year we are um showing on

163the slides using fund balance to pay the classified bonuses we had talked about and remember this is just the first year of implementing those pay scales so remember that was our grades 55 through 57 those they would this pays for that raise our other employees which were our grades 58 through 78 they would get the thousand dollar bonus um is what we had talked about at the last board meeting and so that cost is 597 235 dollars and that would not be something um we were not planning to pay for that with extra money we were going to use fund balance for that so that goes into when i was talking about revenue earlier that's part of that revenue number that i shared with you earlier i'm going to go back to this slide just

164a second so i just i want to make sure that we recall the total cost of the 17 minimum wage one percent step plan was 13 million dollars so what we're seeing on the screen now for that the first year is a 6.3 million we would still have to over the next two years pick up another six million dollars so everything you're seeing here just keep in mind this is just a one year we would be back here going through this same exercise the next two years to finish funding the plan other expenses that i wanted to bring to your attention these are not things yes ma'am can i could could we take a break and see if anybody's got questions before we move into the next category yes expenditures okay does anybody have okay

165miss adam i mean miss walker sorry um can we go back to a couple of slides i wanted to ask this back then but continuation of services and services increases yes so i just had a question you said educators handbook and public consulting group or that that one in the same or the consulting group for the educators handbook or is it a and i and i'm not 100 sure of all the services that that group provides for us is um if i remember correctly it's related to um do you know the answer to that dr powell exceptional children um what what are the services can you provide a little bit more information about educator canada and public consulting group what the services are that they provide for us educator handbook is our district-wide universal discipline

166data monitoring system where office discipline referrals go in and interventions are monitored and public consulting group actually runs the ecats program for 504s ecaps is the state system for ieps for individualized education programs and we use the same version of that to run our 504 plans for students who are eligible for 504s and that is paid to public consulting group okay thank you anybody else i had a couple quick questions on the redirect current resources um can you give an idea of what um repair parts and materials um supplies materials and food and contracted repairs and maintenance that we're going to have to cut back on that's kind of a when i look at the food part and the repair that gives me a little adjective so a majority of the reduction related to the

167repair parts and materials is we currently have a program where we fund small repair projects and so this would eliminate the small repairs project that program that budget so we wouldn't have a set-aside funding source for that so is this going to cut into like our pm programs at all what program this wouldn't cover me these are anything that the schools request that are 30 000 and under go into this special projects fund anything 30 000 and over we consider a capital outlay request so this would cut those small projects that schools request during the school year so could you give me an example of what that is is it like painting or is it fixing potholes in the parking lot it could be painting it could be adding paved play surfaces you know resurfacing

168a paid play area splitting a room up into offices or taking a partition down to create a classroom space it's really a lot of the unanticipated things that come up either at the beginning of the school year or during the school year so this wouldn't eliminate everything out of that it's just it would eliminate everything out of it yeah so these are our remember we scrub yeah i know i'm just thinking if if something comes up and we need to fix it then we have no money no that's why we're taking everything okay all right well that's not good the and then um we can't buy food for what 470 so so um what we what we've done through this process is we've looked at where we were at whatever point in time we were

169scrubbing the budget i think that was in april and we projected out what we thought we would spend through the end of the year and we looked at things that were not necessarily reoccurring expenses and so based on that information that's how we came up with the reduction so we'll reduce based in those areas now a budget manager if i decide i want to buy you know supplies and i don't have supplies in that line in my budget i could move from another line to be able to purchase those things but the we are going to reduce those budgets and then the budget managers will have um the responsibility to create a new budget based on the money that they have and stay within that budget okay then the last question is on your new

170initiative salary increases the um so did i hear you say that i understand properly that we instead of increasing using budget money to give salary increases we are going to give all of our salary increases next year through esther yes and then redirect ester funds that we already had allocated someplace else that's correct okay and just to clarify esser is non-sustaining funds so when it's gone in 2024 it's gone and we will have to figure out a way to replace it or potentially lose the raise or cut positions that's correct thank you okay okay all righty uh miss justice uh yes i don't see anything in here about discretionary funds that like different building principles the superintendent people like that have no cuts going on in that area so we do not have anything called

171discretionary funds we budget um for each we have programs so schools have budgets with programs superintendent finance has budgets within programs and so each budget has multiple lines so for supplies computer supplies equipment furniture like we all build a budget based on the dollar amount that we have in those departments or divisions and so we don't have anything we don't have like petty cash where we just have something set aside all of our money um is budgeted with specific purpose so when you say discretionary funds i don't know um what the question is i guess well when i was looking through the budget it's like i'll just use superintendent since he's sitting up here like his superintendent's office and it has these different things on there which is what you're talking about and i actually

172asked this question about a month ago and i thank you for that answer because nobody explained that clearly as to why i wasn't getting my question answered thank you so we've never i mean i don't i don't remember when north carolina's ever i mean in the years i can tell him since i've worked in north you've not had a discretionary fund everything always has to be budgeted with a live item so when individuals say that that means that we're pulling money from a specific budget to fill their dealer request so if the board says oh we want to hire x then we have to find it in a budget line and reduce that line to fulfill the new budget line so there's no discretion we are actually taking away what we usually say make it

173happen and we're actually behind the scenes fine unit right and i will say the only i'll say kind of exception to that rule is with federal money you receive it over over multiple years so you may see a line item that says unbudgeted because you won't build that budget for that grant until the following year so you'll have a plan for it but you can't actually put it in the system until the next year so that's the only time that that's my only disclaimer related as far as having budget on every line and thank you and i understand that as i said i had heard i mean people use that term nobody clarified it and i had asked for it about a month ago to understand it so thank you mr mcmanus so to give

174we don't go into debt let's start with nothing right now we don't go into debt to meet the 15 state requirements two we already discussed this funds their goal no matter what we do with that we won't have it as of late after two years so therefore towers will go down well if we try to keep that salary whatever votes number three if we don't give a raise we do not have to cut any positions is that accurate can we go back to normal okay we don't have to cut in position so no one loses job well if they're an answer if we've notified individuals who we started off in esser um and they haven't cut their contract with you right now if we try to maintain a 17 or 60 dollar we have to

175go we have to cut right and the numbers we gave over three years now i do want to say i have not costed out what you're saying okay i mean i've costed out just the state minimum you know um so that's been costed out but i have not worked up what a budget would look like with that so i i do feel like we would have to move some things to esser but it would not be nearly what we're talking about today okay miss walker some position because we're not having because i'm sorry to cut you off and i just saw your face i want to answer so because remember because the state's telling us we want you to spend 3.3 million dollars more okay and then at the same time the county says we're

176not giving you any money but we're going to cut you 1.1 million so that's why i'm saying we're still yeah we're still going to have to use some funding and we're still going to have to live within the revenue that we have and so it might we might still have to use s or um to get there so i i just want to mate i don't want to come back later and you know it not be clear support 17 we're going to lose an estimation of how many positions over three years without adding federal we're at home for stage 330 positions and that's including the 85 that we originally were paying out of esser just um this plan for just the one year 245 positions okay miss walker so you just covered it was 85

177positions that were hired with esther which were not going to be permanent anyway is that correct um since they were hired with temporary yes so was to be able to absorb those right into our state um budget through um attrition yeah the hope was our student numbers would come back and we would be able to we would have state revenue and federal revenue to be able to move them back into a different recurring budget but we don't know right now if that's going to happen and you guys presented the budget a couple times and at the chamber they was saying that we had to cut we needed to cut at 17 aig teachers 34 assistant principal positions 130 those were examples scared so that was what the state so that was to get us back

178to the state a lot man and so those were examples of what but we have not gone in and said x is what we're going to cover we just gave you a sample of the state says that they're giving us 15 positions in this we have 35 with the county like new hanover run on state allotment levels only i don't think so i would think that we would not run you that low okay uh mr wonderboard how much flexibility do we have to you said before move something from one line you know line item to another because i guess my question is one thing that i've been thinking about this is something i brought up almost a year ago was you know we have this great plan we're going to give we're on one to

179one um i know a lot of the counties use chromebooks i know we're going to start this whole chromebook thing again but even last night i believe it was commissioner barfield was talking about laptops and ipads and this kind of thing you know maybe this isn't the best time to would it be impossible to use some of that money for we're sending that with esser i'm sorry we're funding the one-to-one with esser okay but can we take that and slide that in for the for temporarily and hopefully our months monies come back up could we take that money and slide in for for the the salary increases so that is already so we've already ordered um that video when the board we've already paid for next year so that money's already actually allocated and spent

180okay yeah thank you madam chair um thank you guys for all your work look honestly i'll just be very upfront i cannot put our school district in a financial position where there's no guarantee that these raises can be kept where we have absolutely no wiggle room whatsoever and we're cutting positions i will not vote for that budget and i will work until i'm blue in the face to make sure it doesn't pass it is not responsible those are good thoughts are there any more questions for ashley up to this point so that we can finish the presentation because we we went over our time um will there be discussion after the presentation because i have some things to discuss do you have any questions for her right now no she's doing an excellent okay okay

181go ahead um you we're on page other expenditures i think so i wanted to go through other expenditures so this screen is showing these are not items that came through department budget requests i think it's important to see that these are items that we had con that the county um is requiring us to to take some things back so um one of the things is landscaping for contracted services so the county had these contracts this year and next year they have asked us to take over these contracts and so that's going to be a hundred 385 thousand dollars of contracts that we'll have to include in our budget for next year and we did not get revenue as you saw on the previous screen for the county appropriation we didn't receive revenue to cover that

182so we're having to use our funding to be able to cover those contracts once again the one one million one hundred fifty seven thousand two hundred and fifty eight dollars locally paid positions because we had that reduction by the county that we've looked at the revenue on that first slide we're moving those locally paid positions that the county was funding because of the cut we're moving them to esser and then we also had um going back to that revenue we also received revenue for the 268 852 from the county that had to go towards charter school payments so this is just the other side the first slide was showing you all the different revenue sources and where it was coming from and now we're just going through and showing the expenses of how we're budging

