001good evening the march first 2022 regular meeting of the board of education is called to order ms bowie will you please call the roll good evening ms craybill i miss walker here ms adams here mr bullier here miss justice mr mcmanus here and mr wildeboard president so again welcome to the board of education's march regular meeting thank you for joining us in person or in the viewing audience we value and appreciate your interest participation and advocacy on behalf of all new hanover county school students we have a very full agenda today as we cover a multitude of topics incl oops sorry let me turn my volume down on my computer sorry about that um as we cover a multitude of topics including several topics requested by at least two board members within the time parameters
002that we have established for ourselves we work through the agenda as we work through the agenda i would like to remind everyone that not every topic or change that we discuss tonight must be set in policy in order to achieve our desired outcomes and that consensus agreements are completely acceptable let's also remember to treat each other with dignity and respect throughout the meeting no matter what your thoughts or feelings are on an issue or even a particular person or group so that the board can remain focused on completing the governance work so necessary for our students staff and schools to be successful disruptions to the meeting will not be tolerated and people disrupting will be asked to leave if this happens the meeting can be viewed via live stream on new hanover county schools tv
003and on the new hanover county schools youtube channel so with that said um we next on our agenda is the invocation the reverend angela walker women's pastor of cora's grove church will provide the invocation and in addition miss reverend walker also serves as the district's student records specialists so we are happy to have such a fine person on our staff it is so nice to be with you tonight let us pray dear lord heavenly father we just thank you lord god for tonight we appreciate all that you do in our lives lord father and just being in our midst lord as we come together tonight lord father i pray special blessings upon our board members lord i pray lord father that you would give them clarity clarity in their mind lord god to make sound
004decisions for new hanover county schools and what is best for students i pray lord father that you would help in aiding in their their decision process lord god that your holy spirit lord father would just filtrate each and every board member each and every person that is represented here tonight lord father for such a time as this i pray lord father that your ways are not our ways and our thoughts are not your thoughts lord god and i just pray lord father that you would guard them the board members minds tonight lord father that they would think on things lord father that are wise and knowledgeable lord father for you are the one that provides the wisdom and the knowledge lord lord father we glorify you tonight lord for each and every person that is
005here i thank you lord god for this opportunity lord father i pray lord father for everyone here to have a calm comforting spirit lord god as we move forth i pray lord father that everyone despite their differences lord father would just come together in unity and in love and in one accord lord father lord father for such a time as this i thank you lord for this time for this season that we are called together lord father to do what is best for new hanover county schools their students their staff and their parents lord father in jesus name we pray amen amen thank you so now everybody remain standing yeah we're getting your squats in tonight um so next we have um the harvard high school junior north carolina the navy rotc color guard will
006present the colors they are directed by commander david everett and staff sergeant richard giardon [Music] and now i'd like to bring forward the a trio from trask middle school sarah bishdand chorus and drama teacher there and students makaya adkins and phoebe tiso you guys can step up if you'd like oh [Music] leaving please [Music] foreign [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] well that was just amazing before we dismiss um we'd like to say the pledge of allegiance okay please join me in the pledge 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 all right so that was just amazing um i'd like to bring to the the stage jackie booth who's
007our k-12 arts education supervisor to do some intros good evening ladies and gentlemen it has been a long time since we've been able to grace this stage in the arts and we are so excited to be back to show all of the talent that we have all over but tonight in particular we had a very special treat miss bishton from trask middle school was able to join her singers tonight and i'm going to allow them to introduce themselves but i also want to brag on them just a little bit they are about to do a musical at trask middle school they'll be doing beauty and the beast and we have our bell and our mrs potts on stage tonight so give them another hand please they have worked very hard to be here and never
008miss an opportunity to brag so um we're gonna hand the microphone off and uh they're gonna introduce themselves and tell us what grade they're in and then hopefully we'll have our rotc cadets back and we'll learn a little bit more about them as well i'm gonna i'm gonna jump in yes i am mrs bishton i teach at trask middle school and i'm excited i got to sing with these wonderful people and i'm excited we're able to sing in the schools again so thank you um i'm micah atkins and i'm in eighth grade i'm phoebe tiso and i'm also in eighth grade thank you for singing thank you very much for being here tonight ladies and gentlemen now we've got our hoggard rotc cadets coming back we are so glad to have them here tonight as
009well gentlemen i'm going to hand you the mic and if you'll give us your name your rank and your great please i'm cadet underhill i'm ranked incent i'm in 11th grade i'm cadet petty officer third class guiles i'm in 10th grade i'm cadet petty officer in class pleasant i'm also in 10th grade i'm cadet chief petty officer gordon i'm a senior thank you gentlemen and thank you for being here with your commander commander everett [Applause] okay so next up on our agenda is approval of the agenda do i hear a motion to approve the agenda so moved is there a second miss justice uh there is an addition to the agenda yeah we can do we have to second it or we should second it before we do any changing all right are you seconding
010okay well okay all right mr wildeboard miss justice oh okay yes uh there's a couple things that uh i would like to well at least one thing at this point let's do them one at the time if you okay i said i said i was going to do one here what i would like to do is where we have the part the part where we are going to be discussing the task force and the endowment i would like to flip those over and have the endowment discussion first in the task force second it's all just changing okay the um is there any just is there is is that emotion that's emotion okay is there a second can i can i have clarification on that though yeah the strategic plan review do we have people coming
011in to present so that's just something that needs to be considered i'm just thinking there there's not really that need to switch those around but the we can it's just a matter of semantics okay second um is there any discussion i guess that was my discussion i'm sorry the um yeah we don't necessarily need to do that but yeah um there's a reason for that it just one flows into the other better if you have the discussion of the endowment first before the task force anybody else have anything to add to that um so miss billy would you call the role um just going down the dia starting with miss justice and use that for this evening sure miss justice yes mr mcmanus yes miss walker yes miss craybill no miss adams yes mr wildeboard
012yes and mr bullier yes okay so we're slips we're switching those two around with a vote of six to one i'm sure i have an okay i would like to add to the agenda discussion under old business for facility dogs please second is there any discussion about that uh yes i think that at this point it's pretty evident that this we've got a lot of information and we need to go ahead and do some action actually this has been going on i first suggested this back when i found out what was going on in september and we've been trying and trying and trying to get information is finally i think most of it's out there and i think it is time now for us as a board to make a decision and not put this
013off anymore yeah i just have some additional things to share that i learned as well and i just want to be able to discuss it and vote question yes it's my understanding that the whatever's keeping us from bringing this to a vote which we may look like you want to vote anyhow but uh it's a memorandum of understanding so dr faust in his thursday report said this i'll go ahead and read it out loud so everyone can hear what we have already received the district reached out to pause for people via email on february the 11th and february 16th regarding an mou for non-staff handlers and will not have and have not received back a reply from the organization's executive director please let me know if you have any questions you would like to discuss
014also shared with the board on 217 was we are in the process of negotiating an mou with pause for people regarding the facility dog program once an mou is in place that meets the requirements of the district and its insurance carrier we will be able to move forward with the program as a reminder a facility animal is different from a service animal facilities animals accompany a handler and are available to interact with any student service animals are assigned to individual students to meet their social and emotional needs service animals are currently allowed and are in place in the district are there any other comments before we vote yes madam chair um yes mr bullier since he hasn't had a chance to speak yet sure this is the approval agenda call the question uh she already
015made a motion and we have a second so right so let's call the question okay okay let's go back to the question before you call yeah all we're trying to do is approve the agenda do you want it on the agenda or not that's where we are okay so um miss louie will you please call the roll miss justice yes mr mcmanus yes miss walker yes ms crabill no miss adams no mr bullier no mr wildebore yes all right so that is four to three so i guess we will add that um and i'm gonna give that five minutes so that adds um that adds five more minutes to our agenda all right under old business so all right yes there's a motion on the floor to approve the agenda yes madam chair i have
016two amendments myself oh okay uh first under old business i would like to remove policy 2330 board meeting agenda from discussion this is something we've discussed a number of times and i just don't see that another discussion will add anything here i'll second that any discussion yes the reason we keep coming back to this because it's obviously got huge problems or it wouldn't be coming up constantly so i think the 2330 is something we need to look at and i would like just so we can clarify what it is that we need to look at have that discussion briefly because it does keep coming back up and we need to resolve some of these issues issues at least semi-permanently because things will always change but it needs to happen miss walker i don't mind taking
017it off the gym as long as it doesn't keep coming back on because i feel like we decided this last time i don't feel like we need to talk about it anymore if it's not going to be changed again so i'm just looking for best practices for our board the board has reminded me and each other from the diocese on numerous occasions that they want more than one or two voices deciding what is on the agenda and yet our policy allows that to happen all i'm asking for is us to consider reaching a consensus on what we as a board want to take up and discuss at any particular point in time none of us want two board members to dictate what we discuss and when opposing views can still be heard and agreeing with
018an item to be on the agenda does not indicate your approval or disapproval of the topic it merely says that we want to talk about it this is not about the board chair assuming too much power it is about allowing all of us to weigh in on the timeliness of topics and to protect our time and that of district employees as we work through our priorities identified in the strategic plan and address emergent situations i surveyed the assembly other districts and many of the others used the consensus model especially for actionable items reserving the two to three people model for information items only so that is why i requested it to be on the agenda miss walk i mean miss justice right my concern didn't have anything to do with what your interest is i'm
019concerned with the format like this is an our agenda was a mess we got people gonna have to wait three hours for call to the audience this stuff keeps shifting we had a committee that came up with a good plan that got torn apart in policy and now every time we come back here the agenda keeps moving around so i want it finalized as far as two to four people approving items i have a whole different statement about that but at this point since i think tonight that's more important but i guess we probably might end up visiting it for different reasons i would like not to have that discussion because i think that having more than two people put things on the agenda is trying to literally in my opinion shutting down the public's
020vote we don't have a problem listening to people we may not like what we hear and vote against them but they have the right to say something and two members should be the number that brings it forth so the minority question call for questions um miss billy will you call the role miss justice uh i'm voting the motion is to remove 2330 from the agenda miss justice yes mr mcmanus yes miss walker yes mrs crabill no miss adams yes mr wildeboard yes and mr boyer yes okay that passes six to one madam jared just had one more uh i would like to move uh call to the audience up i'm sorry from number uh or i'd like to move it as number nine and move information down i would like it to come immediately after
021our work session i'd like it earlier but i know a lot of people plan on being here at 6 30 so i'd like to get through our work session and then have call to the audience immediately thereafter so switch call to the audience in closed session yeah what you're saying oh nelson i'm just clarifying is that what you're saying because that would be a very easy switch because we don't have to mess up everything else i would switch call to the audience with information okay is there a second to that motion any discussion i can see why as i said agenda's got issues but here's the problem there's people that aren't going to be coming until later now because they were told that the quality audience would be later so they won't have a chance
022to speak because they won't know they're not on the radios or on their computers some of them are at work so they timed it to come so if we switch it now those who plan to come when it was on our present agenda will miss out speaking this is this is why that's not fair to those that will be coming in after the call to the audience because they were under another impression at what time it would happen i would love to actually be able to do that and have them talk earlier but there are people that are planning now to come later because of the place that wasn't the agenda and if we added earlier they're gonna some of them will probably miss out exactly if i could i'd like to amend that motion
023to add a second call to audience uh at the end so if anybody does show up late they could still be heard so we could move it up for those that are here those that are not here can come at the end i'll second that at the question okay the um is there any discussion yes madam chair mr waterboard do you mean at the end of the meeting or at the end of whatever we're doing at that time once they come in well the problem being is they might trickle in at different times so i mean we would have to do it towards the end of the whole day okay uh what approximate if we wait miss justice yeah if we went to the very end you're talking about it might be 11 or 12.