183it on each line in those programs okay we're in a mess okay and so next we have county funded expansion so once again these are things that were not included in our budget request did not come through department requests but these were things that the county wanted to fund so they're funding six additional pre-k classrooms and that equals 1 million 265 726 dollars for those additional classes and that includes the teacher salaries all the positions and supplies reoccurring supplies that go with that we also had some one-time costs associated with that that the county is funding 120 000 related to start-up calls so that's buying um you know the equipment that goes in the classrooms you just buy it the one time to stock those rooms um and then that's not necessarily reoccurring and then

184we also had some renovations we needed to take care of to make sure that um those classrooms were appropriate for that age level and that's a hundred and seventy thousand dollars and so that's the one million five hundred fifty five thousand seven hundred twenty 726 dollars that the county referenced in their presentation yesterday and so i just want to end with um this salary increase that we presented tonight is not sustainable without identifying reoccurring revenue source or redirecting additional current resources and we have gone through this budget at this time and we've shown you where we could see where we had savings and so we have not as a staff been able to find funding reoccurring funding to be able to support that would not cause significant changes to school wraparound services and so i

185just felt like that it's important that i say that and it's important that i say i'm not recommending this budget okay so the um before we get into questions hold your questions this is about the landscaping contract services if i remember right in the past they were providing it they were providing these services and we were providing the use of our fields and things like that for their um parks and other activities isn't that how we were working it out does anybody do you happen to recall on this transfer this came about back in 2008-2009 the county approached us and asked that they take over the grounds maintenance and that would that would help them to retain staff at the same time it we were looking at staff reductions and so at that time our

186paint and grounds departments were two different departments and we were able to merge those departments and and not have to oversee the grounds maintenance the county then came back two years ago and asked that we take that back they asked it was very late in the budget cycle and we said you know don't take it right now but we'll we'll plan for it and take it the following year well which is this year okay i'm 2008 2009. i'm just trying to understand why they would provide their services without any getting things back in return unless it was just as the fact that the county and the schools i mean that was part of what they felt was important to help the schools but wasn't there some kind of exchange for them also to get some

187kind of use out of our facilities was there wasn't i'm just there wasn't okay thank you i'm just trying to understand this okay so um this is what i'd like to propose that we this was supposed to just be kind of a um interim dis um information for us based on what we heard last night and that um for the june 21st meeting um was proposing to have a work session where we talked about the budget so that we don't have to have any more conversation tonight this was just supposed to be thought provoking and just for stuff to digest because they haven't had a chance they have have had less than 24 hours to put this together so that's what i'd like to propose um that we just keep going and then we ask

188questions on the 21st well i do have one statement to make please and i think this is very pertinent okay i have been a little confused for weeks now since i kept hearing this figure that the county commissioners were saying about their local allotments uh being funded by the amount of staff we have especially i believe it was the may 5th meeting i'm not sure exactly what the date was when i watched dr faust during his budget presentation actually make the statement that we have third we are using 35 percent of the local allotment to staff people when other districts only use 15. well i said that doesn't seem right in all the districts i've ever used local allotments their main use is for staff for the classroom assistant principles etc so i've been digging

189and one of the things and i need to dig more because it won't be hard now that i found exactly where to find it now this is important because this is a message on the 24th no this is a misconception that that the county commissioners need to understand this this information is coming from dpi and dr faust's question to me a while ago says dpi doesn't i'm not talking about dpi funding they actually have sources of how how local funding is spent in all the school districts across the state and so you can dig into that and i've got to do more tonight because as i said i just discovered this where to find it this afternoon i'm not a big researcher but you can but the point is that according to the state dpi's

190funding they look at the leas where they get their staff allotments and all across the state all 100 some plus districts use usually between 35 and 40 percent of their allotments for staff so that 15 percent i don't know where he got that and i would like to know what you did yeah i'm talking dpi keeps track of lea's use of yo looking funding what what local says in in the state it says first in the state for local per pupil expenditures is chapel hill we're number nine in the state there are including the innovation district so can i and so then the the one robeson county uh has 430 dollars per kid so what i'm saying is we have a huge allotment which that's a great thing from the from the county commissioners i'm

191not disputing that there's anything wrong with the county commissioners adding money i'm just saying that we put a lot of positions in there and it's okay to do that because we have the funding what we can afford is of the positions and the increase we either have to have positions or increase but you can't have and all right okay so let's hold that thought well we are going to talk about somebody's response we're over our time limit and i really want to keep us moving it's five after nine and we were scheduled to be done at 11 15 if we kept on schedule so we are on schedule so let's go hold that thought and any more questions you have send an email right so next on our agenda is the interim budget resolution ashley

192yes i'm requesting approval of the resolution which will allow us to continue to operate at the current spending levels for all funds until a budget resolution is passed hopefully sometime in july okay so is there anything that we need to um we need to do with that for you tonight yep i just need approval for that motion to approve the resolution as drafted okay has everybody read the it's in our notes everybody read that is there a second second okay um any discussion can you just explain it in layman's terms what this means yep so what this means is in case we're not able to pass a budget by july 1. so i think dr faust has mentioned several times we're required by state law to have a budget as of july 1st and so

193if you do not have a budget by july 1st you need to have a resolution in place to be able to continue operations so we wouldn't want to have to stop operating the school system because we didn't have a budget on july 1st so this will give us some flexibility to continue operating at the same level until we are able to pass a budget resolution thank you okay any more questions yes that's sort of like what congress does when they don't have yes ma'am okay um any more discussion um all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay great got that um next we have to do our state required vote for masking requirements per senate bill 654 section 10 for the 2021-22 school year each public school unit shall adopt a face covering policy

194and local school boards shall vote at least once per month on whether the policy should be adopted do i hear a motion we have to continue with our mask optional policy second second okay wait you also need to add with these uh federal restrictions or ec restrictions or head start i think they left the additional part that we've always had to put in about the head start piece is that no longer oh this is the wording that colin gave him okay okay so there's a motion in a second is there any more discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay great we will continue on with what we have can we have a break these two are asking all right five minutes folks we're five minutes we're taking a break yeah five minutes

195well we have five on the diets we could keep going but but we're not go ahead mr mcmanus please okay we have four up here um doctor next up on our agenda is the year-round schools calendar revision dr barnes good evening uh when we turned in our calendars to the school to dpi there are certain restrictions for year-round calendars we have two year-round elementary schools coddington eaton are two year-round schools and they have several different models the state lets you use for a year-round calendar what we use is a block with a nine-week instructional period with a break between them originally when the calendar was approved we aligned ian and coddington's third quarter with our spring break however the state's restriction does not allow you to go you have to have your instructional quarters be

196from 43 to 47 days long with up to a three week break in between quarters and unfortunately the way we built our calendar originally there were too many days in the third quarter and not enough in the fourth because we pushed the third quarter break to align with the rest of the district's spring break it's uncomfortable but the state won't approve the calendar unless we make the change that i sent you here the only challenge and i think the thing that's going to cause a consternation for some folks is that that would mean eaton and cottington don't have the same spring break as our traditional calendar does this tradition does this year-round calendar apply to our restart programs who are also on restarts are on a different calendar and theirs was fine okay so these

197are the only two schools but the state will improve our calendar in its current status okay do i hear a motion to approve the calendar as presented i moved miss justice is there a second mr wilderboy is there any discussion um miss justice yeah i've worked with uh year-round schools and other districts and that's always been a problem but the advantages for those who choose year round it makes it worth it so i'm i'm sorry that that it's a fact because of family situations yeah we do want to apologize to the families that now have kids and you know if you have kids in two years certainly yeah right yes okay is there any comments questions all right all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay that passes seven to zero um next up

198on our agenda is the special events insurance is that ashley yes ma'am so as you know we've tried to reach out to several insurance companies to try to find special event insurance um to help with any possible liabilities that may come to be and so we have listed for you in the attachment and i'll go through we with liberty mutual they declined coverage for special event insurance due to the high risk activities they were not willing to cover that event national insurance group declined saying that it was a very high hazard liability exposure and were they were not willing to cover the event selective insurance declines saying that they're not in the market to cover stunt shows travelers declined but with no comment employers mutual decline saying that the event was prohibited by reinsurance treaties

199tapco underwriters declined saying that they do not cover motorcycle stunt shows or parkour shows notice declined without comment messas declined without comment scottsdale declined without comment evanston declined saying that the motorcycle stunt exposure was more than they were willing to cover um crc group declined knk insurance declined saying that they are their market they do not cover stun and parkour events and winds declined no comment allen financial insurance group also declined saying that due to the motorcycle stunts they did not feel comfortable and they've had problems in the past with motorcycles going into crowds and so they were not willing to cover so we have not been able to find an insurance company that would provide that coverage for us okay so this was an item that mr wildebore miss justice miss walker brought forward

200so mr world of war you want to jump in yeah so let me understand first off we i think we have mr britt and we've asked him to get one of the things one of the many things that he's had i guess barriers uh i think he had to buy barriers because we required that then uh he's got to get special insurance so what his insurance wouldn't cover this event then because it's like a three million dollar insurance that he has to get so mr britt and his company would be covered but the school system would not have insurance for any of these events that took place and the one here says that watching videos on the website but again he's as he said before which i understand that that's true he's jumped through all

201the hoops so he the videos that he that these people watch were before he did all the hoop jumping um so have we approached anybody with the you know we've i can't speak to everything he's done but uh there's barriers now and there's this and there's that and he's done everything else have you know i don't think we've you know come we haven't done our due diligence in saying but these are the things we've made him do now will you cover it because even you know the one allen financial here says we watched the video which was an old video which i guess didn't have barriers or did have barriers we have provided information that those comments to the insurance companies and they were still not willing to proceed okay okay so is there um

202i'm sorry miss walker um well i know that uh he's still doing it in other counties right so is what are the other did we get research on what the other counties were saying that they what coverage they used i got i got information from pender county um from their the school system and their legal counsel and they do not allow him um to do that excuse me i talked with the attorney from there so colin knows him as well and um i was advised through them that they were that several principals got in trouble for using him because he did not have the appropriate insurance school so i just we cannot we cannot base our decision on what other counties are willing to we can't get 17. so the hold on um miss justice

203uh yeah mr brett is there and he's gone to a lot of work to try to make this happen and he'd be a good person to ask questions he's sitting there and you're making statements and i don't know what's true anymore i am totally confused i only know what the legal counsel from pender county schools told me i do not know how they enforce their character did you talk is he allowed to speak at this if we want okay well that's five minutes that's our five minute time it's up there you can see um if it's the will of the board that we continue the discussion then we can we can i'm telling you guys i am moving through the um point of order hang on just please fear you've been saying is it the

204will of the board that we continue on for five more minutes point of order i'd like to make a recommendation right let's make sure i have already spoken to ask that question is it the will of the board that we're talking longer okay but i'm making a point of order which supersedes your little point now i would like to say we have the gentleman here we'd like to get to the resolution we've pushed this on for weeks and weeks and months and months years why can't we ask him the questions that's not even a point of order but if the will of the board wants to i'm making a notion that we continue that we that we move forward and continue this later back again okay so there's a question and a and a second

205is there any more discussion about moving forward uh miss billy will you please call the role she's got her hand up we're just talking about moving forward yes discuss as i said i'm getting confused are you trying to help the school system or block something because you don't have anything i just want to know if we want to continue talking if we want to continue talking then the will the motion is to move forward wait a minute what do you mean by move forward with the discussion to the next item on the agenda okay next item on the agenda and so if you do not agree with that then vote no so the emotion on the table with the second is to move forward to item um to talk longer than five minutes because i

206already stated in the beginning that i want to adhere to our times okay so miss billy please call the roll miss justice keep talking is that a yes yes no that's enough no okay no i don't want to move forward no see that's what i mean i'm very confident i just said it okay so now we're confused hugh oh miss billy mr mcmanus no miss walker no miss craybill yes miss adams yes mr wildebord no and mr bullier yes um no um did i miss somebody no we was we weren't right so now um mr britt if you would like to approach the podium and we can um we got five minutes so mr nelson in the last uh meeting that you guys had nelson said that he wanted to hear from me he said

207specifically we haven't even heard from dane britt dane britt's here i'm here to talk to all you guys and try to straight says that's all i want and that's all i've wanted this whole time is communication so it started out with dane britt we like your show but um we don't want your videos on your your uh business page so i said i wasn't gonna take those videos down okay well you don't have enough insurance okay what insurance do i need so i get a list of demands i meet all of these demands within a week or two i do the fundraising i spend two thousand four thousand dollars on steel barriers which which i raised with with my own you know doing the fundraising with my charity and everything else um four thousand dollars

208in barriers and then we've got i upped my insurance from the 600 a year that i've had forever since the beginning of this thing 12 years ago to now it's sixteen hundred dollars a year for this three million dollar liability deposit that's all i wanted and the the the insurances that you wanted on my motorcycles that aren't even they're like child's motorcycles these are not even street motorcycles they're for children these motorcycles so so we're talking about steel barriers 3 million liability insurance which i don't know if you you know how liability insurance works but typically it covers the other person that's how liability insurance works usually right like that's why we get liability insurance for everything that's around us not for me my liability insurance won't it may not even cover anything that i

209if i wreck or do anything like that it does nothing for me that's how liability insurance works am i wrong i'm i'm curious that's absolutely right so i i felt like for the pe he's absolutely right i thank you i like communication so this is all i've ever wanted i want communication and i crave this communication because all i'm seeing are people that want to bully which is the exact reason that i started this i started this program because hanover county schools failed me failed me 25 years ago without getting emotional the reason i ended up in pender county schools to start with is because i got bullied and ran over so bad at noble because i was in the academically gifted classes and apparently didn't wear the right clothes that my mother had to

210move me to the next county to get me out of noble out of new hanover county schools and then of course i went through the whole process i became a cutter had my own issues of course but um my junior year at pender high school they brought in a guy named michael waggett michael wagner at the time he's a great singer and he was doing a lot of things with you know with a lot of big names and stuff and he basically was telling us like you can do anything you want to do and i was huge into music i've always been huge into music still am to this day which is why i'm trying to tell you guys if you want to take the motorcycles out of it that's fine but michael wagga changed

211that for me he changed where i was headed i'm telling what i don't know if any of you guys know what a cutter is i was literally self-mutilation was my therapy these are things that like if i can talk to these kids you know i see it all the time because i deal with kids not just at the schools but on a personal basis because they trust me they know they can talk to me they don't know that they can talk to you or any teacher they can talk to me because i'm one of them i have a stupid haircut and i have the tattoos and i look like them right um when i see the marks on their arms they trust me because i don't try to send them to therapy or i don't

212try to tell them that they need this or that i talk to them like a human being and that's the way it should be this show is extremely important on it doesn't matter what platform we use the platform is just a vessel i don't care and i've told you guys from the get-go i tried to do a show at murrayville elementary school with no motorcycles i told you i'd play drums for those kids i'd be just this one right here i played whenever he was at murrayville elementary i played for him that's one of the reasons that he told me he's playing drums now it sticks i know you want to hate me i don't care no you can hate me because i have a stupid haircut you can hate me because you think i

213do dangerous things but don't ever question my my motives for doing this my motive are the kids and it's the kids in my community i grew up here i'm from wilmington it was unfortunate that i had to leave wilmington because i had some some things going on that were out of my mom's control she was at the school every other day i still have night terrors to this day because of things that have me when i was 11. can you imagine two or three times a week waking up throwing stuff in your room and my girlfriend's like scared of what i'm gonna do to her and because i'm freaking out all the time because of something that happened at school of bullies how could you not be passionate when when your whole life gets changed

214like and not want to change the situation so please just don't question my my motives for doing this i get it shake your head i understand so mr brit we we only have like that's it we got 13 seconds so all right so what i um what i would like to say is that if he we don't have any money in our account and we can't get insurance to have him here so um so we need we need to have a decision on if we are going to allow or we are going to allow him to do um performances at our school without insurance so i'd like to make that motion that um are we going to allow mr britt to do shows at our school without insurance i just want to clear up on

215this group sorry you mean without the school system having insurance without the school system having insurance yes thank you my motion is the um to not allow mr britt to do and to do shows at our school without insurance can i ask you a question of the are because there was a question asked and it wasn't answered and i understand why but so liability insurance we we've heard what liability insurance mr mcmanus has defined liability insurance so why would liability insurance not be the yeah his liability insurance not cover his motorcycles if they crashed into our through the steel barriers et cetera so if mr britt and his company have liability insurance then they're protected but the school system's not protected in any way the school system wouldn't have insurance coverage for any client but

216as doctor mcmanus at this point if i have liability insurance i'm not protected but the person i run into is why would that not be the same thing i'm not sure exactly what you mean i guess if a student was injured i have my little miata outside i'm driving my miata down the street all i have is liability insurance i run into your car my car's not covered i'm not covered but you are because it's liability insurance that's what liability insurance is well the way it would work for the school systems general liability insurance is that if the school system is sued then that liability insurance applies to that claim and if the if the school system does not have liability insurance for this event and get sued and the school system would not have

217coverage for that claim if if if a student is injured at a show then perhaps that student could try to file a claim on mr britt's policy i don't know whether or not it will be covered all right i will amend my motion the um to not allow mr britt to do point of order madam chair motorcycle don't make motions to disallow something it's not allowed right now we need you need a motion to elaborate i am i'm restating that's the i am restating that we that we not allow performance his parkour and motorcycle performance it's not allowed right now we don't need a motion to do something that we're already doing somebody would have to make a motion to allow it okay then all right does anybody have any more motion so that we

218can finish up this discussion well i just wanted to ask colin okay is there waivers that students parents can sign so kids can participate so we can't be sued we could always ask for a waiver but certainly not um 100 that would stand up but but that is a possibility we could i mean we could think about asking for one but i mean there's i think we always get a little hesitant when we start asking kids to release this from liability for official events that work i do it for field trips with my grandkids all the time the um all the time yeah um again here we are just trying to come up with it on the fly just like we tried to budget for a billion dollar budget or 250 million dollar budget on

219the fly uh sir i have no uh never question mo's my kids loved your show uh been through it a bunch of times um we're talking about what's best for the school system and we've spent more time during budgeting season trying to find special insurance from with money we don't have that's the bottom line it has nothing else to do with anything except that we have to pass a budget and we talk about this more than we talk about a budget and the result is we're talking about cutting jobs because we're not doing ours the um mr mcmanus first of all i applaud you don't you beat yourself up one bit you're on an h of a motivational speaker just for what i heard you say you're genuine and you're sincere what everybody's trying to

220say and it's it's happening everywhere his school systems are not going to be insured for anything anymore because they're liable and and it's not you it's not reflective of you please don't believe that i just wish you'd come in all the schools and pay to speak to kids he said that's your show this is part of the show i know but i can tell you i see a lot of friends that are in education and on motherboards and they're not going to do it the insurance companies are just not going to be just playing drums i'm sorry but they're not going to be playing drums with me just doing a drum show all right so miss walker so so he's just offered up doing services without his motorcycles and playing drums or doing whatever he

221does with his parkour i don't see why parkour is cool excuse me i mean i don't see what's wrong with that i don't think that's a lot of the equation if that's what we're talking if that is the only hold up his anti-bullying message is very strong and i just think that we would be missing out or if we did not at least vote i hear you i see your hand wait till miss walker is done please are you dead yeah what yes well i want to make a motion and mr britt be allowed to perform his anti-bullying programs and i guess further down the line we can discuss more about the motorcycles but in another form that's approved by the board at a later date if you want to approve the form but right

222now it's like drumming or poor car and if you've got insurance for yourself we have more insurance than flip and fly and mayfair i know because i know the owner of living fly we have more insurance than they do okay so excuse me miss justice you finish please okay so yeah so i make a motion that we allow him to do his anti-bullying performances not neces not at the present not with the motorcycles but with other um forms of uh i call entertainment or attraction for the kids pick up a policy yeah where you aren't being specifically for over a year parkour course is there any just the motion on the floor is to allow mr britt to perform at our schools without motorcycles and um dangerous things the and we have a first and