024so because it'd be some kind of compromise and putting them in and it's just at this point i've looked at this agenda so much i'm not sure where that would be but so that even those people that do come in late don't have to end up waiting until 11 or 12 but um at a more appropriate time since they thought that it would be earlier and not 11 or 12 some of them have kids i really i'm sorry this is happening okay let's call it miss walker i was just saying there isn't we usually have two but there isn't one on the end so we'd have to actually insert another one you're right at a particular time mr wordable what did you say you would put the second one there you go well probably at
025the end of new business before committee reports you know would be towards the end but i mean it still gives those people an opportunity to stay and speak if they want to and maybe we can move it up in the future okay let's call for the question thank you um so the motion on the floor the amended motion on the floor is to move call to the audience up to after the work session and add a second call to the audience after new business miss billy will you call the roll miss justice hold on looking at them after new business that might as well be at the end um no i'm sorry no mr mcmanus miss walker yes miss craybill yes miss adams just to clarify it's moving in front of information that's what that's
026what nelson said yes oh my goodness mr wildeboard yes and mr bullier yes we just voted on the amendment so that means that we will move um if we if we vote to move call to the audience up then we will um allow the people that come in late to speak at the end of the meeting after new business so now the motion on the table um mr boyer is to move up the call to the audience to after the work session is that correct yes and all right let's believe that not a second one we already had that i'm just clarifying what you said miss bowie will you call the roll please miss justice no mr mcmanus yes miss walker yes ms craybill yes miss adams yes mr wildeboard yes and mr bullier yes
027okay so that passes six to one um are we able to approve the agenda after 20 minutes um does anybody have a motion to approve the agenda so moved second okay is there any disc any more discussion i just would like to add that um before we do this is that this speaks directly to the 2330 that people give input ahead of time and allow us have to have consensus on how we want to have things done so um ms billy will you please call the roll miss justice yes mr mcmanus yes miss walker yes miss crabill yes miss adams death mr wildeboard yes and mr bullier yes okay thank you the agenda has been approved next up on the agenda is recognitions um i would like to turn that over to caress clegg from
028our our communication supervisor we have some pretty talented people here tonight to recognize so get your clapping hands ready good evening board madam chair vice chair and dr faust i would like to start the night by welcoming the 17 international high school teachers joining as a part of the fulbright teaching excellence and achievement grant with uncw these educators are taking classes at uncw and have been observing in our high schools for the past two weeks we welcome them here tonight all right um new hanover county schools strives for excellence in all that we do i'm not ashamed to say that it is for this reason that our recognition portion of the evening will be a bit lengthy i am thrilled to be able to celebrate the excellence of the staff and students that will come
029before you tonight they have trained demonstrated and given no less than a hundred percent to their craft when we look at becoming the top district in the state they are leading the way the first 37 individuals who join us today have shown a deep commitment to student learning and a passion for teaching they are among 130 000 teachers nationwide who demonstrate the highest standards in the profession and have an enormous impact on the culture and learning in new hanover county schools we congratulate the following teachers for renewing their national board certification mallory weeks sandra diver amy beecher sandra berman anastasia brown christy bundy trisha christmas shannon clark whitney coonrat lisa melinda durant katherine edmonds jessica elliott tracy thalia shaney firstsinger lisa gattuso jennifer garonda allison gower brian hickman holly lynn jones carrie carnes melissa kentworthy
030patricia meek stacy menzies victoria minshaw stacy morgan adam christie rebecca smith elizabeth spence benjamin stroll shannon stiles shannon voorhees virginia wheeler mary white and sharon williams and if we could have all of these ladies and gentlemen stand up we'll get a group picture of you all [Applause] i needed i'm jealous oh [Applause] okay one more senior cali parks has been dominant has been a dominant swimmer for hogwarts vikings all season she helped her team to stay on top in the nbc we would like to congratulate callie parks for her state championship title in the 50-yard women's freestyle [Applause] today is her first day of retirement but we weren't quite ready to say goodbye yet it seems as if mary hazel small has always been a part of the superintendent's cabinet but after 30 years of
031service she retired however she certainly did not go quietly a few weeks ago we learned that mrs small would be awarded by the north carolina association of school business officials the lou thompson distinguished service award over her three decades of service to public school education mary hazel small has contributed significantly in her field helping to pilot new systems serving as a mentor in addition to supporting legislator efforts we would not imagine a person being more suited for this award we congratulate mary hazel small on her lou thompson distinguished award and a very much earned retirement [Applause] leslie lucas an english teacher at hoggard high school has developed her writers by utilizing the new york times learning network the program has helped to develop critical readers researchers and writers students have submitted editorials reviews stem research
032paper papers podcasts media lead literacy videos and vocab projects this year a student has taken this learning experience even further dylan schmidt a sophomore at hoggart has been accepted into the new york times summer academy a selective program for students worldwide during her fall semester in english several pieces of dylan's work were selected as picks of the weeks we are happy to recognize her today for her acceptance into the summer academy [Applause] the north carolina school public relations association in seabrook has honored new hanover county schools communication and outreach division for excellence in communications new hanover county schools earned 13 blue ribbon awards 11 gold and 2 silver for outstanding and effective communication and sea sprawl presented the awards during a ceremony on february 11th in addition to the 13 awards received in digital media
033excellence in writing electronic media photography and publications marketing specialist christina beam won a best of the best award and excellence in writing for her story on trisha tau's life-saving measures this is the highest honor that a public relations professional can receive in north carolina and we congratulate christina beam and ask that josh smith come up and accept this award on her behalf this evening oh our next and final recognition of the evening is no stranger to us we've sent them a total of three invites this school year to meet us right here at this podium and each time has been better than the last when we talk about excellence you don't have to look further than further than coach andre adams and his wrestling team they are cementing a legacy built from excellence not around
034one player one coach but a whole team and that excellence spreads like wildfire and infiltrates its way into the classrooms gyms gazebos and cafeterias until it encompasses the whole school and these individuals are not just athletes they are student athletes before performing on the mat they must perform in the classrooms this type of excellence does not happen overnight it happens slowly and over time it happens with two individual state titles and a tough team loss it occurs with the comeback and a state title it happens with a three-time state individual title winner and then it happens twice in the same year with a dual and team state title it occurs because each individual that i call up here nets puts in the time both in and out of the classroom and on and off the
035mat and commits themselves to nothing less than excellence with great pleasure i give you the laney high school back-to-back state team 4a wrestling champions and the state 4a dual wrestling champions i'm going to call you guys up here but you can already come and i will call names as you guys get up here and they get pictures at the same time aidan arrington devin bale sister bruchelle charlie bishop brent bradshaw avery avery and tyler bonacore thank you lucas and trisha cotto katie edwards tommy gibson jaden harrison owen harshberger alex hopper dalen horrell dylan hugh marquis kelly sam koppelman lucas malik santiago packachew corey and elena pollock tristan richardson jacob rosen marky samuel hayden smith robert tan noah thomas dylan webb holden walker and michael williams coached by andre adams leonard harrison john mills will merritt
036and dirk borsma boris thank you additionally we would like to recognize che state championship individual winners mark samuel three-time state championship mark samuel alex hopper devin bell in addition we would also like to recognize elena pollock elena is the first female from the district to win a tournament she is shattering glass she is shattering glass ceilings for the buccaneers so be careful when you step where you step when you go to laney elena also was the first female from the county to be a state tournament finalist she finished second in the 180 pound weight class i welcome andre adams up now to share a few words about his team [Applause] thank you again for having us back um it was a it's just great to be able to share this remarkable season that we had
037with everyone at the start of the season we had real high expectations coming off our state title that we had before and these guys not only met our expectations but exceeded them and made history throughout the process we've now become four-time conference champions four-time regional champions we won the wrel holy angels and mark adams for the first time in new hanover county history we had three state champions and on the same team all getting pins in the finals and then now we're opening up our room to female wrestlers for the first time ever so we're excited to be a part of women's wrestling which is the fastest growing sport in america so just looking for more great things throughout the mat we lose some great seniors but we have a strong team coming back so
038we're looking forward to making this a tradition coming in front of you guys and it's all possible because of my great staff my administration um amazing parents and these guys i love these guys they're my family [Applause] takes a while here we go [Music] [Applause] and going back to the beginning i would like to um recognize the 17 international high school teachers joining as a part of the fulbright teaching excellence and achievement grant with uncw these educators are taking classes at uncw and have been observing in our high schools for the past two weeks we welcome them tonight as they are here to observe our board meetings so thank you guys for joining us that concludes our recognitions for the evening and we get another round of applause for all of our students and staff
039[Applause] so um dr barnes if you can be making your way to the front he's getting swept out with the crown pick it up dr barnes whenever you're ready we'll let them just take another minute but i just you can get in [Music] place again well they are a tough act to follow me from judy a special word from judy what are these papers that we're getting we're going to be using them when we do the work session so i'm passing them out while we were waiting for people to get situated the protocol is usually to give them to crystal so she can happen to us ahead of time yes okay dr barnes go ahead good afternoon good evening i guess at this point uh we want to have an opportunity to recognize some of
040our newest employees with new hanover county schools obviously the hr department works tirelessly to hire the best and the brightest of of this state and around the nation but we want to recognize a few of our new administrative hires from the last couple of months if you guys can stand up and give a wave when i introduce you please as our new interim chief finance officer ashley sutton has served as our executive director of finance our assistant director of finance and the budget hell is analyst new hanover county schools and also has a masters of science degree in accounting from the university of north carolina here in wilmington ashley welcome [Applause] mr jerry worthington has served as a teacher in robeson county and as an administrator in both whitefield city schools and union county public
041schools and he is serving as our new executive director of school support jared weddington we're pleased to announce our new executive director of school safety mr silverstein charles silverstein served as a lead instructor and scenario specialist in new jersey after 26 years with the bergen county sheriff's department he also was the director of the law and public safety institute and the deputy commander of their swat team charles silverstein there you are welcome last and certainly not least our new talent management supervisor is tabitha lloyd she's worked with us for a period of time as our classified staffing coordinator has a bachelor's degree in business administration from university of mount olive and she's also worked as a cte teacher and an administrative assistant in brunswick county and that's just a small section of the great people
042that we're hiring here in new hampshire county schools thank you thank you so much and welcome to our school system we're we're looking forward to working with you okay so next up on our agenda is um the strategic plan mr smith do you want to um tee that up for us sure yes ma'am good evening since your january 28 board work session on the strategic plan we on the staff took the six focus areas that you uh identified and conducted additional work sessions with representatives across the district to include some process owners to formulate and come up with specific strategies and sub strategies that get after those overall goals as well as swot analysis and you have that report in front of you we know the timing is critical but we're taking those overall goals
043and strategies into consideration as we move into budget season we're planning one additional month of refinement with mph consulting and the board can expect the final plan at the april regular meeting and with that i believe uh we have dr palmer and mr parks hunter on zoom to present you the draft ladies over to you so welcome nancy and dr palmer um board before we get started i'd like to um ask that you um pull out your your plan that you have um or your notepad and jot down some questions that you have so that we can allow um nancy and pamela to go through the plan with us and we can ask questions at the end so take it away um that tells me that i'll stop the other screen sharing is that a
044problem can you all hear okay everyone's a spring she's still a little low hey can you all hear and see us yeah we can see you but you're gonna have to talk a little louder okay right turn the volume up yes that's better okay now i'll try to speak a little more loudly but i think um you'll see what i'm saying as it comes up on the screen also um i hope everyone does have their copy of the plan in front of um we are so fine so that we can share and engage finalizing the plan we are at a nearly final working draft and we won't care what and engage with that um very quickly the plan is organized so that the first three sections are essentially a narrative review of the assessment that
045dates already we will not go over that again in tonight's presentation section four to eight are those detailed okay nancy i think there's something with your computer we can't hear you very well you're you're kind of going in and out and you're a little bit soft can you try again can you hear dr palmer can you hear me we can hear you just fine dr palmer okay okay okay um so can you hear me now yes okay all right let me get a little bit closer to the mic and that may help okay so those um sessions four through eight are the detailed strategies and action steps that we think will take you on the direction of your plan um we're gonna share with you um verbally just the strategies we won't read through all
046the details of action steps responsible parties timelines and so on but you should have that to follow along or look at in more depth later we'll start with letting pamela give you a brief recap where we are and the overall goals we've arrived at and then we'll share those strategies with you and then we will invite your feedback um and discussion so so what you have on the screen um is the process that we followed um the process included five phases the first phase as you know was to do the assessment and gain stakeholder feedback both internal to new hanover county schools as well as the community phase two was to develop our preliminary focal points in terms of what our goals would be we did that through a retreat and um we also just
047kind of set the stage for what would become our primary goal in phase three we focused on building out those goals uh working through strategy along with the administrative team we did and develop outcomes for those in terms of what you see in the draft and i just want to mention here that this did occur over several work sessions that we coordinated and facilitated with with the cabinet in phase four which is part of what we're doing tonight is the engagement in terms of getting feedback on where we are with those salient points that nancy highlighted in the in the plan and then finally phase five will be implementation and of course that begins once the plan is approved and finalized and approved the next slide is our the primary goals that we determined along
048with the board and the staff these are considered our new hanover county schools strategic goals we have six goal areas academic performance student safety and wellness and with this particular goal there are two focus areas people and places the third goal is supportive environment for teachers and staff the fourth goal equity diversity and inclusion followed by family engagement and community partnerships is our sixth goal so here for example is what we have looked at as the goals the outcomes and strategies for performance that through rigorous academics at every grade level students demonstrate readiness for productive citizenship as well as higher education opportunities for meaningful employment the outcome is that by 2026 nhcs will graduate at least 90 percent of students ready for productive citizenship as well as higher education opportunities for meaningful employment and you
049see that to reach this we have strategies around reaching particular milestones increasing the number of pre-k students meeting or exceeding age expectations and teaching strategies objectives increase the percentage of students reading at or above grade level and third increase the percentage of students proficient in nc math 1 by the end of ninth increase the rate of students scoring three or higher on the ap exam increase the rate of students scoring four or higher on the ib exam and increase the percentage of comprehensive study program offerings for elementary middle and high school level students so all these things are strategies that will move you toward that outcome of graduating 90 ready for productive citizenship goal two student safety and wellness there are two components to this goal that's people and places the goal is to provide
050facilities and services focused on safety and wellness to enhance teaching and learning the outcome the people outcome is by 2026 new hanover county schools will operate safe and supportive learning environments this is including supportive and instructive discipline measures with minimal out-of-school suspensions utilizing evidence-based practices so that is the people outcome for student safety and wellness the places outcome by 2026 recommended facility and operational enhancements to increase student safety and wellness will be completed the strategies for each of these components of the of goal 2 for strategies related to the people element of this goal the focus is on classroom climate and instruction and high quality professional learning as it relates to strategy with the second component of this goal the focal points are nutrition and wellness bus transportation teaching and learning a safe and secure
051schools safe and secure school facilities and health and well-being of staff and students in goal three we're looking at providing a supportive environment for teachers and staff and the goal there is to ensure a supportive environment so that staff will perform their duties using the most effective methods possible to achieve optimal student learning and then the outcome is that by 2026 the school will pay optimal student learning as measured by approved and aligned district metrics the strategies here are efficient operations and treatment hiring communication between departments efficacy of employees and delivery of high quality services to students and equity in staff allotment and school diversity our first fourth goal is equity diversity and inclusion the goal is that students and staff agree that their school or work site is an inclusive equitable and diverse place
052where they have a strong sense of belonging and connectedness the outcome is that by 2026 students and staff report in bi-annual surveys 90 or higher agreement that their school work site is an inclusive place where they have a strong sense of belonging and connectedness the strategies here are ensuring that all schools establish staff equity teams and secondary schools establish student ones ensuring schools have processes to establish equitable access to the full continuum of their opportunities and engaging school staff and families to understand the importance of assessing their level of connectedness goal 5 is family engagement the goal is to increase meaningful family engagement and involvement across all schools in the district the outcome is by 2026 more families are meaningfully involved in school activities more frequently as demonstrated in family participation data the strategies there