223a second um yes comment or question um on some of the things and that are listed here parkour is named do we know that we would have coverage for parkour because here here's here's how i view my job and mr britt i have no one up here dislikes you no one up here dislikes your show okay that that came it's not personal so our job our job is to protect our students and the financial stability of this district if something were to happen at one of your shows and we are unable to be insured that falls on our shoulders and it also means if someone gets injured in one of your shows and we don't have insurance then we have immunity because we are a we're a school system so that means that potentially someone

224let's say loses an arm at your show because a motorcycle comes flying through whatever then we can't we have no recourse to support that family that is that is the purpose of this it is nothing personal the message of anti-bullying is very important it is something that we all believe in and are supporting at our school level when there is danger to our students that is supposed to be at the front of this and and mr bullier is right we're talking about potentially having to cut positions and having to pay for an additional insurance stipend that is not currently covered in a budget that we already don't know how we're funding it that is my hang up with this it's nothing personal miss justice okay first of all we're not paying for insurance we've already

225established that absolutely right right uh second of all i just talked to i realized my grandson's going on a bowling alley field trip tomorrow darn balkan hit him in the head by accident with some of these crazy kids the way they throw stuff i have signed a release he's going there's all kinds of activities that our kids we can't wrap them all in cotton him playing drums what are you afraid of the drumstick flying across the room poking an eye out they happened that in band come on guys let's be real here this man has he is a very great obviously motivational speaker our kids need to have role models that are outside the regular i guess you could say box because this isn't a regular world anymore it's changing rapidly he's a good example

226of the future here and he's a good role model and one of the worst things that happens in middle schools is bullying and it starts in elementary too and so this is what our kids need he's willing not to use the motorcycles he's willing to pay for his own insurance and not us i don't know what else you would like it seems like some people just complain to complain sometimes oh yeah so a comment for me is before we allow you to have one last speak is that um i don't think we need to get in the practice of saying you contractor you can come on you contract or you can't you contract you can't come on if a school wants to use him for another event to come and play drums or to do

227your bullying message it's up to the school to to get that approved and get there and make sure that all the insurance is covered so i am having a hard time voting to say we're going to carte blanche allow anybody to come into our school irregardless of you standing there you know with your great haircut it is a sweet haircut the um so i just have a hard time with us making that carte blanche statement if the schools want to use mr britt or anybody else to talk about bullying or to talk about any other topic then they need to go through the process of getting their own insur making sure ptas have to do that schools have to do that so um we'll give you one more final comment and then we have to

228um i filled out 10 pages of paperwork to dj at holly shelter's middle school formal recently that's never happened before so tell me at what point this becomes discrimination against me thank you tell me i don't know okay and that's that's what i keep getting is i don't knows and that's what it's been the whole time uh you jump through these hoops and we'll let you and then suddenly i can't anymore and i can't even play drums there and we don't know why this is why parents and and faculty have so many issues with the school board thank you for and those opinions so um all right so the motion on the floor miss justice would you please restate it so that we can vote that we allow mr brent to present his anti-bullying program

229not using his motorcycles but using another a form of uh attention getting device for our students that's that's in a much safer mode which would be like playing drama but yeah so okay so that's the motion and there's a motion and a second um miss billy will you please call the role madam chair just want to clarify one thing does this mean he wouldn't have to get permission from the school i mean if the board is saying that that's not so he just gets in the process we should not be carte blanching saying anybody can come on there are procedures so um that's what we're voting on is allowing mr britt giving him carte blanche what wait what no i didn't i did not say that why are you i did not excuse me folks

230from the audience are not allowed to input but i did not say that and i'm disputing my no you're saying my motion clarifying question so if this is typically a speaker can come into a school and it's on a school-by-school basis the reason the board is approaching this issue was because it was regarding insurance right right so to say that he can or cannot go into a school really isn't our call right if it's safe and it's a speaking engagement it's a drum situation so i don't quite understand why we're voting and mr ben i'm going to if we do have to go i am going to have to vote no simply because i i just i don't understand why we're voting on this okay so ashley can you add do you need to add

231anything more for clarity i hear you and i'll get you next i just thought it might be helpful um you may recall i think it was at the beginning of this year we had a change in our our contract procedures where we we have template contracts now and if we do anything other than that that goes to the our attorney for review and approval before we move forward and as part of that we put in place even if money didn't exchange we still wanted to have that contract in place because there were other things like sexual um paperwork that's related and insurance related so that we were even if money wasn't exchanged in hands we still had that paperwork to support like we would for any other contract and so the only reason that this

232this item came to the board was because our insurance carrier said if something were to happen on our premises because of the specific event that we were talking about with the motorcycles and parkour that they were not willing to cover any liability in that situation if it's djing or if it's some of the other things that you do you would just fill out the contract you still have to fill out the contract and you would put in the description you know what you were going to be doing at the event so then we could evaluate to make sure it was in line with what our insurance would cover and so that's i guess why there's a change in the previous years why you didn't have to do a contract versus now you do but the

233reason it came to the board was the special event coverage piece because we didn't have liability insurance for that type of event so going forward it would go through normal processes if it's not involving the parkour and the motorcycles the high risk items if that makes sense miss walker so you're you're putting parkour with the motorcycles now why i'm i'm just saying that if it's something that's not high risk that our insurance will cover then um it would go through the normal process for example his djing event that went through the normal process like all of our contracts did you get to djing did you get to do that holly shelter yes uh marvel elementary canceled me the night before a week ago they were supposed to have a fifth grade social they cancelled me

234because they said they did not want to have to go through all the processes so whenever i spoke to the principal i said i'd already filled out all the paperwork for holly shelter middle and she said i didn't know that well why did you cancel me another one of the issues that i'm talking about okay well that's not the issue we're voting trying to say is that if the board needs to vote to allow him if he's following all the rules then why is one school proven and one night so we're just basically saying he shouldn't be i mean getting barriers if he applies for something just because he he's him i mean well and also too this is not our role is to decide who comes onto the school it's not our role it

235obviously isn't our role we have we have a risk manager who um julie moore who manages all this for us um so um i think we should we need to call the question so miss justice state your motion one more time that we allow mr brett to perform his anti-bullying programs at our schools okay without motorcycles okay without all right so the so when yes all right so miss bowie will you please call the roll miss justice yes mr mcmanus yes miss walker yes ms craybill no miss adams no mr wildebore yes and mr bullier no okay so that passes four to three okay thank you next on the agenda is um written rules of decorum miss walker would you like to take the lead yes yes yes yes okay so i brought this forward

236to the board last um i think our last regular meeting and colin made some changes and he clarified some wording and um i i think i apologize for getting it so late to crystal to be put put on but um you guys have copies in front of you not much was changed although colin may add to what he did make changes on which i think he just made some clarifying he changed a couple words do you want to talk about what you changed i just suggested a few small changes cleaned up a few things mostly around just tightening up wording make sure we didn't run any first amendment issues but i think as it's presented now it's yeah something the board could consider and i think that was the only reason it got tabled last

237time and i believe that we should vote on adopting these written rules of decorum i think it's going to be a lot it's going to be helpful to do so because in my opinion if you have written rules and people understand what the rules are before they come into the building before they do call to audience then they know that the consequences are and so i feel like it's time that we take our meetings more seriously and we take them back i think we've for too long i think we have been i think an easy target and i i think it you this doesn't happen in other you know um official meetings so it's late y'all i'm so sorry um so i would just i'm i would please um ask that we adopt these reforms

238yes i'm making a motion is there a second second is there any discussion i think it's a great idea is is there any discussion yeah i just said i think would you miss justice would you like to make a comment we're following robert's rules of orders you're talking about having decorum then we're doing it here with all of us i just said it's a great idea okay thank you anybody else i have a couple questions that i just want to make sure that we're all clear on is that um i'm wondering why we have to say written rules of decorum because what about if something happens and we don't have it written down and that means that we don't address it um second when you have we have may result in consequences i'm concerned that

239may leaves us some wiggle room and if the board wants to be consistent then i say i think we should say will have consequences wondering why under respectful behavior no shouting calling out or making disruptive noises during the board meeting with the exception of quality audience does that mean that they are allowed to shout call out and make disruptive noises with that um so those questions and then um you want me to address them yeah yeah i'm just getting them all out so then we can do that and then i'm wondering um what will we do with this what is your proposal to do with this document do we post in the boe online we reference it in our policies um do we store it in assembly who maintains this um is this a board

240chair a board clerk responsibility so why do we need to say written rules why can't we just say rules of decorum because written rules are in my opinion establishes them that they are they are we have written them down we have posted them and they're going is my hope that they are posted on our website on the call to audience page posted on our door posted anywhere we're having a meeting because that just declares to everybody that these are our roles and that if you come into the building and if you decide to do called audience then you have to abide by them i think just saying them i don't think is enough and so all right so where do you propose we we house these like do you want it to be a policy

241do you want it to um you know calling ben so i need to know where where we're going to keep this document assistant we don't have any board standard operating procedures yet well you pretty much uh before you started reading most of the things that i've written here so having them written like i just said on the website when you sign up for called audience on the door anywhere that you know people are going to come and congregate okay and who do you suggest as the owner of this document to keep it up to date if we need to add more things uh the board it says in here clearly that you know this is not an exhaustive list if we have to we will add to it okay um so what about the will

242versus may in in paragraph two well colin didn't uh change that and i think that that just gives you flexibility that's that's what i think i mean if you want to make it well then you're going to have to enforce it every time i do enforce it every time i do enforce it every time you just started to get oh it's gone have a comment on the may versus will i think that having it as may gives you some leeway with respect to your enforcement um you know especially when it says disrupting or disturbing meetings you know especially you know often you give people a warning the first time well i i am concerned that when i try and do things step by step methodically in order to keep the order in the room and