053are three focuses for the this particular goal as it relates to strategies high impact engagement opportunities to create a fund for this particular goal and to also standardize large events that take place in the district goal six community partnerships to strengthen and increase community partnerships that directly enhance student opportunities and achievements the outcome by 2026 the number of partnerships and collaborative work will increase as evidenced by documented engagement with this particular goal there are also three strategic areas related to achieving this outcome the first is related to partnerships and or sponsorships by lowering the barriers the second is related to partner recognition of those partnerships and sponsorships that we're able to secure and the third is a mutually beneficial exchange between partners whereby those relationships are win-win but those are the goals and measure strategies
054underneath them we are working on finalizing what we are calling a dashboard for success that will look something like this it may be slightly different as we work with staff to determine what are the best ways to show you the information one of the things that we want to make you aware of is that we can capture a lot of data some of the data is not going to change except on an annual basis yet you will want to know about your status and progress more frequently than that so one of the things that we're suggesting is that you may use this red yellow green system to just know are you going in the right direction are you at stasis are you going in the wrong direction and as a reminder this is not it's
055not a grading system and it's not a pass fail exam it's more like a compass just to see where things are moving just as a quick example of how this might work um if you have a code yellow maybe that's because you have a construction project that's awaiting the release of bond or grant money if you have a code with maybe that's because you had a goal that you were moving toward of increased family interactions and yet a pandemic is causing you to have fewer family transactions so those are the kinds of informational things you can get from the red yellow green system that won't show up in numbers as often as you would like to know about the status of your progress and one of the reasons for doing this is that as we
056talk with you all about the previous strategic plan something that we heard very frequently was that it didn't often stay in front of you so we're suggesting that you might use this as a tool to keep the plan in front of you as you move through implementation and i'll let pamela explain a little bit more about that so another way of thinking about this is related to the timelines that are indicated in the plan for each of the goal areas and strategies and so in thinking about monitoring and tracking progress here are some ways that we are we've included to do that um it could be that we have short updates at monthly board meetings as well as reviewing progress as it relates to the plan every quarter and then doing a formal report where
057we share the metrics or success towards achieving the metrics that are identified in the plan and do that on a yearly basis so that is a very quick overview of where we are at this point i'm going to stop sharing my screen so that we can see people better and invite you to share your questions or thoughts or discussion okay tom mr rollerboard first of all i want to thank you for your hard work on this i think we got a good start here on this i did have a question uh and goal two it says uh explicit uh social emotional learning instruction can you define that for me and how is the effectiveness of that measure the way that we have it um set in the plan right now is that that is measured
058by the academic methods or other metrics in the distance and we again we are still working on capturing that metric system for you that we want to use to show you this the success and progress but that that goal is targeting toward the fact that if the district metrics that you're using now are going in the right direction that should show some outcomes don't know a staff has any um other comment on that so um folks just as a reminder i know you got this report late but if you look in the the bound copy there um is more detail than what we just saw so i know it was a short turnaround for you to look at that but that is a one place that you can look for some more information for that
059if that is helpful to you so for example um there are some measures in those sections um on strategy 2.1 one metric might be that 100 of schools have a school mission the guiding principles that they have school um guidelines for success so then again this also refers back to the increased achievement and graduation because students are doing well and performing well so part of our work today to be completed is to decide which of those metrics is good to show you for the dashboard the staff will be wanting to look at many of them to be sure they're on track in every way okay um yes um adam adams sorry let's get it out um thank you to both of you for the work that's been done here but we know that time is
060of the essence and a lot of data has been collected and we know that a lot of interviews have been completed my question is obviously we got this this evening and so as a board we haven't had time to truly review it yet but how quickly are we looking to be able to vote on this because i know this impacts our budget and we need to get moving so what is the timeline for acceptance and questions or questions and acceptance my timeline was tonight but we didn't quite get there um so now we and we're not um having an interim meeting on march 15th so we might need to rethink that um but i would say that the absolute drop dead date for us to approve this is april 1st at our next board meeting
061that's my my thoughts um miss justice we could possibly do a after we look through all this information possibly do a zoom special meeting to approve this to give more time because as you said the budget's coming up and we need to have it crafted around this well i don't the the format of the meeting you know it doesn't really matter but um having another meeting is obviously something that we are going to have to do yeah and so before april yes i think we have a little bit more work to do with that i think that's a good idea um so did did i see somebody else stand go up um mr um boyer yeah uh madam chair thank you i i appreciate all the work that's been done the thing i really do
062appreciate about the plan itself is that i it seems to recognize that there's not one area that we can focus on to improve that in order to improve we have to improve as a community and as a you know a foot we have to have a focus on the entire student and that's not just math that's not just reading so i think it's a good start but i do as miss adam said i do feel the need for speed here um so i would like to consider having a meeting you know we don't have to do it from the diocese but perhaps as early as next week and honestly i wouldn't prefer to do that by zoom i know it's a pain to meet but this is the biggest thing we do so um that
063would just be my two cents okay so i've noted you know two people definitely um are thinking about it and i'm guessing miss adams that's sort of implicit in your your question special meeting yes anybody else yeah i would agree i would agree because right now this is draft and so we approve it well draft is just there so nobody gets confused that we're this is what we're operating on but they're um yeah well i imagine it i'll also be strapped because we haven't approved it but also we if we have questions we might want to tweet things over right so um so my suggestion would be for everybody to just read through this get some ideas together and we really when we have this special meeting it's not the time to just start you
064know blabbing them out we really need to have some lists and have some ideas so that we can um and i didn't mean blah blah you know i meant you know the um so that we have some concrete ideas that we can share um with each other and with um pamela and nancy does anybody it would be very helpful if you have those ideas together in advance of the meeting so that we could um be able to prepare a good response um and presented that meeting so that we can you know work through them right okay mr mcmanus are you just staring at me or do you have a question okay i just feel like the supportive teacher and staff environment which goal are you talking about yeah which goal are you talking about uh
065space two i'm going back to phase two in the community stakeholders so so that we can all find it um what page are you on page uh six okay thank you that was one of the highest percentiles on on our survey done by our staff i just feel like that is the key to everything else falling in place is that we and i haven't heard anything yet but how are we dealing with this difficulty with our staff from the survey about so much to do and not enough time to do it well or sometimes maybe to do it so right or wrong i think that that needs to drive what decisions we make okay and they need to know that we hear them still loud and clear all right so make sure that's on your
066list okay um anybody have anything else all right then um thank you ladies for your time and we will be getting back in touch with you um and checking all of our calendars okay thank you so much thank you okay so um next on our agenda looks like it is the employee task force and um hold on just one sec no i thought we oh we flipped okay i'm looking at this and i thought that i didn't pay attention that we had already flipped it so um for that item before we get started um this this item was put forth by miss justice and i'm seconded by miss walker and thirded by mr wildeboard the the board discusses whether to hold a vote if they should request funding depending on the hospital endowment fund and
067depending on the vote holding a work session compiling district needs if the vote passes this is actually a good compliment to the requested needs of the teacher's task force and results can inform the requests from the endowment so that was the request and um it appears that miss justice has passed us out three handouts would you make sure that we have what you want in front of us so we are prepared for your discussion well one is just a couple pages from a wilmington biz article where will the money flow that's one two pages and there was actually only one highlight in part but you should see that um okay the second item that i handed out was what's called exhibit d use of net transaction proceeds and this was signed by the county commissioners
068and the i believe it was a new hospital uh owners novit um on october 6 2 20 20 2020. okay there was another one that one has to do with the task force so there's only two there's only two handouts okay all right and so we have ten minutes um it's ten after six go ahead okay um that was great with mr mcmanus just pointed out we have our our teachers are in crisis our whole district is in crisis we have had the pandemic um we've had more than just the pandemic though uh it's really difficult right now for our staff and one of the things that we need more than anything else is resources in so many different forms and it was i believe last year that the teachers got a supplement increase but
069none of the other staff did and that's one of the things they've been asking for us repeatedly then there's also resources here in the community we had mr anderson just presented last week a whole a whole lot of different information about our facilities and how we need them upgraded how much they would cost the costs are increasing uh it's on and on and on honestly a lot of it has to do resources and money now i have been hearing since this hospital sale first came became public that this would be a huge amount of money at this point it was sold for 1.5 billion and the interest alone the is being is to be used to improve the community and that is what was told to the community during the sale and that is why
070it's where we are at right now and what this is here the exhibit d the use of net transit transaction proceeds this is what they ended up signing and agreeing to how the money would be used in the endowment it's been placed in a in an endowment with a uh i guess it's called a board i believe that's the official name that decides on how it's being used well they had a meeting and informational meeting i believe was back in november where the people have two one in october and one in december okay they had a couple informational say that in october and what it was october i was there excuse me that's not what i uh october and what other month do what what other month december okay okay the the october meeting was
071an informational meeting the december meeting had to do with requests for the endowment the december meeting was the same meeting they were both called listening sessions ah that's what i'm talking excuse me now the point is is that the community has its requests and that was part of the endowment and in this document that was signed on um the date back in 2020 it says use of net trans transaction proceeds they have the purpose they have the foundation board of directors and then they also have the administration of fund management the endowment itself and then it gets to how the endowment is used and the very first primary use of the endowment for that 1.5 billion dollars in interest drawn off of it first one very first one it's public primary secondary and post-secondary education
072post-secondary cape fear uncw we are everything else the following are just illustrations but this is what they suggest illustrations of possible initiative high quality universal pre-k uh pre kindergarten with wrap around services comprehensive no cost broadband broadband connectively county-wide comprehensive access to modern technology for all learners by the way that's what we got those funds we were using those funds for for the one-on-one from the uh esser funds from the pandemic okay new hanover county teacher fellows programs for traditional and charter school graduates committed to returning to local public schools that's one way for us to have teachers from because we're having a huge staff problem access to scholarships for post-secondary education attainment and school facilities which is what mr anderson was talking about designed for mid 21st century education delivery we need to use
073those funds we need to figure out what we're asking for why we need them and request this from the endowment since we were the number one use of those funds and i honestly am very surprised over the last year with all the concern that our government officials have shown in our school district has shown and the public has shown that this has not been a major topic of being able to draw on these resources and use them for all these concerns so that's why i brought it up that's why i should i thought it should be placed on the agenda and i think the public definitely was the public's idea okay so now at this point i would like to hear some further discussion from board members but in my opinion since they said this
074is what the funds should number one be used for and we need them badly and it could save we could be the number one school district in this state with the use of these funds used properly and we wouldn't have to be increasing taxes on our citizenry because we need all these things here in the school when those are funds are sitting there drawing millions of dollars we spent 350 million dollars this county uh manager decided to spend 350 million dollars so the goal is for school safety that's a lot of money we've got one safety officer so far and i'm not sure what the other use will be but this is something we as a board need to be just excuse me for others this is something this is very important this is something
075we as a board need to be looking at and discussing and coming up with requests since that was what the promise was when the sale was signed okay so um board members you also have in your packets this pink and you often people in the audience can also see that i would like to if you want more information about this to go to nhc endowment.org and it will give you all the directions about that one of the things yes education is one of the pillars but the endowment committee has been created and they are putting together the plans um not the school system um and we are we are not holding the school the it's not our job to hold the county responsible for that contract but i did want to yeah this is what
076i wanted to call your attention to what comes next so first of all we had two public listening sessions i attended just so i could hear what other people had to say the the meeting on october um i can't remember the date like 27th or 28th that um had about maybe 35 people everybody got three minutes the meeting in december on december the fourth had about 65 people and then each person got three minutes um education and nonprofits were there the purpose of the listening sessions was not to request money it was to talk about what you what we thought as individual citizens and non-profits and organizations felt that the money would be used for it wasn't a session to ask for money so then they had to establish their endowment website they had to
077hire a new ceo which they did he's coming to town um he's very well qualified it appears um they create a community advisory committee and so if anybody in the community is interested in being on that they are looking for a diversity and gender and experience to serve on that committee then they have to develop a model they have to recruit staff they have to they haven't even developed what the grant um application criteria looks like yet and then they're not even accepting proposals until september so we do have time that the grant applications process is not even going to be announced until july so yes we can be thinking but we we don't know what the grant criteria is um the we don't submit until september and then they don't start making their first
078awards until november um and i i do i have talked with several members of the board and you guys also are welcome to do that too about what some of the criteria are and this this is what the i've been told is that we need to submit ideas that are collaborative with other agencies and organizations within our county and that we they need to be sustainable that they are not giving us operational funds they're not giving thank you they're not giving um any organization operational funds so that's kind of what i wanted to make sure that we all knew that um so that the public didn't think that we're dawdling and we're not thinking ahead so mr boyer you had your hand up and we have like three thank you madam chair i'll be very
079brief um there was no promise of x y or z there was a promise of an endowment and there was also a schedule with that promise the schedule you just laid out very succinctly sorry thank you uh you know the idea that there was 350 million dollars that the county promised us no the idea that 1.6 billion dollars goes directly to education no we're all open to this process and we're all part of it and the superintendent is leading it nobody's ignoring it so i don't even know why we're having a discussion when applications aren't even being accepted until september of 2022 this is a publicly released timeline ms adams i just would like to share that you know i've encouraged board members to talk to county commissioners about what they're hearing in the community
080continue to talk to constituents what they're hearing about the community i also attended the december listening session what i heard was a need for workforce housing more than anything was the theme and i've actually spoken with other people that have had that same um idea what i will say about this i know that our superintendent is very aware that this is coming down the pike and this is an option he is not ignoring this and i've had conversations about him and he has shared some of his ideas and the ideas of the senior team so this is not being ignored but if you pull up the website it says applications will be welcomed in september of 2022 for grants and if you had talked to anybody on the board you would know they have said
081that the first grants that they're going to roll out are most likely going to be smaller grants it's going to be just a few in the fourth quarter of the year so i encourage all of our board members to educate themselves talk to the people on the board talk to the people in the community and learn about the endowment especially when opportunities are presented um miss walker i think you might be bringing us home unless anybody unless we have to take a vote to extend our time we save time on the strategic plan go ahead you have a comment yeah yeah i i feel like you know we have a unique opportunity to come together as a governing body to get the input that you know we're up here doing making decisions all the time
082you know i take everybody's point about reaching out and talking to people but this was our hospital the promise for us was that we were going to have money to invest in our community and i know september is when they're going to be you know releasing or taking applications but i don't think that it's any problem for us to get together we have some kind of committee to get together and talk about with all the knowledge we have on this board to talk about what our priorities should be we've got a strategic plan that would probably help us with that right so i don't i don't understand why i mean it's not a question if someone's not doing something i feel like we got to look at what we need to do and i think
083there's plenty of things that we can um plenty of opportunity okay the um mr mcmanus did you have your hand up more of a statement than a question yeah i'm i might as well say it i'm really worried that the perception of the board of education and i'm a part of it so i take as much blame as anyone else being so adversarial with each other all the time [Applause] may well inhibit the things that we're chasing to support us both financially and otherwise and for whatever reason we have got to agree to disagree and not beat each other up in public and to sell each other and kick below the weight that can also go for our crowd because that also affects our ability to work with organizations in our community but we've got
084to quit it i truly believe we're in a bad place right now to start asking the things based on the perception of this board that's all i want to say okay miss justice you have already had your whole time do you do we want to continue the time talking um because we we do have a very likely inventory i just need to ask the board if we're keeping to our time because our meeting is going to go on until 10 30. two minutes to wrap up since i'm the one okay go ahead you got two minutes very much this that was our hospital this process is fine and well in normal circumstances but we are in crisis mode we are leaking staff bleeding staff we are not helping our kids we even have our kids
085leaving and this is an opportunity to have resources this is what they said they were going to do for our community it was our hospital and it's sitting there drawing instance they got 350 million dollars somehow uh the county manager did for safety and yet as i said it's very vague and nebulous about how but it's there and he got it so if they can do that for safety we could use that mount easily to try to put our schools in a position that we're not bleeding our staff we're not losing students and we give them a plus class education quality education all students in this county and waiting until september just we can't we need to be acting now and the superintendent that's great he's talking but all of us this is our responsibility
086not just one person's and we were elected because we represent you and i know from everybody i've heard in this community they want these funds now to help our schools and we need them okay thank you miss justice it is the employee task force let me pull that up employee task force this was also a miss justice item um discuss putting together a task force composed mainly of a variety of staff at all levels to come up with solutions to the problems we are having with staff morale and resource shortages to support our staff such as pay and planning time and this is the reason i wanted to put it following the request request from the endowment this is one fun source of how we can help the situations in our schools now the purpose
087of a task force that's a temporary grouping as ms kravel just read a temporary grouping of individuals and resources using a lot of data and things like that for the accomplishment of this specific goal which is to improve the morale and effectiveness of new hanover county employees that will result in improved student learning staff retention and recruiting the 2022 climate survey of new hanover county schools staff clarified this need of the district and we need to continue to provide a quality education for our students this task force will definitely help do that the goals this will be improving working conditions to retain and attract qualified staff increasing pay for all positions across the district restructuring and hiring new staff positions to address the current ineffective structure things times have changed and the pandemics definitely changed
088we need to have our structure shift in order to meet them properly establishing student-centered learning in an equitable manner across the district these resources would really help with this identifying current problems that are hindering staff and student performance and correcting them using experts from a variety of departments schools and knowledgeable education and community members this is a group of people that should be members of the task force the ones i just left and something else i would like to add and mr mcmanus just brought it up we need if we're going to have a task force there's going to be members of the board that need to be on it that work together and aren't adversarial i myself was put in that position against i didn't ever want it to be but for some reason
089i've become very much a part of it and i can work if they will work with me with anyone on this board in order to improve our schools uh that's our all of our number one goals should be up here okay um any comments from anyone mr bullier yeah uh i definitely think this issue needs to be addressed i'm all for task force if that's if that is the will of the board not sure task force has ever inspired morale but i definitely i support the the effort so if that's the world aboard then i would support him i just wanted to add um my comments about that i think that with the endowment fund and the task force um both are good ideas except i really think that we should allow our strategic plan
090to play out so that we make sure that we are addressing all those things that um that are laid out in miss justice's comments and perhaps we can share that with the public at some point in time the um is that we we really need to work you know in conjunction with that endowment money can't be used for pay so we already know that why because they already said they're not using it for operational expenses um and so the employee task force the dr faust has committed and his cabinet has committed that they would be working with their staffs and staffs on down and with the principals um to look at that kind of stuff so i think that we we empower them to do that and then we put that in hold on just
091one second and then we'll go and then we put that um before our after our strategic plan miss walker did you have comment i thought i saw your hand yeah yeah i did i would just would add to that that you know the strategic plan is not an exclusively separate thing i think a task force would fit nicely in with the strategic plan and i think it's and we need to do it now we just had the climate survey which told us what we needed we we needed to hear and now we address it and i think that's that's the next step and i think whatever you want to call it task force whatever you want to call it i think it's imperative that we do it sooner rather than later mr wildebore and i
092would concur i think that we you know we have this survey we have the information why not use it now i mean strategic plan we hope to get together very soon move forward with it it's going to be a very important part of what we do in the years with the months and years to come but i mean we have a problem now that we need to address so having a task force might be a good way to start to you know solve the problems now and not wait until later and i want to remind you the county commissioner signed this document and so did not novant hospital this board that they have created they're not set in stone this should be sentenced up this is what was signed and so they should be if
093it's salaries they have to pay if it's positions they have to create that should not be included in that statement from their public hearings or something that they're in their draft proposals for putting together their organizing process this should be something that should be able to be used for our schools there shouldn't be limitations if they're needed okay so um if i'm hearing us correctly um and dr faust is going to have to um weigh in at some point are we asking him to um direct his staff to work on this task force and take away their focus on the strategic plan because it's going to be kind of difficult for them to get the work done if we're asking them to do two major things and also just to let you know that um
094the and help me if i am wrong that the north carolina um climate cert the staff climate survey is coming out sometime soon the the working condition survey is coming out tomorrow so we have we'll have even more information for that so miss justice go ahead and bring us home because we're almost dead i think that we at least three members of this board should be on this task force i think that we should come up with the people along with dr faust we need to work with him but this should not be directed from central office one of the things that was very clear in that climate survey is that there's a lack of trust and a problem with communication with central office i think we should be leading this task force and i'm
095right now volunteering myself to be on there because i've worked too hard and care too much for for what mr mcmahon has mentioned before the adversarial relations among some people up here to keep good people from being able to do their job we need to all work together so i'm definitely volunteering myself and you know i could volunteer other people but i know there's good people up here and we need to be focused on doing a good job gathering lots of resources and working together okay so if i'm hearing you correctly you want a new board um committee and that means that we need to take it to policy to add it in or we have to vote on that is that what we're asking for this is there's no difference between a task force
096and a committee oh yes there is a test for this okay now if you're having three board members on it and we are leading it it is a board sponsored function and we have to address that somewhere in our board work well there's a lot of different interpretations of what a task force is but it's something that you bring in an emergency with professionals if you can call it a committee but then you're going to be putting it back into the never-ending almost obstruction process that occurs when we try to get stuff done we need if you're going to do the commit let's do it and do it right and let's do it with i just said to be responsive to our needs and not according to bureaucracy and procedure ms adams i would just
097like to say that i think it's a great idea to address all of the issues that are listed on here i think we have a strong hr team that is doing a lot of the work around this already i also think that a lot of this work has to be done at the school level we are a governance team and yes we have good ideas and yes we listen to our community yes we listen to our school-based staff but at the end of the day the people that are living it breathing it and working it every day are where the best ideas are going to generate from and so i don't necessarily agree that board members sitting from the dias should be dictating how we should be supporting our staff and that's just my take
098on it it's my thoughts on it and i i just think that we have enough committees i think we've got very large important issues that we have to face that are budget related and are governance related that i feel that we need to focus on right now yes miss walker well i don't think we're dictating anything i think we're collaborating together to solve problems and i don't think we're telling people what to do the suggestion was to have others staff members etc be on it to give their input so i i think we have a difference to what our role is up here governance includes a lot of things but it definitely includes leading and we have to set an example we have to be vision you know oriented and we have to set our
099mission to do these things and a task force is more specific and time limited it's not like a committee that we have to just you know follow this you know particular agenda with or sorry policy with so so mr shive would this fall under an ad hoc committee is a sense we're leading it i'm not sure where you want to fall underneath your policy but it would be a these would be the board members are going to be attending them and they would be public meetings subject to the open meetings law okay so it would have to be like an ad hoc committee kind of deal we can add them to the policy where we think it makes sense well we don't have to change the policy the policy says we can add ad hoc
100committees but we just have to define what we're doing and make sure we're clear right on if if we're leading it then we're responsible for the results that's all right all right so did you want to bring us i think pete had some i was just going to say quickly that i think just to you know address what we're talking about i think we would need you know school level teachers school level administrators on such a policy or on such a team all right so um does that get to what you want for the discussion or um because we we have a minute okay to bring us home well we need to do this as fast as possible and if we're going to meet about the strategic plan maybe we can have some more formalized
101uh information then uh so maybe and not we need to open this up to all of our input not just a select group so that we can get this done fast but we can also communicate so i will i'll make that a note of that for when we get together and if anybody has anything else they want to add please just send me emails and let me know so that we can um we can work on that okay so now we are on to call to the audience i'm sorry uh yes let's take a quick break okay oh wait come back in five minutes is it still cold in here oh okay so next up on our agenda is call to the audience i want to thank you all again for signing up to share
102your comments and concerns with our board as we have stated before we welcome your engagement from our from the school community and from the audience and community at large several items we need to remind ourselves of each time that um per our board policy 2310 the board allows up to an hour of public comment um during the call to the audience please try and be respectful of us and speak on the topic that you signed up for the public has asked this board in our school system to be more transparent and truthful and we respectfully ask that you do the same the um i would like to call three people up at a time and have you all sit in the front row unless you're already sitting in the front row and then we can
103keep that flowing that way um please refrain from using profanity derogatory language and other slurs in your remarks or i will ask you to leave disruptions by any persons at a public meeting will be subject to action including removal from the meeting we must respect the rights of the individuals who come here to address the board as well as those who have come just to listen audience members should refrain from yelling out and responding to comments made during speakers but during the call of the audience violators will be given one warning and if the behavior continues they will be asked to leave all right so first up on our agenda let's go ahead i mean on our list let's call sandy isles natasha two veronica mclaren brown and melissa mason um veronica's already in front
104so the others can um come to the front and if you are following along you can see on the screen where your name comes up so you have a basic idea of where you're going so miss isles start us off a year ago i approached the board asking you to consider changing our seclusion restraint policy to be safer for our students every month since i have spoken before you and every month you have ignored my concerns you refused to change your policy to require that only strength trained staff restrained children you refused to ban the use of restraints that could restrict student breathing such as prone restraint you have refused to tell us when our seclusion rooms were approved for use despite general statute requiring their approval you've refused to provide documentation confirming any room
105has been approved and therefore the public does not even know if any room is legal for use you have refused to release demographic data so that we can understand exactly who is being secluded and restrained yet you provided this data for suspensions why is seclusion different you have refused to do a deep dive into this topic you have shown no interest in understanding what is actually happening at a school level we still do not understand why mason borough elementary reported six occlusions and they don't even have a seclusion room you have refused to connect with experts to understand the psychological damage seclusion causes children you have refused to present trauma informed behavior programs that focus on present preventing challenging behaviors and crisis you've refused to put our children safety first but tonight you scheduled your
106attorney to do a presentation on seclusion the attorney was hired to protect you not our children and we must remember this when we hear her words for one year your inaction tells us you support locking five-year-old black and disabled children in padded rooms why have you cared about young children being suspended but turned your back on five-year-olds being locked in padded cells you've had a year and you remain uninterested maybe you thought i'd get tired and go away i am tired and i promise you i will go away as soon as you stop harming our children thank you ms isles um next up is natasha [Applause] nice to see everyone without mask almost everyone um recently someone advised me that it was time to move on and asked me what my problem was in response
107to a post i shared with them that demonstrated the impact that the imposed unlawful and illegal ineffective mass mandates have on children my problem miss adams is that there has not been any accountability for the harmful and negligent decisions of this school board however i am not here tonight to repeat all the state federal and international laws and violations this board has violated i'm here to inform each of you that you're being served with letters of intention from four new hanover county families with four separate claims against your liability insurance for your unlawful mandates your blatant violations of our constitutionally protected rights i assure you it is in with your best interest to review these documents at your earliest opportunity you are bound by your oath under god to uphold the laws of the united
108states constitution and north carolina state constitution not only have you failed to do so but one might think it was a deliberate act of domestic terrorism that targeted and abused our children the unprecedent unprecedented mass use of medical and social interventions without regard for physical emotional and developmental consequences without fully informed consent and in the presence of coercion and intimidation has created both irreparable harm but mentally and physically to the very individuals that you have been entrusted to nurture educate and protect you are hereby served with this notice to correct the violations listed in these documents within the next seven business days if these are not corrected they'll be notifying your insurance company thank you mr veronica mclaren brown [Applause] thank you [Applause] miss brown you can go ahead and start whenever you're ready [Applause]
109you said that education that educators like skills and needed more training to change policy 4300 this year 11 new hanover county elementary schools participated in behavior leadership foundation training at the february meeting julie bonham presented data that showed those 11 schools significantly reduced out of school suspensions it also showed that 14 schools that have not received any of the training had two or less out of school suspensions six of those schools that had no none of the training had zero suspensions educators are demonstrating the skills needed to change the policy stop the accu stop the excuses adopt a policy that ends out of school suspensions for ages four five six and seven-year-old babies except for guns drugs are serious and injury i once heard this comment at a principal's meeting they say they said nobody
110wants those animals in our schools sadly enough some principals laughed as if it was was funny no one from the central office made a comment [Music] my silence still haunts me tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of when you pass the current policy with a vote of seven to zero does your silence haunt you thank you miss brown um next up melissa mason thank you i have a prop i don't know how i'm gonna all right so this is a seclusion room according to a department of education report from 2012 10 years ago restraint or seclusion should never be used as punishment or discipline as a means of coercion or retaliation or as a convenience so why are seclusion rooms like the one i just showed you in our schools why are we spending money to
111build more of them in our newer schools and why are we still having them used let's call it what it is it's solitary confinement no bathroom no food no water and no way to communicate in case of distress according to policy they can throw your child into this six by six padded cell with no windows and no door handles for up to ten minutes without notifying you as a parent ten minutes for a child is an eternity especially for those that have anxiety or special needs school should be a safe and healthy place for our kids school policy doesn't require any counseling why is that not an option to go to first do we think that the child is learning in there likely not the pattern is sadly familiar it's a nice fuzzy term seclusion
112room but it covers up a cruel policy that doesn't work hurts children and no one is held accountable my name is melissa mason and when i'm elected to this board of education i will listen to parents hold school staff accountable and vote against the irresponsible use of seclusion rooms if you want to read more go to melissa for education.com thank you thank you miss mason amanda pat bradford peter and leslie posey um you can come to the front so we can move that i'm sure you didn't hear your name um amanda pat and peter rawich i don't mind that but um miss bradford the um if nobody comes then you'll be the only one okay yes ma'am yeah i was told during the break that is amanda this is amanda hang on this is unusual
113yes ma'am what do you need judy what do you need okay okay so um amanda boomershine pat bradford is is um waiting um peter's up here in the front leslie posey's up here in the front okay chris sutton you may make your way to the front if you can go ahead miss boomershine all right thank you good evening um my name is amanda boomershine and my husband and i have two daughters at the international school at gregory i'm not here to talk about that school tonight um i am here to share with you something that i witnessed when my children were in school at forest hills global elementary when my kids were younger i often would volunteer in their classes help out in the classroom library label books make copies that sort of thing one
114day in the 2015-2016 school year as i was leaving my youngest daughter's kindergarten class i heard a child screaming please no please don't put me in there again i looked down the hallway and saw a young black student being dragged down the hallway by two staff members one was on each side of the young boy and he was screaming and crying shocked i wasn't sure what was happening i asked the then principal what i had witnessed and she said the child was most likely being taken to calm down i inquired further and found out that the school had a padded seclusion room and that is where the child had been taken to this day i have that image imprinted in my mind i wonder what happened to that child and where he is now it