243to have thank you and to have order in the room if we are not consistent in our handling of things then that just brings back more bad feelings and more people from call to the audience that'll be up to each chair i mean so um what about the one no shouting calling out or making disruptive noises with the exception of call to the audience are we allowed to make noises they're doing legal proceedings when we're having serious discussion and we don't want that but call to audience is is a time when people get to come up and and speak their pieces so we do we do want shouting calling out and making disruptive voices suggest that we want that but they're not going to i mean you're not going to restrict people are you going

244to make them all be quiet when people are up for called audiences that is what i'm supposed to be doing when like that one lady here who kept yelling at me she was on her third i mean i was getting ready to ask her to leave until she was quiet okay where do you suggest any different wording because this yes i want to take out with these with the except i know and i've had all these comments with the exception of the audience i don't think we need to make an exception i'm just throwing my my points out anybody else can make their own comments um so anybody else mr william oh well um and i think just the point of this whole thing is one one of them is like under the quality audience

245there will be no yielding of time and we have had yielding time we haven't had yielding time today we had yielding of time no don't i don't have a problem with adding that in yeah yeah okay well i'm just saying that and i think it's a good idea to have this when people sign up so they see it so when they they can't say well i didn't know or something you know on the on the digital thing out here when we have it have it sit right next to it as they sign their name they look at it here's the thing okay you want a copy you know we have it can i just say the yielding of time that um we had an issue with that last year because people wanted to yield to

246everybody and it's fine if you guys want to keep that but you know how far will it go that's what i'm saying i don't have a problem with that's not one thing i had a problem with mr mcmanus i i think it just sets a basic standard and i think somebody said it better or best it's up to the chair unfortunately you have to make an interpretation decide when to make a call or not but it's at least a basic format for what you should should not i guess exhibit in our meetings and we have had some issues but i think with the chair whoever he or she can be okay we have a motion and a second on the floor is there any more discussion well again i think it's a great idea miss

247justice jim comment yeah i think yes i think it's a great idea thank you all right miss billy will you please call the roll miss justice yes mr mcmanus yes miss walker yes miss craybill yes miss adams yes mr wildebore yes and mr bullier yes okay so that motion passes seven to zero we will have these um rules of decorum putin putin um posted in the the places that miss walker suggested i will work with the board clerk to see that that happens okay next on our agenda is um board attorney contract let's click on that so um the board will review the current attorney board contract ending june 30th 2022. um i'd like to start the conversation is that with making a motion that we extend the board attorney's contract from june 30th to

248indefinitely like we had before second is there a clarification yes does that mean it's uh that if we decide to go with somebody else or to do open search that they would have they would have the contract but it'd be like a 30 days previously we would have to we would have to um adjust start adjust the contract but we can do that that's what doing it if that yes so we yeah the emotion on the table is to con to extend their contract um because it is up june 30th and we need to um extend the contract so you're working definitely i think doesn't it naturally go open-ended no it's not it was 30 days 30 days no our previous one mr shive you weigh in on on the contract it usually is it

249just goes until somebody wants to terminate it is that is that correct i think the previous iteration of the contract was uh such that it would continue in perpetuity until one of the parties gave notice the current version that's in place that the board approved effective february 1st 2022 states that it runs until june 30th and that the new hanover county schools reserves the right to extend the contract an additional three years in one year increments so that's my motion okay okay not okay so is there any any any questions about in comments yeah discussion yeah the indefinite judy i mean um i'm not ready we've had discussions and about this contract for quite we've had people in um the indefinite part i like right now i don't want to attach it to a year

250or three years i think the 30 days 30 days the thing right now should i just have a lot of questions about what's going on with our current legal firm it's not you calling but boy what's been going over the last couple years and i know that central office needs a law group and that's not the problem i'm talking about some of the behavior that we've had to endure because of certain circumstances so my motion was to keep it in in in what's it called what's the word calling and perpetuating so i think that what you would be asking is for the board to make a motion into a new contract that would they would not have a set end date but i think you would want to think about adding a termination clause of

251you know 60 or 90 days okay okay all right so is there any more discussion i just clarification because you just read off what the contract said that once it ends we have to do it in a year or two three years i'm sorry say that one more time it's this late so it's whatever the board wants to do if the board wants to extend for another year you can do that if the board wants to enter into a new contract that doesn't have a set in date you could also do that okay so my motion was to extend the contract for one more year and i have a second on that so okay um is there any more discussion miss justice yeah i would much rather have the 60 days especially everything that's going

252on from any objectives determination it's not determined we could do it again in 60 days we could renew it the point is a year is a year or three years or three years that's that's a long time and everything that's going on i want to be very cautious for our school system any more contracts any more discussion it is just terminology it is not set in stone if at any point this board says hey we want to review we want to do an rfp we want to look somewhere else we can do that it is just extending the contract so with the we have legal services i do not think it is good business practice to go by a 30-day 30-day contract extension i would like to see the year i support it any more

253discussion well the last contract we had was 30 day 30 days so it wasn't yeah that's what i read it was 30 days 30 days um not i'm talking about the one prior miss dagner filled out i don't mean i was not working with the board at that time but i don't believe that it required a board vote every 30 days it did not because it did not had a 30-day notice provision perhaps yeah 30-day notice because it went on for over a year so i remember that because we've had it we've had guaranteed for more over years right but we have not voted every 30 days on their contract no we didn't have to vote every 30 days but you could give a 30-day notice right that's always been in there yes and so

254i mean if we vote tonight to do a year we're doing a year yes but she just said that we weren't we don't have to is that him is that clear mr willerborn did you have a comment i actually did um just a question so you are our attorney now but it's not actually you it's your law firm correct so if next week uh darrington smith said well we're going to switch you around we could get somebody else is that correct or would you be our attorney for that's correct your contract is with my firm not me so and okay mr mcmanus do you have a question okay so the motion on the floor is to extend our contract for one year with all the same um the all the same things that you know

255each party has 30 has to get can give 30 days notice so um to end of the contract so miss billy will you please call the roll miss justice yes mr mcmanus yes miss walker yes ms craybill yes miss adams yes mr wildebore yes and mr bullier yes okay great that the the motion passes with so we continue with darrington smith for a year um we will review it next year at this time okay so next under information we have the use of seclusion and restraint um ms barnum good evening for the update on seclusion and restraint i just um i want to start with a little bit of a frame on how we kind of got to this work and and then i'm going to give you specific steps on what we're doing right

256now so in alignment with strategic efforts of establishing learning environments that are of course supportive culturally responsive and focused on building relationships in community a team of lead teachers and specialists are continuing their work or our work in evaluating necessary changes for the inclusion of additional fidelity measures and discontinuance of any ineffective methods these are of course incremental steps we're continuing our work our professional development on a trauma sensitive more than a trauma inform but a trauma sensitive approach based by based on backed by evidence-based research focusing on brain-based and brain-informed practices of course that foundation of that is usually utilizing staff skills in the prevention of crisis situations as well as responding to students in crisis and a lot of that crisis is related to stress and trauma and we know that we have

257plans to expand and continue this work in trauma-sensitive education this approach most specifically relies on the relationships that our staff have with our students and their ability to understand the difference between intentional and then adaptive or maladaptive responses to stress in the classroom and this builds on work we've already been doing with with zones of regulation regulation instruction that we have in place so specifically some of the updates i'm going to go through these quickly because they're pretty bare bones updating our greenblatt reporting form i'll get into a little bit more of that but updating it to make sure that all of the components are completed with fidelity and there's there's no confusion on that um revising our guidance document also in focusing more on the verbal de-escalation and having that training across all staff

258entered into an online system so that we can actually monitor um that all staff have completed that training that's generally been done at staff meetings but having that in our in our um what we call vector our safe school system allows staff to sign in complete the training and we have an immediate roster of that of course doing a deeper a deeper dive into regulations with our staff and aligning those two trauma-sensitive approaches and practices um i have again followed up with my conversation with dpi on data and still i am i'm waiting for that response um another point um we have continued to even though general statute and policy allows for seclusion and restraint in instances of destruction of property whether it's personal property or property in the classroom and we've continued to advise

259against that we want to remove that from even the training materials and aligning that with the general statute so go a step beyond because that in in practice that's just not appropriate um really advancing the understanding of the schools and their crisis team creation so crisis teams work with regard to safety issues in the building whether there is a shelter in place a lockdown whether there is some other type of unexpected event but expanding the role of the crisis team and making sure that you have an entire team that can rally around supporting when we have an incident in the classroom or in a school our post-crisis steps with regard to debriefing really requires some additional work and that has not necessarily been a focus of the training it's included in the training but it

260hasn't in our opinion been a strong enough focus so expanding that that also um includes not just the professional development on that and the understanding the debriefing but recording and communicating that debriefing with families and at the next team meeting so the next or the immediate iep team meeting 504 mtss whatever that might be and then with regard to the reporting fine-tuning our reporting to parents having a well-defined standard operating procedure not only for how parents receive the communication how the data is entered into powerschool those are pretty consistent but pretty consistent isn't enough having a well-defined standard operating procedure that really is a check by check making sure that that communication went to the family verbally on the same day that written communication is in their hands within 24 hours if it's not able

261to be the same day how the reporting is completed within a 48-hour time frame so that it's it doesn't sit somewhere waiting two weeks to be entered because then data might might not be as as fresh so those standard operating procedures are what we're working on and again continuing to deliver district-wide professional development opportunities to all student support staff members and all student support teams whether they are the mtss team or the student support staff any any really grouping of those folks receiving trauma sensitive training as well as lives in the balance training that we've already been working on and in july at the july meeting you will have an opportunity to see from school improvement plans and the school each school's plan for the management of student behavior which i'm expecting will be able

262to provide some more insight on all this work at the school level so i don't know if you had any questions okay somebody have any questions for miss barnum um justice yes um you've done a great job the district has over the last year in addressing this i guess it probably started during the pandemic when it was more time to think you didn't have the kids together and everything but it has the numbers have really really dropped um do you feel that it's a practical uh call or ask that and by the way you know how i feel about seclusion i i think it's a form it's just not good for kids there's no way any way it is it's good for kids in my professional opinion do you think that it is a very