115was clear to me that he had been in the seclusion room before and did not want to return that was six years ago and it doesn't seem that much has changed at that school or in the district overall as far as the use of seclusion rooms my question for the board and everyone listening is if that had been your child or your grandchild what would you be feeling and thinking right now thank you thank you mr alex [Applause] we've been told that the new hanover county preschool program does not suspend four-year-olds we've also been told that there's a law that prevents the program from suspending them that second statement is simply not true there is no state or federal law stopping the pre-k program from suspending students even head start and the north carolina pre-k
116guidelines allow for four-year-olds to be suspended five years ago the new hanover county schools reported to the u.s department of department of education's office of civil rights that six preschool children were suspended so when exactly did the pre-k program stop suspending four-year-olds changing policy 4300 tonight will end this harmful practice and its disparate application and this includes protecting the children who are four years old when they enter kindergarten change the policy because research shows that children who are suspended are more likely to drop out of high school and are more likely to enter the juvenile justice system the pre-k program may not be suspending four-year-olds now but a policy will ensure the fidelity and accountability that's needed to keep our youngest learners in school so they can get the help they need change the policy
117not because of an imaginary law but because it's the right thing to do thank you mr tonight i want to tell you about my friend charlie charlie is a graduate of hoggard high school he is also a survivor of elementary school seclusion rooms early in his school career charlie was identified as having learning disorders and difficulties without anger management because of these issues in kindergarten and first grade charlie was repeatedly locked in seclusion rooms charlie is now 30. we talked about him coming here tonight to tell you his story in person but he knew that his extreme claustrophobia would prevent him from coming into an unfamiliar room even one this large because of his repeated seclusions he is also terrified of dark spaces since high school charlie has worked almost exclusively in jobs such as
118landscaping that allow him to be outside the only indoor space where he is comfortable is his own house when he visits his grandparents next door to me they meet outside he also has trouble controlling his anger particularly if he feels there is a threat to his family being repeatedly locked in padded rooms did not help charlie learn to control his anger or solve his learning issues it left him further disabled with claustrophobia and nyctophobia i hope you will invest in programs such as collaborative and proactive solutions or expand the use of conscious discipline seclusion is torture not therapy thank you miss posey [Applause] [Music] so i'd like to invite jordan ugendelli alicia alicia ogundelli and robert bellamy up to the front you always throw curve balls at me and change the agenda and everything i
119was going to speak about 2330 but instead let's really just talk about the difference in mentality on the board i'm gonna try and take mr mcmanus's uh non-adversarial advice on that one and try and shoot a little higher on this one um legitimately i there are some people on the board that believe in the greater group miss crable you and i obviously don't agree on that um you know you want to keep everything on the agenda that's that's to the strategic plan and i understand it the problem is that the greater good is the reason why i'm here the entire reason i started coming to these meetings was about the sexual assault victims and the thing is i tried just to get them just a little bit of a semblance of justice and i could
120not do that because of the greater good and even now look at the people that just came here and talked about the seclusion rooms really think about this we have people that are running as democrats we have people that are running as republicans we have bipartisan support to change our infrastructure for good same thing with four-year-olds and five-year-olds i have a two-year-old at home i get to see my friends as four-year-olds throwing throwing them in a room or suspending them that does not help we have to change what we are doing this is not going to work the problem is that some of these board members up here truly do not want the community families or even the teachers to have involvement in the strategic planning and that's an issue and the thing is you
121y'all are supposed to be elected officials to to look after our best interests and unfortunately it's just not turning out to be that way miss crable you are elected as a republican everything you've done here has been against the values the conservative values that some of these people uphold just let me know that and i this is not personal but march 15th we are going to have a discussion and i will make a motion to try and have you censored at the republican um convention coming up and the reason being is because of how you treat our community and it's nothing personal i mean we really could have been friends if you worked on these issues my name is jordan organelli and i'm currently a student at murder gold middle school one of my friends
122got in trouble for his teacher because they had a difference of opinion about something and the teacher accused him he never used no disrespectful words to our church yet the teacher still sent him to the front office where he was suspended for a few days he didn't have a gun he didn't have any drugs and there was no physical violence he was just trying to defend himself with red and the teacher didn't like his tone if i were the principal i would have handled the problem differently by talking to the student and listening to his side of the story of what occurred and then i would go back to the teacher and have them talk so there could be a resolution between this the two actually meaning less talking about us and more understanding us
123a simple act remediation would go a long way without having to suspend a child for simply using their words because the teacher didn't want to hear them out i consider myself lucky to have a few teachers i feel i like to talk to and feel respectful to because they give the same respect back i can't believe it's four five six year olds getting kicked out of school for using words at the age they're basically parents they repeat words that they heard adults say i'm using my words here tonight to speak on behalf of the four or five six year olds and they has come here who doesn't hurt if you sit here and do nothing and does nothing to help eventually you got to get up and do something for the school to change your
124suspension policy now thank you [Applause] good evening where is the humanity suspension of four five six and seven year olds needs to be done away with the majority of you on the board have children and have grandchildren yet you lack the concern of suspending four five six and seven years because none more likely it doesn't affect your children however it does affect mine you all were elected to be in the seat you're sitting in you made promises to get in that seat and now you sit there and turn a blind eye in a deaf air to the people that supported you being in that very seat it is your education is your educational value system different from one group of children than another i did the math and it appears so last month none of
125you bothered to ask how many of the out of school suspensions were for black children and how many were for white children guess who infected most changes student behavior policy 4 300 in and out of school suspension for four five six and seven-year-olds except for guns drugs or violent assaults are you that far removed from reality that you can't relate to the crucial issues at hand concerning the students that attend your public schools such as suspension of four five six and seven-year-olds the sexual assaults in the schools and the seclusion rooms what about the support of the employees making a living wage where they don't have to choose between bills and meals placing our teachers teachers assistants and bus drivers under a stressful work environment these are the people that entrust we entrust with our
126children we are real people and it is essential that you address our concerns uh certain so i we need solutions to ascertain some real solutions actually now i'm here to ask you where has your sense of humanity going this is not the same energy that you have when you were begging for votes [Music] i'd like to call to the front robert bellamy angie caney and melanie cooper are you here yes [Applause] are you mr bellamy thank you oh god bless you guys i'm trying to say that is out for that uh my name is robert bellamy uh i am today an advocate for love our children and racial injustice i don't know at all but i want to mention the last minute changes before the call to the audience i think is cruel i think
127it's also selfish and you all know that i mean you know that people have kids here and people have kids at home plus this is a school night a school night and you all know that you know what's wrong i know you all have kids or you had kids or you you know people that have kids so why are we trying and why do we keep trying to discourage the public from speaking out about suspensions of these kids these babies four five six and seven years old and you know you know you shut down the public input on getting uh a needed agenda i needed items on the agenda i mean needed items on the agenda this basic stuff is stuff like that i think the board members need behavior and leadership training for for
128real themselves i think you guys need yeah you know you need you need behavior leadership training guys seriously because you know you don't respect the policies and you don't want to hear the truth and most of you just follow along and you just know it's wrong and just go along you just follow along and you know because we all know you have basic common sense because if you didn't you wouldn't be on the board uh you're you'll be fighting the same you'll be fighting the same type of system you're now fighting to help create you know maybe uh maybe we need a new policy uh to suspend one or two of you guys and let you stay at home with no pay you know feeling like no one loves you lost in the world and
129and in a kid's mind feeling unwanted because that's what that's what's happening with these kids now now for you it'll be like it'll be about all about the money and your silly pride your time is out it's already with your focus on silencing the public title ix was conveniently left off the agenda for this evening during the upcoming sexual assault trial on march the 8th despite the board refusing to settle and holding this case up in court for years the board will quickly seek to pursue dropping some of the victims of michael kelly a convicted child predator from that lawsuit this is based on a statute of limitations technicality that will likely be overturned the board is jumping at another opportunity to intentionally cause trauma to victims in an effort to evade accountability after almost
130four years despite ongoing attempts by the board to sabotage it we have the results of the title ix survey the results show evidence of not only sexual assault in our schools by high numbers of sexual and gender-based harassment in females non-gender conforming in lgbtq students ironically some like to claim they support victims of sexual assault but discourage any mention of title ix you can't support one without the other the same federal law that protects sexual assault victims also protects lgbtq students perhaps denouncing pedophiles looks good on political campaign slogans but title ix doesn't fit the narrative truth be told our district is failing them all despite any progress made regarding the title ix legacy a product of the advocacy and resilient of randy johnson not any board member that claims otherwise the findings of the
131title ix survey also showed that our students are reluctant to report assault harassment and discrimination because of lack of trust in adults in their schools and because this form of treatment has been normalized we can thank you the board and superintendent for that your treatment of students who have already proven sexual assault by their teacher through trying to erase them and dismiss their cases set stat presidents that they are unimportant our kids nor our community trust you your elusive actions are cruel and only wish it was that easy to erase the trauma from the minds of victims so they could begin to heal thank you [Applause] and while she's making her way to the front um barbara aguero katie gates and loretta stackhouse are you guys with us okay go ahead good evening my name
132is melanie cooper and i'm here on behalf of love our children i'm advocating for four five six and seven-year-olds who are being suspended in school when children are suspended it disrupts the entire household and my question to the board is how do you show up month after month sitting in a position to make moral and humane changes and instead make excuses i just don't understand that when i was in school i was a pretty good english student so i'm just going to go over a few words that i think that the board should understand one of them is intention it's a thing an intended or aim or plan so you have intentions here to derail the students by your lack of no actions defiant full of or showing a disposition to challenge resist or fight
133bold imputed those of you who close your eyes to this are very defiant and have a lot of nerve and you have deep stairs you should be looking at yourself the way that you're looking at me right now systematic done or acting according to a fixed plan or system this is systematic and you behave as ugly as your wicked ancestors and you you know i'm talking to you right now because you're staring at me it takes two minutes to conceive a child but it's been 50 years since our children have gone through this horrible horrible circumstances here cold-blooded lacking affection or warmth i'm feeling that's what you are and you know i'm talking to you right there thank you thank you miss cooper so next up barbara guerrero barbara guerrero it's time to break the
134cycle we understand that teachers and other school staff have lots on their plates besides the three r's times have changed and it is time to break the cycle of adverse childhood experiences or aces out of school suspensions for four five six and seven year olds is an ace the first public institution children experience does not need to contribute more aces our schools should be safe havens per your own data presented at the february interim meeting the nine schools already receiving training had 82 suspensions for the first two quarters of this school year for all age groups in these elementary schools this is far fewer out of school suspensions than the data available for prior years we still do not know how many of the 82 suspensions were for the youngest children the 16 schools that
135without this training had only 45 out of school suspensions 10 of these 16 schools had one or less zero school suspensions for all age groups it seems to me that the board of education as the leaders and policy makers for new hanover county schools can amend policy 4300 to eliminate out-of-school suspensions for four five six and seven year olds beginning in the 2022-23 school year and not wait an additional year you need to reinforce the good work of the school administration and make clear that this policy is a firm expectation student and the policy should read suspensions will not be used as a consequence for four five six and seven-year-old children except for offenses such that endanger the health and safety of others or the possession of weapons or drugs or violent assault thank you
136[Applause] good evening my name is katie gates you all tonight have received envelopes that contain petitions of grievances and affidavits that are served with respect and with the intention to hold the board accountable for not upholding your oath of office nor acting in the best interests of our children we the community and the parents will no longer tolerate child endangerment from those that swore an oath to educate nurture and protect our most precious gift our offspring our posterity you may have heard in the declaration of independence that it says whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends ends means meaning to interfere with our unalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter
137or abolish it good thing we're not here to abolish this governing body we're here to lay some guard rails with the board as a necessity to constrain the personal and subjective overreach of your duty through policy decisions in the last year that have limited the rights and freedoms of our children and the adult community assembled in this room monthly over the last year we are very thankful that you have made mass optional following a year of national and local parental commentary but as parents we are obliged to make you accountable for your decisions in the last year and ensure that such liberties are not taken by this board again we are the voice for our offspring and any and all public servants that continue to trespass on and violate our biological property shaolin will be
138held accountable to the laws the constitution and the oaths that you took when entering this office please do the right thing choose to protect the rights of our children our nation's future prosperity and the freedom for all by honoring the list of grievances thank you [Applause] good evening when i first heard that four five six and seven-year-old children were being suspended from school i wanted to cry why are babies being suspended from a place that they are sent to learn then i heard about the padded room seclusion rooms and my heart hurt the teachers and teachers aides and other support staff for the learning process for children come asking for decent earnings so as not to have to work several jobs for the necessities of life they deserve better working conditions better working conditions for
139them create better learning conditions for the children parents and citizens from the community come to the school board meetings to advocate for the children and you do everything you can to discourage them these issues are brought to you monthly you do nothing now i cry because you use the time that could be spent finding and implementing solutions for issues to reduce the amount of time and shut down the time for call to the audience and not hear the issues you can and have the authority to change the policies i cry because i realize you do not want to change the policies who are supporting the children who really cares thank you [Applause] yolanda hernandez okay um tracy bua smith oh are you yolanda i'm sorry good evening we're tired of waiting we're told that we
140have to wait for a culture shift in our schools before the policy policy can be changed no one had to wait for a culture shift 21 years ago when the board of education ended its policy on corporal punishment no one had to wait for a culture shift last june when you allowed transit transgender students to participate in middle school sports that align with their gender identity we shouldn't have to wait for a culture shift to change a policy that you know is harmful to four five six and seven-year-olds the behavior leadership foundations training that was started last august has significantly lowered the number of out-of-school suspensions in elementary schools that's good but training alone won't guarantee the fidelity and accountability that is needed to keep our youngest learners in school that's what a policy is
141for change policy 4 300 now and end out of school suspensions for four five six and seven year olds except for guns drugs and violent assault for the beginning at the beginning of the next school year each month you wait sends more children mostly black children through the school to prison pipeline we're tired of your excuses do your job please ward thank you thank you miss smith are you tracy oh i'm sorry tracy i'm sorry i checked you off because sorry it's okay okay it's so nice to see so many smiling faces my husband and i have five children and currently we have one child enrolled in new hampshire county public school as a senior are you aware the following book titles that students can access either in school or online media centers in new
142hanover county schools out of darkness the glass arrow stamped racism anti-racism in you forged by fire what riley wore blm a good kind of trouble queer there and everywhere me and earl and the dying girl in these books there are many examples of racial division sexually explicit language bullying harassment and obscenities for example with a quick search on an nhc high school's online library resource i located the book me and earl and the dying girl the male main character is quoted as saying these words f-u-c-k-d-i-c-k-s-h-i-t and a-s-s when i signed up to speak tonight there's a message on your google form that states messages that contain profanity or other derogatory language will not be permitted and participants may be removed so adults can't use profanity at this meeting which is great but our children can
143fill their minds with the filth can you make that make sense why the double standards in hypocrisy our tack toddlers are not intended to be used to purchase obscene books these books lack serious literary and educational value they do not belong in the nhcs libraries classrooms or virtual apps on computers how can parents trust that you have their children's best interests in mind when you come across as not caring what they are exposed to in our literary choices what criteria are you using to choose books in our schools media centers and online resources what is the process that is being used to choose books parents have a right to know these answers school board you work for us and it's time you stop grooming our kids and instead work on purging nhcs libraries and online
144resources with concerns your time is up thank you gail major she is sick hello masklas nice to see you oh we missed one sorry mrs adams still don't get to see you gail major child advocate also was a substitute in the school system for three years before i resigned a year ago i think the news media called me the retired teacher no i quit because as i said at the very beginning when you first met me i understood what was going on when i first saw your meetings on the change of the curriculum after covid came the children were behind in reading and all the other subjects but we decided to put in a brand new curriculum for what why would you do that so what we are doing and i think you all know
145by now is we're getting the budget for the edi from last year working on the new one presenting it to the commissioners because i know it's up for approval come i think maybe may is it uh fingerprinting lobbying i was the girl i thought we had that in the bag and it got passed around you got served with a violation dr faust you sent it over to sheriff ed with an mou and it there it sits and nobody can make a decision to solve a fingerprinting problem that you've had for decades and i've only been working on it for a year here so those of us who are new to this area and have lived in other places and know laws that are in place for the good of our children we are coming forward
146and we're getting stronger and i thank you today i see diversity in the sense of no politics in this room we all know that you are failing our children in so many ways so right now we are looking at not only the fingerprinting the edi we're also looking at head start the preschool and special education and i'm somewhere along the line i think i heard something about the pta getting involved miss crable i think that was your little baby when i first started researching you so the research has been done on people places you're done miss major oh yes we wouldn't watch it stephen powers is he here good evening everybody wow i have uh the first time i've ever been in pta me uh you have a good school board this is uh pretty
147intense um i have a son named stephen clark powers he's a student a senior in fact in answer county schools and the reason why i'm here is because as a parent because we're all parents here and that's what we're concerned about our children um we live it in a very precarious time with it's pains me to say this with the gun violence active threat things that are happening right now not just in our school students but across the nation i'm very fortunate to work for a company that i'm very passionate about because i think we really need to to create a safer environment as everyone expressed in different points we things are happening in the school system and there's just not a system in place to create a safer haven for the kids our company
148is based out of jacksonville north carolina we have onslow county dna it's manufactured and produced here it's an active threat lockdown device that works and it's basically for the safety of the children and the faculties and and the people in the schools i'd like to encourage you to take a look at our website campus safety products rhino where because it works we're in the gina geneva convention headquarters in switzerland and navy seal headquarters and many school systems here and in throughout the nation and we're in some school systems here in north carolina as well the products right there and it uh it's very simple to use a five-year-old could use it thank you [Applause] okay so now we're on to our next oh i'm sorry pat yes ma'am go ahead i'm pat bradford and i
149have to thank you i really have to thank you i couldn't understand equity diversity and inclusion and tonight i do you have created equity and inclusion every single person in this room that's spoken tonight we are all on the same page love our children be kind to our children stop suspending babies stop locking children in padded rooms stop allowing children access to sexually explicit books we're all in agreement black white brown registered republican registered democrat you have taught us to come together to fight you've taught us to come together to fight against the school board who was elected who is not representing the people so those of you who are up for election you might want to pass this 4300 tonight because none of the people in this room are going to vote for you
150if you don't you're just running amok mr mcmanus is right your decorum is out the door it's embarrassing it's actually kind of funny though i mean bring popcorn pass it out this is like reality tv watching you guys work and you don't get anything done because you're busy fighting but you have created a force here of all races all political parties and we are united for our children against you guys so thank you good job thank you miss bradford all right so that gets us through everything on our list just in case anyone wondering so we won't probably need to call the audience because nobody else signed up okay the um let's move next to our agenda in our agenda is the behavior leadership foundations training update we're going to hear tonight from alderman elementary
151and college park elementary the um alderman let's just have you go ahead and go first if you're here why or you can flip a coin on who wants to go for okay you can introduce us are you gonna is there any any intro okay um so i'll go first my name is tyler shumate i'm a fifth grade teacher at alderman elementary and we have the privilege of starting the behavior leadership plc in august of this year um basically for this part i'm going to cover what we did in the beginning so we took a deep dive looking at what behavior looks like across across the school and really establishing the base of everything i've had the privilege of talking to a few people on the board about this before but right now we're really that
152preliminary stage of getting to the grassroots so we are excited we started really excited to learn more about improving our school culture overall in the climate and really looking at how do we address the behavior proactively instead of reactively as educators how do we start in the beginning by looking at proactive approaches in order to establish those relationships with kids and the expectations from day one during our first meeting we revised and updated our mission and vision statements and developed a plan to market these new changes to our staff together we worked update our school-wide expectations and review processes for positive behavior support for all students through this work we've been able to create really a cohesive message that really kind of kind of brought everything together under one accord so through this work we
153were able to create that cohesive message in order to help engage accept grow and lead every every one of our eagles every day here you see on the slide um if we can turn the to the next slide please that's possible yep oh i do all right you're right i do miss school that's it so this is my side appreciate it thank you okay um just a few of the beginning slides so at the bottom that was where our first kind of think tank plc meeting happened and we really got to have a good team come together with teachers with our principal our guidance counselor and social worker really start looking at improving our school culture from the inside we also have soaring eagle cards that we do with our kids as you can see
154in the top left photo so kids are nominated for currently for being respectful responsible safe healthy and kind in different ways we look for what's extraordinary what are they doing that's more than just your typical uh behavior that exemplifies what we want them to be and by doing that we're able to reward them every day on the intercom our principal is able to announce their their names every day on the intercom and that little bit of recognition goes a long way so it really falls in line with positive behavior support you also see the bulletin board with the sword the eagle way acronym which is engage except grow lead every eagle every day and again all these accumulated cards um for the students individual students then also the um classroom cards overall for when we
155see classes going above and beyond so our the idea is you know really turning the tide on behavior how do we start in the beginning and that's kind of the stages that we started at this summer and are continuing to work on an address in meetings every month sorry thanks hi i'm chloe jackson i'm the counselor alderman um so in this slide i'm just going to be talking about what we've been doing since going to the county plc's so we're really just trying to make sel a common practice every day in our school so we're really focusing on school-wide social emotional learning in many different ways we're utilizing harmony every day we have monthly or some semi-weekly guidance lessons and we're really focusing on the zones of regulation in our school all of which are
156really helpful in having students identify and learning how to regulate their emotions um and we also focus on a variety of different topics during my guidance lessons which i think have been really super helpful we also revised our school-wide behavior plan and something really cool that we did was we started our golden awards so what those are for each of our special teachers as well as the cafeteria and the custodial staff award a class every month for behavior or like for custodians would be who has the cleanest classroom and for cafeterias who has the best behavior in the cafeteria this has really helped with behavior in specials because it's something that we realized was something that we could improve on so that's really helped us identify and improve on that we also have created pbis
157incentives such as the cart that we have going around we have certain pbis days and things like that that really help with the positive behaviors also we host our family nights that are inclusive to the whole child if you look at the second photo on the slide that's we had somebody come in and do line dancing which was really fun on our title one night in student-led conferences it really included the mental and physical health so it really included the whole child the top picture on the slide is a picture of the golden awards that we have it's really cool we have a golden spatula golden palette golden sneaker all different things for the different specials that the students get really excited about um the last picture on the slide are different zones of regulation
158the different colors each represent a different group of emotions that we have and every classroom in the school has one of those posters it's interactive it's a dry erase poster where all the teachers went over with their students how to regulate each emotion that we have in those different zones but that's what we're doing right now thank you good evening i'm jordan sunny hilbert principal proud principal at alderman elementary school and just as my colleagues have so eloquently stated this is a process and so although we continue to experience it our new challenges daily our hope is to continue this work in order to foster a stronger sense of community in our school a more positive climate and a safe place for our students to learn to do this we like to focus on involving
159and empowering more of our staff and our families in this work using data from our this school year to continue to plan and problem solve forward and continue to improve our implementation of school-based social emotional learning for students and staff to do this we will also specifically strengthen our use of harmony in the classrooms like you see in the first slide at the top and as well as the use of positive communications between school and family like you see on the top right hand corner there we have a positive note home that's what that says i know it's a little small up there and then to continue to enhance our students ability to reflect on their behaviors and to set goals of success similar to the bottom um picture that we have of our student-led
160conferences that we most recently had for our last two title one family night so very proud of the accomplishments that we've had so far this year and the data that we're seeing so do we have any questions yeah i want to just jump in real quick so um what has been your well first of all who are you who are your teachers and what grades are they teaching so that we can we can identify a little bit more of that i know tyler he absolutely so this is a great teacher that we have mr teammate and then our school counselor is here council okay thank you so what has been um your most favorite part about this um behavior leadership foundation effort like what have you found that you're just so excited to have learned
161and or being able to use well i'll speak to this one then i'll let my team speak um so i feel like as an administrator i love that we were able to actually get down to the ground and start fresh and kind of look at it in a new approach of looking at the data what's behind what's driving behind what we're seeing on a daily basis what are some of the trends that we're seeing as a new principal to the school it's been interesting to see history and now looking it forward you know with the changes that we've experienced this year but truly getting to the data that's driving what we're seeing on a daily basis and then starting to create a plan from there and to look at with the help of a well-rounded
162team looking at it from all sides and now we're getting also data that we're looking forward to having um that's from the students perspective of what our school looks like and so we're taking that plus what we get from input from our families plus the impact of our staff and the input from our staff and that's how we're able to look at planning for next year so we're really excited about this process great do you guys um you know or well yeah i really like all the different ways we've come up with rewarding the positive behavior um it's so rewarding as an adult to see all the different ways that students work um to get those rewards and you know be acknowledged for the things that they're supposed to be doing so i really like
163coming up with the different ways to reward students for their behavior i will say one thing i think what i've looked forward to the most is when you look at any any type of correction whether academic or instructional or behavioral you really look at it in three tiers right now we're looking at tier one we're looking at the base what are we doing for all the students and then when we address those issues and we've really i think done a great job of branding that this year we're going to build on that next year then we can look at okay who are our students that are still struggling with behavior who are students that are still just we can't quite reach them just yet what are we going to do in our tier 2 level
164what are we going to do to make sure that we're addressing those needs in the classroom and the idea is that we start to see those behaviors de-escalate and we start to see that we are starting to see that and then we start focusing on those teacher relationships even more with students so that some of the issues that we've heard address tonight i don't think even become as big of concerns because we've done such a good job of addressing the needs of our students um and it's a lot of work it is it's it's not easy and days are tough it is a process it's not a you know you're it's like almost i was telling someone the other day it's almost like trying to turn a cruise ship around with an ore you know
165that's what you're doing essentially um and it's a lot of work but we love doing it it's exciting thank you does anybody else have any um miss justice yes pbis positive behavior intervention support this is what all this sounds like it's based on that's correct uh and this is the first this is the first year you've been implementing it not pbis but the going through this plc and the some of the the activities that we've been through through the plc that's what we're starting to implement this year because what you were just describing describing was pbis and if you have had that in place why is it just i'm just curious because these are things because i've been i've actually been trained in all levels and i've implemented them in my classrooms in my schools
166and i was trained oh my gosh started back in 1990s and we have a list of all these schools and aldermen's and one of them and i'm just interested in how that has translated if if this is a really good and i'm against that plc is bringing it out and causing it to be more focused which is good but you know the uh and that's that is the good thing that we have a great place that we've started from and the fact that we have really worked on tweaking revising looking at what our current needs are so it's been a lot of that um so far in this process so but the pbis is basically what which is an excellent program it is basically what now is being implemented across the board and it sounds
167like it's going to be increasing correct let me just offer a little bit of clarification okay um pbs as the the program that you're speaking of which has like an accreditation process and it's sort of overseen is not exactly what this is we are utilizing positive behavioral interventions and supports that schools are coming together to develop in their school teams and identify how are we going to take an instructional approach to behavior but in terms of saying okay now you are a pbis school like you're referring to in those programming this is separate from that okay we were just given that information and i'm trying to understand what has happened in the past and what's going on now because it's a wonderful program and you were implementing it and correctly it sounds like now and
168i'm just trying to figure out what's been going on so i would say the best way to think of it is pbis is the what and then this plc that we're doing is the why and the how so it's taking it to the next level so we've had the what for years you know i've been in autumn in six years and when i started we were we started looking at the pbis process so we've had that process now we're digging it deeper because we're learners you know that's what the best educator is a good learner and that's what we're doing is we're looking at the data right and then building on that to produce our why and how as to addressing behaviors continuing to get better at it thank you so am i hearing that
169there you're kind of using these programs um synergistically is that the right word or or you you're using multiple strategies to get at your end goal is that kind of what i'm hearing um mr mcmanus did you have your hand up but he answered okay did you have something i just had a great question probably it's for tyler because you know a teacher they implemented this new program i know in the beginning y'all kind of were talking about is um as instructors that there's more training and i know you guys get trained to death on things but i was curious what you feel now kind of on the backside of this um having to start implementing whether you feel like this is a going to be a culture shift for you guys and going forward
170would it be something that sticks with you going forward ever well absolutely so i think you know the biggest the biggest thing that plc plus has done or this this plc has done for us is it's look making us look at our data so you have the pbis right and we do all of the different pbis components but then with this particular pd you start looking at the data you start looking at okay where where are gaps what are we missing what do we need to do where do we need to improve um so that's the next steps that we're taking right now so like i said again the whereas the pbis was the what this is the why and how we're going to do it and we're taking in small steps we really are
171with our staff because we want to make sure it like i said it's a process and we want to make sure we're doing it right we want to make sure we have the buy-in from our staff so that we have the the consistency in all of our classrooms and that everyone is doing it the right way students we know need consistency and so that's one of our major things is that we are making sure we are doing it slowly in order to make sure we're doing it the right way i do have a question okay mr mcmahon going through this process do you have opportunities to share with other principals who are either anticipating going through it who are will begin very shortly to go through it i have opportunities as a you know when
172i talk with my colleagues absolutely i feel like we are going to probably have that opportunity because since we're the first round of schools to go through this plc to probably talk with some other schools but yes like you know when we have a principals meeting or something like that and have other times to to collaborate with my colleagues i definitely mention what we're doing and some of the great things that has led to some outcomes that we've already seen in our school yes thank you okay well thank you very much um you're done um the um thank you for coming you know feel free to stay as long as you'd like okay and i i applaud you for the work that you're doing it sounds awesome so i will say we have college park
173yes college park is up next um and i'll let her introduce her okay college park owls i went there good evening it gives me great joy and great pleasure to stand before you to share what the outstanding wise leaders are doing at the park but i also want to invite you to come and see what is um happening at the park i am the proud principal dr maria madison and i have with me today ms jeannie harvest our phenomenal social worker and mr kelly cortan my right hand and we want to share with you because we had the pleasure of being a part of the first cohort in the behavior leadership foundation but what we have done is we bought a brand new flavor to the team so what we have had the opportunity to
174do was talk about the pilot that we experienced a couple of years ago with several other schools and that pilot was working alongside the resiliency task force and that allowed us to have hands-on knowledge in regards to how to help our students and our teachers to approach everything with the brain and mind and if we do that we will become even better and so over the years several staff members have participated in trauma-informed trainings and we and what has happened because of that participation we have shifted the atmosphere in our school and when i say that that means that when we are addressing anything academically socially emotionally behaviorally what instructionally with our staff we begin with the brain we've learned so many different skills and so we have been allowed the opportunity to share these