263uh practical ask to say by the 23rd 23 24 school year that we will no longer have it implemented and it will be able to be the problems will be addressed in other manners that are safe and obviously already working because our numbers have dropped so much i think [Music] predicting the future is not necessarily a skill of mine however however and it in it and it's it's late so there's no telling what i'm going to say i'm just kidding um i think with a well-planned professional development opportunity time for staff to really experience that mind shift i think that i think it's possible i really do but i have to say that the folks that are in the room right now those of us that are talking about this aren't the ones in the

264classrooms every day and experiencing that moment where they have to make a decision on how to maintain safety and i think i operate on a growth mindset i expect that all of our staff are able to continue to grow and adapt and adopt new strategies and even better accommodations and supports for students that aren't ineffective and that aren't counterproductive so i would be hopeful for that but i wouldn't be able to make promises okay well is there anything okay thank you anybody else just briefly i think you'd mentioned last time about um you talked about lives in the balance would uh will you be working on a grant for that or is that something that i mean if you need help i mean is there any way we can help you figure out how to

265to apply for grants because like obviously we have no money obviously we're we're tight right now but right so um we've got some opportunities in that and so at this moment as of this week and a conversation i had yesterday with regard to some funding opportunities which i don't want to you know to but i am not concerned about the funding of the um the trauma sensitive schools portion we did receive a grant for that and um with the lives and the balance piece adding i don't i'm not concerned with funding this at this point if you had asked me three days ago i might have said i'm concerned just want to check and see if you need it okay all right um thank you miss justice well i won't make a motion we don't

266usually make motions out of information sessions okay so we can we get that on to new business next time or if a upcoming meeting thank you okay um thank you next fingerprinting dr barnes so good evening so we're pleased to announce that we are now considered one of the three districts that i know of in north carolina who are fingerprinting all of its new employees we began with uh sporadic in april to make sure that we had the system up and running and the process working and have been going full bore since may 1st with fingerprinting all of our new employees what's nice about the system now is we really have three systems of support to ensure that we have the best eyes on this issue that we can so we work with a group

267called background investigations bureau who keeps a running check on we do the new employees two ways we do the bib as well as through the fingerprinting so we get a richer report back on all sorts of charges and incidents that may have happened with the person we also utilize something called the guardian system which will track current employees who may uh receive any kind of charges or or arrests that we get informed about daily so we have uh sort of a multi-tiered system to support and ensure that we're keeping track of things that go on with our employees and our potential employees thank you great does anybody have any questions mr orderboard i just want to clarify what you just said so the guardian system is that that is it all of our employees or

268anybody who has been fingerprinted no it's all of our employees of course oh awesome very good correct any other questions thank you for that update and you did it in two minutes we love you okay um next up um dr faison for paxton patterson career exploration exploration lab good night oh good evening good evening good night everybody so um good evening um so i have the opportunity to share with you um the paxton patterson lab and this is a new opportunity for our middle school students so they will be able to explore careers um through the cte program so on the next slide and you actually can move over two slides please oh do i have i have control over it or you know you have the power i do i'm sorry i apologize okay

269i apologize um so on the next slide the next three sides you can actually see that the different modules so with the paxton patterson lab the middle school students at murray elementary this is a program that we're going to pilot this year in murray elementary there will be two classrooms at murray for this program and what will happen is the students will have the opportunity to explore different career pathways so in the next three slides you're going to see those pathways that they have the opportunity to explore and here you see a number of pathways but you also see one that is close to our community hospitality and tourism so we wanted to definitely highlight that and the flight and drone technology i don't know if you guys had the opportunity to actually um see

270that at ashley and i say that because part of the lab at the middle school the students actually get to explore at the middle school and then they go deeper at their high school so that's a match there this is additional modules that we have and i'm going to point out here the personal finance and we all know how important personal finance is our state actually has had for our students now entering 2021 they have to take a personal finance class so this falls right in line with that as well and our last set of modules here and you'll see here we're thinking about our community you see the video production when you think about wilmington when you think about our community you definitely think about video production and lastly i'll highlight the employability skills

271because when we talk to any employers to do partnerships or internships and just around our state that is a key skill that we need to start making sure that our young people have so you know a lot of employers are now saying especially when you think about career and technical education they're saying i can train them i need them to have those employability skills so this is a first place that they can get that now what happens so the students will actually have a project base so you think about there's a classroom and you have a teacher and the teacher is a facilitator so the students will be working on a project-based problem-solving opportunity they're going to do critical thinking problem solving as i said before of course collaboration and we love the fact that

272as you can see here math and reading skills are highlighted along with that narrative and persuasive writing so this as i said before the student explores let's say i want to i think i want to do medical careers i explore that and then i can go and do that into my high school and do the pathway and you're going to see a little later in the next presentation about our cte pathways and how these are aligned so for the teachers to actually do this this is a different concept this looks different i'm going to show you um a video and 50 minutes 50 seconds but it's late i'm sorry um but i am going to show you a video but you're going to see that this is different this is where the students are actually

273on a learning management system and they're using that learning management platform but most of the time this is hands-on this is 70 hands-on so think about that and the actual learning and opportunities that our students are going to have with this again that writing piece we we want to just make sure we highlight how this is incorporating the core instructional pieces that of course instructional classes and we have accommodations for students who need it with closed caption and text-to-speech so the instructor the instructor actually will receive two types of training because as i said this is different this is different for the students this is going to be different for the instructor this instructor will have to learn how to be an instructor of a pax and patterson lab so they will receive training on

274that the online platform that will be used along with safety because you're going to see that our students will have a variety of opportunities now i'm going to show you a quick quick um click um sorry video with the student experience and i want you to keep in mind that this video is for paxton patterson lab and paxton patterson lab says middle and high school so you're going to see a couple of tools that we do not use in our middle schools we do not use a saw and you're going to see a big drill but i thought it was important for you to be able to actually see this and this is only 50 seconds but it's 50 seconds of power all right no no not working if you and it should be the

275one that's 50 seconds because there are several [Music] so you just see you get a little taste of what you will see at murray um middle school when you go and see this lab in place and they're actually going to be two classes of this these labs cost about eighty eight thousand dollars and this is something we use our cte funding of course you know that we cannot use our cte funding for anything but for our cte courses so we do hope to add additional labs but we started with murray and we're starting with two classes there we're not going to play the instructor video i put that there for you to go and see it's about two minutes long but the key pieces that he pulls out are that when students start a number

276of times they think they have careers they they want but then they find that that is not what they really want to explore and also that the students in these classrooms they can take off this is an opportunity for students who sometimes can't shine in a math classroom or reading classroom this is where i become a leader this is where i shine so um we're really excited about this and um that's the pax and patterson lab and hopefully we will begin to add them we're adding it at murray next year and hopefully we'll add it at other places in the future questions um adams i'm excited i am too cte background over here so i'm very pumped to see this i'm thrilled um so just i guess my question is there's multiple career paths the

277students are going to have an opportunity to explore what cte teacher is being selected for this what is their background or is it just a general position so it's just a cte teacher okay so all cte teachers you still have to go through the training for the paxton patterson lab so it doesn't have to be a particular cte teacher thank you mr mcmanus absolutely you know i adored this i think i was thinking i knew you would love it yesterday one is this in all those schools you just said one just one murray but futuristically speaking we want to add it in the other middle schools but there again this is not cheap um because of all of the equipment because this is really exploration so um we do have a plan to hopefully definitely

278add an additional middle school um in the not this year but the following year and we'll just have to see what funding dictates and how it takes yeah when they light up a couple or more or maybe one when they go to high school what's the availability there or do they go to c-tec or economy so if you recall okay so in our high schools these are modules there that they can explore but in our high schools we have these pathways so they can go to their high school and do these same things and they'll go deeper because they can take the first class and the second class so um if if i am like ashley and i use ashley because i don't know if you guys have ever gone to that drone classroom it

279really excites you so if i go and i get really excited about that i can go to ashley and go in deeper with that pathway if that did that answer your question no yes more than one school yeah money so the funding come the cte funding comes from federal funds or yes ct is federal funded and you know we want to pilot it and since this is a pilot we will like i said with funding hopefully we'll definitely add this in additional schools because we expect this to be very successful i mean you think about us we're adults and we're excited so our kids are going to be really excited murray was picked probably because they lead into ashley is that perhaps why they were picked well murray was picked because honestly the the the

280teacher and the the placement of the teacher so it was time for it it was a different change in a person so it really doesn't matter because if we do it at hogger these the modules that hoggart will then the student the students will feed into the middle school there so it was just really um staffing was was perfect at this time for murray so not really location so mr mr wildeboard um so i i just want to see so will this be like one elective or two electives and how will the children be chosen to to be part of this well it's going to be um just like the um students do with their cte courses okay so they would sign up for it it would be just would it be one off it

281would be one yeah one block yes mr mcmanus so the facilitator which is perfect the teacher after this facilitator that's my question so the requirements to be a facilitator are they the same or you that's going to depend on of course in other states being gracious because of the pandemic but what's the background because there's so many people who are gifted in so many of these areas who have worked and made a living so their relevance in the class would be absolutely unbelievable so we is you start with as a is a regular cte teacher and the cte teacher is training to become the paxton patterson lab teacher and really that teacher is just a facilitator so as long as you're a cte you can get trained in this and become a paxton-patterson lab um

282teacher all right thank you so much thank you for your presentation we're all excited and we all want to be in middle school now yeah um next up is um you can just stay the new hanover county um application for our cte um federal funding so roll right on into yes yes yeah i wanted to ask about uh this is well now 10 30 and we know how we make our brains work they don't work well actually after nine but after 10 definitely not we are going to have an interim this month right can we please move what's left unless there's somebody from the outside here that needs to present that i don't want to mess that up but if it's all the people that are in the room now uh could we please go

283ahead and add this to the interim what's left because at this point making decisions and hearing information in fact i can tell from what i'm hearing from some of the things people are asking now they're getting tired and their brain's not quite as sharp as it would it was an hour and a half ago so could we move this to the interim is that a motion yes it's a motion to move it to the interim there's a second second okay um any discussion my only question is is there anything in new business um senior staff that we need to have action on prior to june 21st good question the aig plan and the cte plan we need to we didn't have that done okay so i i so that would be um something that we

284need to consider so if we those ones are the big ones and so we have to do those so we also have to decide the july board meeting i know so that there's a lot more business on there so um the motion on the floor is that we suspend new business discussion until the um june 21st meeting um and there's a second and said miss billy will you please call the role well oh you gonna have a discussion i thought we already did go ahead well i was i wasn't sure what people were saying so you were asking the questions you were asking the question uh did we have to present certain things tonight yes and then we i was told there's three things we have to get done tonight okay uh why do we

285have to have them tonight i'm just because it's their rules it's still it's a week it can't wait until there's one person here i [Music] you am you know if you needed it and you're here also i mean that's that's important that you're here okay so it's important that we do these tonight so i'm gonna withdraw i'm gonna i'm gonna withdraw that amendment then okay thank you emotions dr faison all right roll on okay so i just um share with you the paxton patterson lab which we are really excited about so now we are asking that you approve our cte plan for our funding and before we ask you to approve that plan we want to just give you an overview of cte and new hanover county schools because we have such good things going

286on all right dr faison is this this wasn't uploaded to us yes it is you should have a i see it i see the clickbait scroll down [Music] well we just had last summer we we actually took tours of all these different facilities i mean we're pretty in it all of us up here are immersed in what we're doing with cte the board had asked for me just to give an overview of ct so i will thank you go ahead it will be free thank you i'm just because i still remember it was good but we just had one all right so currently we are serving over 15 out we have 15 000 students enrolled in our cte programs 6 000 of those students are at the middle school level 9 000 at the high

287school level we have different pathways within those pathways students can actually become concentrators so if i follow the three pathways the full pathway and the three classes two or three classes then i become a concentrator so instead of just taking maybe an accounting class here and a drone class in a medical class if i stay with a pathway and finish that pathway i become a concentrator so as you can see here these are the number of concentrators we have at the different schools and we're really happy to say that overall we have 11 almost 1100 students as concentrators in cte god we need to be extremely proud of that as a board and as a district so these are the pathways that we currently have in our district and the schools that the pathways are

288located we are adding this year a pathway that we're really excited about the state is adding the teaching training pathway so we are adding that pathway at hoggard so the students will begin with teaching as a profession then they'll go to teaching um as a profession too and the advanced studies um education and this will be offered at hoggart here again is new so we're piloting it at a school but we're really excited about this because this will allow us to partner more with kate fear and uncw but also think about those board scholarships these kids will feed right into this and we know that um education we need people to be interested so we're really really excited about this we're also going to add the pathway to laney we know laney is stem and

289we're going to add the data science pathway there so the students will complete this pathway they'll do the three three courses and they would then become a concentrator if they um completed that pathway and that is a quick overview that was good yes we just wanted to highlight with to you okay the new pathways that we have okay um and the concentrators and the numbers that we have just to show you the wonderful things that are occurring in cte um any questions so you don't need any action on this tonight yes we need for you to approve the plan oh yeah so you have the plan also uploaded okay all right so um can i ask a question is the is the teaching pathway is that kind of analogy um analogous to our um teacher

290cadet program that we used to have yes is that and that's that's exactly what i um correlated to is the teacher cadet and we're actually i talked to i had the opportunity to meet um dean dempsey and we actually want to make our program premiere we have this is a new program we can build it and make it look the way we want it to look so we're excited about this and how we can partner with uncw and um kate fear to take this program to the to another level okay uh justice in the past laney uh was where this program was housed for the teaching uh is there a particular high school or is it across the district so this year we're going to do hoggart with a pilot we're doing the stem pilot

291at laney hopefully there again we have to see the interest we could add more um pathways to different schools mr mcmanus federally funded yes this is this too is one of our cte yes i'll and i'll just make that clear because you're you're right because this is a lot but we're fortunate that our career and technical education those are federal dollars that we cannot do anything but to do the things that we're doing we don't have a choice to move those line items so very good point sir miss walker i just had a question um so you're telling us about laney you've got data science here and programming i met somebody at this last chamber event that asked about microsoft's like certifications and stuff like that do you think eventually it would lead to that

292kind of stuff because i feel like that's in demand you know some of the programming and sometimes now that is a question that i will have to ask mrs fadrell she's like don't we already have a microsoft certifications at all of our schools [Music] but data science this is sas programming so it's actually on a higher level um actually it will begin with excel and then lead into these courses it leads to any certification that someone can put on their resume are you just talking yes ma'am it can be set you're talking sas programming those folks that won't give us the formula for testing schools so yes ma'am all right thank you if we have microsoft word is great yeah i'm sorry i'd like to make a motion to approve the application for career and

293technical education state and federal funding fiscal years 2022-23 second okay jumping on everybody seconds okay uh thank you so much give it to you thank you okay the um all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed okay that passes 7-0 next up mr boyer will you lead us in the discussion of amendment to policy 34 60. thank you madam chair rock and roll let's go as quick as we can here you can see the changes made if you click on the policy you've all had an opportunity to do so at the 5 10 22 policy committee meeting ms farnham shared proposed amendments be made to existing policy 3460 graduation requirements after discussions the committee is in favor of amending this policy per the attached red line version i remind board members that these policies

294will no longer go on for first reading they will be discussed at our monthly policy committee meeting and then on our agenda as they are amendments so at this time i'd like to ask for a moment to show the question before we get rolling um is it best practice that we um when we look at amendments to policies that one hour before the meeting should we wait till the next meeting to vote on these policies or can we um move forward but maybe like you know as an exception rather than a rule your policy doesn't prohibit you voting on them tonight if you want to i mean things for you to consider how long they've been posted and you know whether or not there's significant public interest in the policy such that you might want

295to wait before voting on it but again the board is free to do so under its policy if it so wishes oh okay thank you um miss walker so uh was this just done today yeah i don't know why i missed that i guess i was in and out but no this was not today pardon me the this policy was not done today the only ones uh that were done today were student attendance 4400 and uh communicable diseases which we've had before but no these policies were not discussed in our policy committee i said 5 10 22. so may 10 oh 34.60 i'm sorry that is i was looking at 35.60 my bad sorry okay this was voted on may 10th yes yes yeah we've had this one out there for two meetings okay so

296okay so um is there well nelson you want to uh yeah i'd just like to ask for a motion to approve the promises you can make a motion second okay nelson do you want to make the motion sure okay thank you all right not to put words your mouth um all right so nelson adams is there any discussion i just i just want to know i i know it's been a while since we've had this come up today what is a major change i mean are we just adopting i thought we already had that did we already had electives six elect this is the one that we talked about where ms barnum showed us the charts and we added the words additional you know to make sure that we we were clear on that and

297um if you scroll down you can see in the red additional and um miss farm tell us what there was one other major change specifically the main reason for bringing this back was to include the promotion requirements that um that dictate the number of credits to move from um 9th grade to 10th and 10th to 11th okay so there's a motion and a second um any more discussion all those in favor say aye any opposed okay that's seven to zero next policy 50 40 for news media relations thank you madam chair once again at the may 10th committee meeting mr smith shared an amendment be made to existing policy 50 40 news media relations to better align with current best practices for school district media relations specifically to remove the requirement that school system employees

298receive prior approval from communications or the superintendent before speaking with the media so that requirement has been removed after discussions the committee is in favor of amending this policy per the attached red line version so to reiterate the requirement that communications be informed before employees speak to the media has been removed okay um is there a motion i moved to adopt the policies okay is there a second second okay um any discussion i just have a brief question so best practices you're saying that the policy that we had in place that that requires approval for system employees is now being removed yes and and the communication outreach they will upon request coordinate news that's not that's less restrictive is that what we're saying here yes yes i'm just clarifying that yeah okay um there's a

299motion and a second um any more discussion all those in favor say aye aye any opposed okay that one passes also the board policy 72 62. mr thank you madam chair um the policy 7262 communicable diseases went back to the policy committee and the committee made no recommendations from its original policy so i would ask for a motion to approve 7262 as uh presented there were no amendments to the policy and if i could second i was all second okay any discussion yes ma'am um so again as i brought up in in policy uh and the vote was uh two to one uh in policy uh i think we've got to look at the first paragraph where it says very clearly an effort to maintain what section mister the first paragraph the very the very

300first an effort to maintain balance between the need to protect the rights of students and employees and to control the spread of serious communicable diseases and then if we shoot down to subsection c2 where it clearly says if either state or local health departments have provided direction to make to contain excuse me it is getting late the spread of particular communicable diseases uh it talks about underneath that that the cdc the school nurse or other relevant medical authority and i just asked the policy committee to join me and figure out exactly what the other relevant authority was if we could further define that they didn't feel like that was a necessary thing we could just kind of leave that up in the air and hope we could figure it out down the road i think

301it is important that we do have that and i really think it's very important that we get the very best medical advice possible to make any uh rational and logical decisions uh in the future so i think it's very very important that we um you know put together a this committee or further at least define what relevant medical authority we are talking about is that one doctor is that one nurse is that a group who is that yeah we don't know so i think that's important to further define that i think it would be great if we could have a second you know group of uh to to advise us not that we should listen directly to the the health department or to that other group uh it is ultimately it's our decision but i

302think it's important that we get as much information as possible okay is there any more discussion okay um um all right hearing none of the all in favor oh i need a motion oh yeah um all in favor of adopting the policy um as written say aye aye aye any opposed opposed okay so that passes six to one okay um amended the letter e amendment to the student attendance policy 4 400. i guess we discussed this in policy today um i'm fine if we had to wait miss varnam is there a need to pass this right now there's not a need to pass this until um at least probably the july meeting so okay so then we'll go ahead and just leave this one on kind of as a first reading and we'll discuss it