175skills at these plc's with our colleagues and some of our colleagues have started a lot of these things and i am a talker but i just want to share that we have enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate and share some of the great things that we have learned through evidence-based research on how to help our students to not flip their lid as well as our staff so i'm going to turn it over to miss harvest give her a round of applause because it's after 8 o'clock i think thank you so much for allowing us to come and share about our school tonight each morning at college park elementary every classroom has a meet up classroom meeting supported by a meetup slideshow the students greet each other and talk about their owl expectation goals for the day
176like we said we're the owls outstanding wise leaders so we have owl goals we they share with each other and answer a fun question as a way of building a classroom community they discuss their schedule for the day highlighting any changes as a way of reducing worries about their day and finally they watch a short video connected to the social emotional learning lessons being taught by our school counselors our counselors are using zones of regulation and mind up curriculums to support our children learning self-regulation skills we survey our students staff and families to determine how we're doing and where we need to make changes we have a partnership with laney high school called bucktown owls that's the picture that you see there where laney students come and mentor our students that particular young boy does
177a countdown every week three more days until he gets here miss havis two more days till he gets here to see me it's awesome finally we have community leader assemblies to ensure that our students learn about people in our community so thank you for letting me share some of the things we're doing all right she always wants to talk so much i don't know we just put up their morning meeting regulation stations in every classroom and then the zones of regulation and mind up or our curriculums so do you have any questions so i guess i'll ask sort of the same question um the it sounds like your your trauma-informed pilot program helped you out a lot in the behavior leadership how did you see that working um synergistically again that word i just made
178up both ideas come from students coming into a calm environment so expectations so we are all just for my previous training principal training i think i was on the conservative tide i want to know an agenda i want to know what my day's going to look like and sometimes we take it for granted as um adults that kids just just you just need to come to school no it's okay to talk about procedures rules expectations and review those throughout so by combining the behavior leadership plc's and what we are continuing our journey with being learning more and more trauma-informed strategies to help our college park family it's just a melting pot melting together because it's so important as a leader and so what is your favorite part about it so far i just like all
179that i just like learning just the learning of how the brain works how to develop a stress response good solid stress response system so whenever you do meet a challenge you don't win a game what do you do instead of you know bopping your friend or saying something that's not appropriate so building that stress response system at an early age is very important to our college park family thank you anybody else have any comments questions ms walker since uh you started the this particular program have you seen a difference yes we have i mean just the culture of our school and i invite you to come and see because that's very important to us and how i ask a student how to demonstrate the model of the brain just ask them questions about their emotions
180and their feelings and they can can tell you that's good elementary school college park yes that was very awesome i had to get a plugin all right thank you so much anything else you want to add have a good evening okay thank you for being here with us we appreciate your time have a good evening and thank you susan for being here for their support okay um so next we have um no we do not the um so i just before we move into the next section i just want to just ask folks if they could probably keep some of their conversations down so that we could hear what our presenters are talking about we've got a bunch left to go and i want to be able to hear every word that they're saying so
181next up is student seclusion rooms we have that on the agenda for 15 minutes um this was brought forward by miss walk i mean miss justice discuss and vote on ending seclusions and restraint in new hanover county schools uh miss walker indicated at the gender review that um that there was not necessarily a need to vote right now but we needed to talk about a plan so which one of you want to take the lead on that discussion well i'll go ahead and then um but oh yeah that's okay yeah is ms in with us oh sorry there she is sorry we can't say it okay yeah so um this is carolyn murchison from um farrington smith who's going to be guiding us through um just a little bit of information about the use of
182seclusion rooms in a public school setting uh so thank you thank you for having me can you all hear me okay yeah we can yes ma'am okay great so i just have a couple of slides here i i seem to be a little bit behind the eight ball there's been clearly this is a subject that is um people are passionate about right now in your district based on your your public comments tonight so i've put together just a couple of slides if you can go to the next slide i'm happy to take questions from the board at any time what regulates the use of seclusion and i'm also talking about isolation just so you can uh so we are using the same terminology is both north carolina general statute 115 c-391.1 as well as your
183board policy which is board regulation 4302 dash r and that policy as it relates to seclusion and isolation tracks um exactly as it is in the statute this stat this statute in addition to seclusion and isolation also regulates the use of physical restraint mechanical restraint and aversive procedures in north carolina next slide so um before we talk about seclusion i just want to make sure that we're all on the same page for isolation isolation when that term is used means that it's a behavior management technique which the student is placed alone in an enclosed space but they are not prevented from leaving so the student could leave at any time um because the student is not prevented from leading leaving then the the law in north carolina does not limit when or under what circumstances
184isolation can be used as long as you meet these following criteria the space that's being used for isolation needs to be appropriately lighted ventilated and heated or cooled and free of objects that could expose the student or others to harm the length of isolation is reasonable in light of the purpose of the isolation and the student is monitored so we want to have somebody close by next slide please here are a couple of examples it's one thing to kind of talk about and use these words but i think it's much easier when we think about how this might come up so leaving a student to calm down in the assistant principal's office for 20 minutes without an adult in the room that would be an example of isolation um that happens um somewhat routinely in
185some schools as you're trying to figure out things that happened and you're um you know if there was a fight at school or so on so you do have students that are in the situation in our schools this is okay as long as the door is unlocked there's at least one adult nearby so the student is capable of leaving that room if they feel they need to another example would be placing a student in a three-sided timeout cubicle within the classroom as a disciplinary measure that would also be okay the cubicle only has three sides therefore the student isn't physically prevented from leaving an adult needs to remain nearby to monitor so those are just a couple of examples of isolation next slide seclusion is also involves a student who is left alone in an
186enclosed space but in this case the student is physically prevented from leaving by locking hardware or other means or is not capable of leaving due to a physical or intellectual capacity next slides so when we're talking about the use of seclusion with special needs students what general statutes tell us is that it can be used if it's outlined in the child's iep the 504 plan or behavior management plan as long as certain conditions are met and a couple of these are the same conditions that we just reviewed for isolation the space needs to be appropriately lighted ventilated and heated heated or cooled it needs to be free of objects that unreasonably expose the students or others to harm the space in which the student is confined has to be approved for statutes by the board
187of education the student is released from seclusion um once the behavior stopped that led to the solution in the first place or as outlined in the student's iep or 504 plan so sometimes the iep will dictate how long his child stays in there it's very rare for that but that could happen so if it's outlined in there you could also follow that and the student needs to be continually monitored by an adult in close proximity who is both able to see and hear the student at all times next slide there are two other permissible uses of seclusion and this isn't specific to our special needs students or students with a disability seclusion can be used as reasonably needed to maintain order or break up a fight or as reasonably needed when a student's behavior poses
188a threat of imminent physical harm or self to uh to sell for others or imminent substantial destruction of school or another person's property so those are all the reasons that are outlined in the statute of when we when it is legally permissible to use seclusion in our schools next slide please there is also reporting and notice requirements that go along well with seclusion next slide now what 115c well this is true for both your regulation that we referenced before 4302 i believe it was as well as north carolina general statute all employees are required to make reports to the principal promptly in the event of any seclusion that exceeds 10 minutes or goes beyond the length of time specified in the student's iep 504 planner behavior intervention plan it's my understanding that per practice your
189district actually requires all seclusions be reported to the principal so that's irregardless of the length of time that it's used next slide parents then are notified by the principal once the principal has either personal knowledge or actual notice that the student was placed in seclusion for longer than 10 minutes or longer than the time in the iep or 504 plan then the the parents get a call the the note the initial notice to the parents is usually occurs in that day if at all possible and it will be verbal it may happen the next day if you're unable to get a hold of the parents in any event after they get verbal notice then a written report gets sent within 30 days again this is required if it's for longer than 10 minutes or is
190longer than the length of time specified in the iep now again um it's my understanding that principles notify parents of every seclusion not just the ones that go beyond 10 minutes and that is all of the overview that i have for you on seclusion but i'm sure you have questions i'm happy to answer any from a legal perspective that you may have missed justice well these aren't new this none of this is new information we've been talking about this for months and months and months i'm not even sure how long at this point you i'm not sure so thank you very much i appreciate this information but this really isn't any new information and the concerns are still there this doesn't really satisfy anything except to say that in this state you can do it
191and in our county you got some rules but that still doesn't change the practice itself and that's what i want to talk about um miss murchison are you able to stay with us as we have our discussion so that we can ask you for your expertise if we get to a place where we might need that absolutely okay thank you yeah but we're we we have this on the agenda for 15 minutes so it shouldn't be too long miss walker yeah um i just want to be clear i know when we asked to have this put on the agenda i don't think we requested the legal right because we've already gone over this i acknowledge him but the thing i think to miss justice's point i mean we're constantly talking about this i think people
192are very very um curious of what our plans are and i know there are districts out there that don't have these rooms i know there's some schools in our district that don't have these rooms and i think i just you know if we're building schools and putting new ones in is that the intention and i understand legally there are you know iep you know ips that have that that in there but at the same time i think you know the discussion should be moved towards what we can do to eventually not have to use them and we can do that i think we can same with the suspension discussion if we can get in a place where we can give resources to teachers and staff where we can figure out ways that we can move
193away from this model of discipline or you know calling it therapeutic i guess that's kind of a stretch but um i don't know that's they're my thoughts i don't know if you have anything to add well it's literally many states ban it many school districts ban it even in this state um and that's what we're talking about getting to and i think we need to do it sooner than later but we do need to have an end date i mean all these wonderful programs that we're seeing and they're stepping up their game but i've been in education for probably 30 years all together things come and they go pbis is probably the one most standard they're doing more refining and making it better now but that's really the point is that this is a practice
194that in my personal opinion from working with children that long it's almost a form of torture it does no therapeutic good i have not seen any therapeutic positives and any data from anyone and it is mainly our ec kids and children of color why are we allowing this without finally taking some kind of action or at least with an end date and that's it and now we're going to be talking about the suspensions later but we need to have an end date on these discussions if we're going to decide to end these practices so that the public knows and then so the schools like they are preparing right now but it shouldn't be a three-year plan none of this to take that long especially after all the training i've seen that the schools have done
195over the years there's got to be a bit and we should be better than this these are our children what are we teaching them especially children that are already at risk because most of them are low income or ec so i that's what i would like to see us make a decision on is an end date and you know miss walker was saying you know you know it's not immediate but we need the public needs to know we need to know uh mr mr nelson mr bullier yeah thank you madam chair i appreciate it um i i definitely understand everybody's concerned with this you know i researched it heavily when i voted for the policy last april and i haven't really seen anything new in terms of new information or some new revelation that says
196we can get rid of the policy if we're not doing this appropriately i mean that's really important but i've yet to see somebody come forward and say we have a policy and you're doing it wrong i've yet to see that and to say that new hanover county schools you know engages in some kind of torture that's just not correct we're not torturing our children we're not almost torturing our children okay that can be an opinion yeah that can be an opinion and i think it's in the back please i think it is an opinion and mine's a professional opinion i've worked with kids small lots of small children for many years in other districts all i'm asking is to change the policy i'm not saying that all of the policies wrong but that part is
197the one we're looking at so just because you say it's policy so it can't be wrong that makes no sense i mean that's never made any sense for any that's why we have policy we have people up here to decide when changing or keeping it you know miss justice um the the counties that you worked in before with small children what are they so i can look them up oh i'm sure you will i will um i'm sorry about that but sometimes i feel like i'm stalked um okay i'm interested in looking up excuse me i've obviously worked here with the small children during county hyde county dare county i have no that wasn't small children but i work with at least three or four counties and they do have most of them do have
198pbis by the way which i have brought up um and you know what i would appreciate that we don't keep putting things off and we stop be nitpicking in details that have nothing to do with what we need to decide here we've had tons of information since this first came up a year ago and if you want to keep kicking the can down the road or pretending this isn't serious to those children that are experiencing it right now um that's your that's your call but i think this and i believe the overwhelming majority i have not heard i've heard one teacher that said well not teacher we had a letter today about somebody a child throwing a stapler at him well that's the assault thing we're talking about we're we're trying there's certain things we
199don't want well that's a suspension but i mean it's all very similar we need to treat children like children and a lot of our children are in such crisis and they need help they don't need to be made worse mr mcmanus did you have your hand up yeah and you need to take your hat off the microphone people can't hear you well that's on purpose um i'm thinking out loud and so i'll probably alienate somebody no matter what we say we alienate somebody unfortunately so if we would vote tonight or next week or the first of april to do away with seclusion and or suspension what's the plan yeah because i feel and i hear from teachers there's no plan and that's not a i'm not throwing that to anyone that for them to stick
200on the wall i'm saying what's the plan because my understanding is part of seclusion that doesn't mean that it's right is to protect kids when they lose control and to protect other kids but obviously anything can be too much or too little so i'm just saying if we're going to do something kind of agree with her let's do it i'm ready to respond uh not this tonight but i do think we need to make it up one of our many priorities but we need to have a plan otherwise we are throwing the staff and i almost asked ms madison because she's got 30 years and somebody in the audience i'd like to ask but i'm not we got to have a plan it's just not gonna all of a sudden work immediately because we say
201so that makes sense so i'm thinking out loud so mr mcmanus would you suggest um putting something like that into our strategic plan so we can we can put the plan together and measure it and actually have hang on please and then is that what you're suggesting i think we need to deal with it before school ends okay thank you um mr wutabor and just uh you know one thing we have to put in this whole plan as we're talking about here is the idea of you know a lot of ieps already have this this as a piece of the of the plan now the parents are part of that team the educators are part of the team the ec teacher is part of that team and so we can't i mean in my humble
202opinion i don't think we can turn around tomorrow and say you know what no more seclusion we need to look at it we need to update those ieps to change those ieps so we can go forth so that's a piece of the whole the whole thing we need to look at okay we have um our we are at our time so do we want to extend the time or do we want to um let miss justice bring us home all right miss walker and then miss justice bring us up we we're already over our time okay no uh just piggybacking off of that like i believe that it's true we need to set a plan we need to set a course for that plan we need to have that plan include supports and services for
203staff because i'm not going to say anything negative about staff i know they're doing a lot of them are doing the best they can but they cannot implement a program without support but also i know i think a component of this should be finding out how how this affects the students because i don't know that that's necessarily part of this um discussion is how do we know if it's not creating more trauma for the children you know as a hiasa's kid i know it um you know we're not we're grown-ups now you know that's that was a long time ago but we're not thinking about it from a child's perspective and i think we need to start doing that so okay okay so miss um walker i mean miss justice um wrap up first okay
204i'll wrap it up uh thank you mr mcmanus for bringing this up because i haven't thought i've also worked for accurate youth alternative which uses restraints human differences i'm sorry whoops eckhart youth alternative effort echoed like the thank you cam thank you you know about them they're excellent and they in order to be working there i was an education director there in order to be working there you've got to be trained it's every three months literally in in restraint safe restraints a psychologically developed too not just physically in order not to do not to traumatize very literally very traumatized children with a lot of ieps and emotional issues um so they can be trained it can be trained i mean there's training there's ways to do it that's the way we should go and i
205didn't never set just to do it tomorrow i've been hearing that from some people like you just want to end it never we got to do this right we're already working on it obviously in the school level and it's that's very helpful but we need an end date and we need if you got a goal then you're going to achieve that goal especially if it's realistic and you've got uh you know lots of information how to implement it properly and that's all i ask and that's all i think everybody else is asking all right well um thank you anybody else but no i'm not gonna do that we're done all right so um next up on our agenda um thank you for all for your your input on that the next step on our agenda
206is um the long-awaited compensation study presentation um from dr barnes would you like to introduce your your guest jim oh jim jen jen i don't know thank you for being with us yes no problem so joining me tonight tonight is mr hank hurd and mr ricky lopes from hill consulting they are the consulting group that conducted this the compensation and classification study so before i ask them to present their findings what i'd like to do is just give you a little heads up a little you know entry way into what they're going to share tonight so most importantly while we have been undergoing a compensation and classification study tonight's presentation will focus primarily on the salary component as as you may be aware or if you aren't um these studies can take you know a