303in july keeping in mind that school starts in july for some yeah so we need to do that in july so that everybody can get their stuff together okay so we didn't have to do any voting on that we'll move make a note to put in the july thing july agenda sorry um all right so next up letter f um july regular board meeting the um i brought that up just as a confirmation for folks that july 5th is is our next board meeting it is the tuesday after the holiday july 4th holiday on monday i didn't know if there was any interest in moving that meeting from the fifth to the twelfth yeah yeah so um i just was bringing that up for discussion um and if there's no interest then we're sailing on

304with the fifth i think we should move it okay so motion to move your motion okay is there a second move from the fifth to the twelfth okay are you seconding mr mcmanus yes okay okay um any discussion i just have a question sure are we going to have an interim meeting in july and if we are is that going to be bumped to later in the month the interim meeting is going to be our town hall so we will not have an interim meeting good that's right i think we did discuss their job wasn't yes okay that's good all right so any more discussion on that um yes ma'am it's just like a couple people might have some other plans is that what's going on here because of the holiday i just i i'll

305i will be in town i mean but no i just think that given the proximity to the fourth of july it's best to allow our staff if they're traveling and our audience if they're traveling to have that extra week so that's why we're having a discussion yeah that's why i brought it up was because it was because of the close proximity to the july 4th holiday um that our school system celebrates okay um so we have a motion and a second to move the board meeting in july from the 5th to the 12th and any more discussion okay all those in favor say aye aye any opposed okay that passes seven to zero all right so now um the new hanover county schools um letter g the aig program thank you and thanks for waiting

306hanging in there and fluffing up your marriage pretend like you're awake i am going to go through this um rather quickly but please don't hesitate to stop me if you have questions on any particular slide so as always um new hanover county schools the aig plan runs according to dpi article 9d the six standards in the plan are student identification comprehensive programming within a total school community differentiated curriculum and instruction personnel and professional development partnerships and program accountability when we were writing the plan for the 2022 through 2025 plan we formulated a writing team it consisted of three elementary gifted specialists to middle school one high school uh we reviewed the feedback from the previous plan the one that we had been working on we looked at dpi put out a changes to nc aig

307program standards why they made changes stakeholder feedback we had feedback from our gift advisory council we had feedback from our principal focus group we had feedback from many different areas maria black who is the parent liaison lead dr smith who was chief of diversity equity inclusion we had program representatives from the state we had sel coaches and instructional coaches give us feedback additionally dpi offered the guidance of dr makel who's an associate research scientist for johns hopkins school of education and dr adelson who's president and ceo ceo of adelson research they too looked at components of our plan and gave us feedback changes uh major change not major changes but changes made from the last plan to this plan based on the changes from dpi in the standards and through feedback that we've gotten emphasis

308on practices that will address the disproportionality of aig's identified students and decreased disparities emphasis on communication emphasis on meeting students academic and intellectual needs we had additions some of them i were creating a beginning aig specialist handbook and training currently there is kind of a booklet but we saw a need we have many new specialists right now who came on doran covid and this past year that really haven't gotten in-depth training so we're developing that we did add the high school diploma endorsements that go on student diplomas they were not in our plan and now are in we are going to eliminate the tops folders which we purchase um as an observational tool and we're creating our own based on evidence-based practices and other exemplar folders we added a policy giving permission to the aig

309supervisor and only them to make changes in power school after 30 days of identification because there were some discrepancies we were finding clarifications we did add a glossary to this um this plan we uh added into the plan we had had it but it wasn't in our plan descriptively the procedure for resolving disagreements between parents and the school system when a child is not identified for the program more clearly and specifically outlined identification criteria with the addition of our looking at identifying the top 10 percent of underrepresented populations through disaggregated data we used the word degisting in the last plan and said that it it wasn't a practice that we practiced and have clarified that there may be some circumstances and added procedural accounts of how that would go about within the grievance policy and

310process procedures we added that aig identification is not clearly tied to specific services current services are not permanent and can change depending upon factors including performance school population and availability we added that to the parent letter that goes home and uh modified that on the dep that's created for identified students we clarify transfer student identification on all of our paperwork and we attach documents to each standard for each for each practice for each standard um identification not much has as changed here in terms of using our k-3 nurturing program to begin that observational of student gifted tendencies and again we added that using the top 10 percent of subgroup data to as part of that data that we collect for the achievement piece comprehensive programming within a total school not much really changed here specialists

311and classroom teachers use local state and national standards to align and expand curriculum and instructional plans instructional pacing depth and complexity are varied and adjusted based on student need student-centered instructional practices and materials are standards-based and grounded in research differentiated curriculum and instruction again we're using evidence-based resources we're developing future ready skills ongoing assessments as well as we are really going to concentrate on using pre-assessments for our own groups and working with classroom teachers to use them so that students aren't learning what they already know personnel and professional development all gifted specialists are aig certified or are working through their certification professional development is given on a monthly basis we meet as a team our district aig credential credentials are offered to classroom teachers each year by our specialists we are constantly recruiting and trying

312to retain all of our aig licensed professionals that's both gifted specialists and classroom teachers monthly training and plc's for aig specialists we are starting with a when aig teachers are on their own island in schools and sometimes i feel that way in our building as well but having a we're trying to implement a weekly plc virtual plc for our gifted specialists so that they can arrange a time that they can mutually meet as their planning period and be able to discuss practices and units and things that they're doing partnerships this is we already have a lot of really great partnerships our getting our gifted advisory council up and going again was a important move we have you know parents we have uh now students we have uh professors from uncw uh we have you know

313a good range of representation on those communication is going to be one of our biggest initiatives this year transparency and communication school to school district to community program accountability gifted advisory council will start again this 20 22 23 school year with their site visits uh we're excited about that um we are you we have to follow our aig plan and any goals and and strategies for professional development that will help us meet the district goals align with lea initiatives and state legislative standards and that is it good job question okay that was the whirlwind tour um does anybody have any questions of miss um sheehan sorry um i i thank you very much and this is late and we're all kind of you know a little bit um you you mentioned disproportionality and i'm glad

314you did disproportionality i'm glad you did because i think i'm when i originally on the board i actually spoke to the then um coordinator about how we can identify students in a different way i don't know i guess i see in there that you're gonna try very hard to do that which i'm glad because that k-3 area is very important and that really starts in our k-3 nurturing program in identifying students with these gifted tendencies students you know when we think about kindergarteners they come into school and they have varying exposure to things um you know some have areas of need in you know they're they're coming from poverty they're coming from uh lack of experience where some are coming with an abundance of it through our nurturing program and exposing them to activities dealing

315with problem solving critical thinking higher order thinking we're able to get them hopefully caught up so i guess i guess the follow-up to that was is um the gifted advisory council you said you just implemented that again was that that was defunct before and you just put it back together or well when coveted hit they they kind of just followed you know that i think they tried to to meet virtually a couple times and it you know they advised that you keep addie in all the schools was that right i think that's what i heard her say earlier in the presentation and are we going to follow that recommendation because i feel like we would probably miss a lot of students if yeah if we did and i know that there are some that have

316zero or five my main concern is with this disproportionality issue and if we look at the schools that have the leaf students those are the students that probably need that and you know our hope as a program is that catching them early we may not identify them by the fifth grade or by the eighth grade but we're preparing them to go into the honors classes the ap classes the ib program the stem program um dual enrollment yeah they need that that's what i'm saying you know i had a son with asperger's and he was not identified as gifted although he was very intelligent and so no tests would have picked that up because he was inconsistent with his work and so i you know he had a high iq though so i feel like recognizing

317students that have special needs or or disproportionality um discussion we're having with students of color and things like that that may be you know and then some in our lower essay economic schools that come in a little behind that doesn't mean they're not gifted absolutely not they're twice exceptional absolutely um and you know part of our partnerships is getting with the you know the el the esl the the you know ec department and working together to find those students that may i'm happy fall through them thank right and i'm lucky enough to be on the advisory council thank you thank you and it was sort of a cold year when we weren't meeting that was strange um one of the things that has not been emphasized enough is how much work the aig teachers do

318outside of just the identified students and you were just talking about it right now so the schools that may only have five kids or four kids identified and then we have schools that have 60 kids identified the teachers are still throughout that school they're giving their their time and their net expertise and nurturing and identifying all the kids in the school benefit from this right and they're still using their data to find those you know the top students in each subgroup in the school as a whole you know and developing flex groups right that involve more students access to the program whereas in k3 all of the students are getting them with that minimum 15 lesson uh units each year and and so i just wanted to make sure that the public understands that the

319workload is just as extensive and just as helpful for all the schools whether the child they've got 60 kids or three kids because they're they're with everybody and especially in these high poverty schools where the some of the kids backgrounds it's not easy for them to shine is rather as it is for the ones who are living daily into rich situations we provide that enriched situation with our aig instruction to those kids is going to be different if there are 60 kids versus five kids it is it's going to be different it may not be easier but it's definitely going to be right you're going to write more plans for those students you're going to see more students um and i don't know if you see more students that would be more of a population

320school right like i look at it on your workload and you only have seven at another school that's a different type of workload in addition to we have some schools that don't have any kids well we're again all of our schools have it yeah i think our lowest is two what are we going to do okay all right let's rarity again because it was a question from the county commissioner and services is the key word well that's what i said to the chairman of thank you we have to provide services yeah so service of business that doesn't mean personnel yeah because we can share madam chairman thank you i'm trying to mr i thank you i'd like to move that we adopt the aig plan second okay nelson judy okay any more um judy w

321d justice okay um any more comments okay um all in favor say aye any opposed okay great you're good for the next year three years and thank you for having such patience in waiting okay so um next on our list is committee reports i would respectfully ask if anybody has a report that we hold that off until our interim meeting um correspondence does anybody have any no okay announcements let me get there my computer is freezing up yeah i got to read some there was earlier all right so we have a interim board meeting on scheduled for june the 21st our july meeting has been changed from jul our july regular board meeting has been changed from july 5th to july 12th there will be no july interim meeting that we are having a town

322hall meeting on july the 19th i think it is sorry july 19th okay we don't have anything left for closed session um move to adjourn any discussion hearing none we are adjourned 1105. you