207a long time and it's been a priority of the superintendent of course and under dr barnes's direction to make sure that the first component of this was completed in time for the superintendent's proposed budget so first part tonight is the salary aspect of the study thank you what i want to make aware of make you all aware of is the goals of the study so when we set out to look at what it exactly was that we needed for the group to look at it was important to identify what it was we wanted for them to study and then ultimately what would the recommendations be what was it that we were looking for so compression is a problem that we've identified in our scales and you'll hear tonight that is not unique to new hanover
208county we see this across the state and across the country we were very interested in understanding and looking more closely at the market value of our positions and sort of you know what the going rate is for our classified positions we wanted to ensure that any and all hiring inequities would be um studied and then of course we would look to have any recommendations from our consultants that way we could ensure moving forward we would have compliance so that all of our practices are transparent that we were competitive in this market right here in wilmington as well as across the state making sure that what we're offering is equitable as well as fiscally responsible so as an organization we wanted to make sure that any recommendations that could be made are able to be sustained
209and maintained you responsibly did it sorry thank you um so for the purpose of this study and and the aspect here that we're talking about it was a process um we have been a part of the southwest southeast regional salary study for new hanover county's participation in that you'll hear about tonight as well as some references to the study overall we sought out information from representatives across the division within each department so child nutrition transportation operations really was a comprehensive attempt at really hearing from all of our departments and and understanding where they saw some potential issues not only in the salary schedule but also in job classifications we've provided all of our salary schedules and approved stipend schedules to our consultant group to be able to review over the past six months we've had
210regular check-in meetings with them so we could remain in conversation and communication so that way this study could progress as it is we also selected and identified benchmark districts so we know what our neighbors right here next to us are doing pretty well we keep an eye on things but it's equally as important to make sure that we can benchmark ourselves against district like like us so that may be an enrollment that may be in a division's ability to pay level of support and effort so they'll speak to some of that this evening as well and then of course within the division collaboration between human resources finance and then the consultants that's been ongoing and then tonight we are looking to provide you with an initial report and then we would look to meet back
211again later to share the classification information okay so with that i'll turn the presentation over to mr her to mr lopes good evening madam chairperson board members and dr faust my name is ricky lopes and once again we're with hil consultants and we're going to do a what's usually a long presentation in 15 minutes so i'm going to talk fast i apologize if i talk too fast but um let's see if we can get to the information you need to get in okay there we go okay we've done about uh over worked with over 50 districts in north carolina we've worked with districts in other states also so what have we learned in general from doing these salary studies and one of the things that we've learned is that salary um the policies for salary
212determination are not consistently followed there's various reasons for that one you have a turnover in personnel you may have a policy that's not written could be a different interpretation of policy but we find that to be a major issue as far as determining salaries we also excuse me have issue with step increases in north carolina as you know our budgets are determined by pretty much by the state and so we follow state policy as far as funding for these positions and so over the last 13 years we're going to look at an example before we get finished over the last 13 years there's been very little increase in classified employee salaries you're going to find it's been less than 11 over a 13-year period and so what that means is if the state's not given
213raises that falls down to the local units and in most cases in north carolina that's not a possibility so what we have learned is that the classified employees have kind of been left behind as far as salaries are concerned not just new hanover but we're talking about from in general across the uh across the state um let's see i'm not going to go over every slide once again because of the and so we talked about salary compression that was mentioned just a minute ago salary compression means that a person maybe that starts today is making the same thing as a person that's been here for 10 years so you talk about morale issues you know that's going to that person that's been here 10 years is going to be very upset that they haven't had
214an increase so we're talking about compression that's the general idea job descriptions are often outdated when we do our go through our process we don't actually use the job descriptions we'd like to actually talk to the people job descriptions are not usually updated and so we can find out more talking to folks so you heard already that we've talked to quite a few employees to get the determination of what their their job duties are all about we talk about the market we compare the salaries to the market and the market is not just private enterprise what you're finding now is the market is other governmental entities you're losing employees to other school districts you're losing employees to county you lose employees to the city and once again it gets back to salary issues and because
215ours is dependent on the state sometimes we don't keep pace with what the local salaries are because the state hasn't done their part to fund the the allotments to pay for these classified employees so when we talk about markets sometimes we just think about private enterprise but we need to remember there's also other other governmental entities um living wages that's been a kind of a buzzword the last few years is what's a living wage and we have to remember there's two parts to that discussion one is bringing up the minimum but how about those employees that are already at the minimum or just barely above and i'll just give a quick example next year the state says that the minimum is going to go up to 15 an hour so what if you have an
216employee that's been with you for 10 years and right now they're making 1501 an hour okay where do they go okay so the person that's making 13 or 14 an hour is going to get a significant raise to go to 15 the person is making 1501 question mark and that's the purpose of this salary study is to give you some options to look at as to how we look at all employees not just those that are going up to the minimum to the minimum wage let's look at cost of living for new hanover county and it may be hard to read on the small slide here but it's got north carolina the united states and and new hanover and so if you look at north carolina they're about 90 percent overall of the country's average
217for cost of living but look at new hanover you're almost at this at the national average 98.6 so what that means is your cost of living here overall is about 10 percent higher than the rest of the state go down about four bullets look at housing housing at the state of north carolina is 81 percent of the state average you're at 101.5 so that employee that's making 15 16 an hour is trying to live in new hanover county and it's hard for them to do that on that on that particular wage um as a follow-up the reporter i have a lot more information we're doing this real quick so you'll have some other things that back up what we're saying but we just want to show a couple slides here let's go one slide ricky
218everybody knows about the cost of living in new hanover just look at the paper the price of real estate we all are aware of what's happening there one of the things that we do in our methodology is our on-site interviews is uh interviewing staff classified staff as mr lopes referred to being former school administrators the three cpas that are partners in our firm we've spent our entire career in school districts you've seen our bios so we know when we talk to classified staff or any other staff of the school district exactly kind of what their perspectives are but we interviewed four transportation staff for maintenance child nutrition teacher assistance and support some of the issues that they raised by the way we mentioned earlier we've done 52 of these salary studies just in north carolina
219115 school districts we've done 52 three of them were done in rhesus which are 16 districts together you're familiar obviously with the southeast risa but some of the comments particular to new hanover county schools morale is low because pays low was a comment by a child attrition employee ricky can you go to the next slide just so they can see many classifies employees must work two and three jobs due to the cost of living is so high teacher assistants in particular concerned because they see other employee groups receiving raises and they have been left out to a certain degree and these are comments that we heard here in your district but we've heard in many other districts also turnover among staff changing job expectations and yet salaries do not change due to the compression mr
220lopes mentioned earlier trade areas recently there's a tool allowance they appreciated that compressed salaries are a result of general assembly it's amazing sometimes when we talk to classified staff also they don't understand you know i work for new hanover county schools why am i waiting on the general assembly for raises they don't understand with north carolina's centralized system the state approves the raises you know for the employees and so forth and a lot of employees heard that you know state employees outside of public education have received earlier raises and k-12 were left out so basically uh you know just a lot of confusion about that uh here now we're doing a study in buncombe county and a lot of the comments we received from your employees were very similar to what we received in buncombe
221county with asheville being the city there uh in two districts in in buncombe and nashville however uh cost of living was huge you know the fact that employees were saying we're having to drive in 45 and 50 minutes from outside the district and obviously we talked about that earlier here uh cities and counties or competition here that mr lopes mentioned as well as the private sector so just just a lot of competition for your employees so what do we recommend we recommend that you adopt salary schedules place employees on the correct levels and modify the steps each year even if it's a small amount and you've already done a good job of doing that you're in better shape from a step standpoint than a lot of school systems because it's not as compressed as some
222of the ones that we've seen and so you've got four or five different grades that have compressed steps but for the most part you've been able to maintain the integrity of a 30 step scale so you would be commended for that the recommendations that you're going to be looking at tonight we recommend that if if this is cost prohibitive that you phase them in over a period of time we work with school districts that have done these over a three year period we've worked with some that have been able to do it faster than that but the intention is not for you to take it to do it immediately unless of course you have the resources to do that but we'll look at those numbers in just a second um one of the things that
223we are looking at but you we don't have a recommendation for you tonight is being able to tie in principal salaries and administrative salaries uh typically what we see in school districts is there's no continuity from one to the other and we'd like to see a progression from the principal's position into central services positions so that you can see a tie-in to salaries and we will have that later it's just not part of the report tonight one of the things and i'll just give an example we did a salary study for a district and at that time they implemented the salary study immediately the next year they had new administrative staff and they completely got away from the salary study and started paying people based on who they were again as opposed to the salary
224study so the morale is even lower now than it was before we did the salary study because the employees were excited that they could see where they were going to go but now it's been frozen for a number of years and so we like to see our the recommendations handled with fidelity the employees appreciate that you already post your salary schedules on the web so that's a good thing but whatever recommendation is approved we recommend that there be some type of preliminary training with those that are responsible for working with employees so they understand the salary schedule and explain it to those that they're interviewing or hiring so they understand it but once again you'd be commended forty doing some of the things that we don't see in other districts one of the things that
225you are at a disadvantage of in the handover is that you don't pay a supplement to your classified employees your your salaries are right now compared to other school districts are comparable but as far as the supplement you'll see that and this is based on some of the large systems that you even have some local districts that are smaller than you around you that are paying a supplement but just look at this for a second you see buncombe county pays almost 11 supplement um once again they're a district very similar to you and that they have a asheville being a vacation city so to speak they have a lot of dollars that come into their community from out from outsiders but it goes all the way and then down to two percent as you can
226see in cumberland um so the amount right now isn't as important as the fact that you see that you're if you just paid 15 an hour to your employees because that's what the state's saying is the minimum you'd be behind okay regardless of the cost of living you'd be behind because the other districts are paying the supplement in addition to the 15 an hour here's an example of a person that uh and this is just a hypothetical this is not a real person but a person who was employed by uh we'll just say any school district in the state back in 2008 2009 a classified employee they were making 13 an hour back then okay if we go to 2122 we'll skip the middle bracket if we go to this year after they got a
227two and a half percent increase they'd be making 30 one dollars they'd be making fourteen sixty three an hour so in a thirteen year period they've received less than one percent a year increase okay next year ricky's gonna go work for that school district i'm gonna make fifteen dollars an hour all right this person is going to make 15 an hour that person has been working 13 to 14 years next year we've been working 13 years we're making the same thing okay and so that's just putting into numbers what an example would be of somebody that was going through this situation okay now let's get to the to the summary of the salary schedules i know we're running short of time probably we did three options and we did two variables under one of the
228options but we did three options for that to be considered one is what if you had a 17 minimum and you said wait a second 17 the state's only recommending 15. once again you're not paying a supplement your cost of living is higher here and the people that you're competing with around you are going to be paying at least the 15 an hour a new hanover for you to be able to get that employee it's going to cost more than 15 an hour okay so then we said what if he did 16 an hour and our two examples under 16 are going to have two variables under that and the 15 which we would not recommend in your situation the 15 is just the minimum that's the amount you have to do that anyway the
22915 a minimum the compression issue is separate but the minimum will be fifteen dollars an hour beginning on july one so what if we do a fifteen dollar minimum with a one percent step and what that means is each year of experience that person will get a one percent increase that would cost the district roughly six and a half million dollars and thanks to the finance staff here they were able to work out these numbers on short notice based on the current payroll information um the sixteen dollars we did two variables and i'll explain why in just a second but a one percent step would cost ten million dollars okay two percent we call 17 million and the two percent over a thirty year period a two percent step increase is roughly about a 66
23068 difference between the minimum and the maximum of that particular job and that's typically what you see in in the marketplace as a matter of fact i went to the uh the new hanover county website and their minimums and maximums have about a sixty to seventy percent difference in each of their grades and so their beginning salary is about fifteen thirty right now fifty dollars and thirty six so that third option is very close to what the county is doing and these numbers can be tweaked once you based on what you want to recommend but that's very similar to what you already see in new hanover county just not necessarily with the school system the fourth bullet is what if you went to seventeen dollars an hour and seventeen dollars an hour with one percent
231step would be 14 million and one quick uh explanation of this a a grade determines the job classification from a hierarchical standpoint this job is paying more than than x y and z a step values the experience okay so the lower lower percentage you use for the step the less value you're paying for the experience for that position and that's when you see employees leaving because they can go somewhere else where they may be giving a bigger step differential for that experience and so we like to see ones about the lowest amount that we would use for a step we like to see anywhere up to two two and a half percent two and a half is very hard to fund but really higher than one but somewhere between one and two is what we'd
232like to see for a step differential so those are the four options that are on the table as far as our draft report is concerned um at this time and did i stay within 15 minutes just a tad but only by five um so anybody want to i have a couple questions but if somebody wants to go first um mr boyer yeah thank you i think uh you know mr man it's mentioned as being adversarial i don't think anybody disagrees that you know we need to find a way to compensate our classified employees effectively i think that's really important i'd encourage every board member to reach out to their state delegations as well state stakeholders county um again you know nurture those relationships because it's really important my question for you would be is there
233any difference between let's say our bus drivers our cafeteria staff our janitorial staff our teachers assistants is there a group that's really low paid or that stood out to you as being worse off in terms of a compensation comparison say with another county from a comparison standpoint we're not saying that any one group is overpaid or paid too much but what we're seeing statewide is that your trade areas your hvac your electricians your carpenters your plumbers uh your mechanics and the bus those are being pulled away by private industry because the way because the economy is booming and so they have other options to go to that will pay substantially more than what they can make with the school system so usually what we found out through our discussions with the employees is they're here
234because they want to be here they know they can make more money but they also don't have to work on the weekends and so forth but we think those are the groups that are probably the the furthest away from from the market thank you and bus drivers also i'm cbl licensed yes they're whenever you're close to a municipality the demand is so huge for a cdl license and school boards are saying across the state we're a training ground you know we're paying to train them to get the license and the next thing you know they're gone you know on the way in today i went circle back through carolina beach on the way in and i was looking at some signs from bojangles of different restaurants so fast food paying 17 to 19 recently in
235the news it was in the news that target now is is increased to 24 an hour so you know it's it's a crisis level that we're at in school districts across the state and flipping back to when we interviewed classified staff in the old days you know in prior years uh pensions were huge and a lot of employees that your employees have had 18 19 years say well i'm here because of the pension but then we interviewed some of the younger ones that have started and they talk about the health insurance that they have with the state of north carolina how how good the health insurance is however in order to have family coverage is close to 700 a month if you have a family and what they're saying is we don't clear enough money
236at the end of the month for our paychecks in order to you know feed our families so it's kind of a revolving cycle you want to have the benefit pieces there but it the pay has just been compressed for so many years mr motorboard thank you madam chair um mr boyer i would agree that we believe at least we found something we can all agree on so i think that's a good thing um but my question to you is you know you had mentioned that a lot of the other districts give a supplement why is it that you're not proposing a supplement versus the you know the salary scales here you can do it one of two ways for instance some districts will have a lower uh may have a lower salary that goes with
237their supplement but beginning july 1 everybody's going to be at a minimum of 15. right right now you could have a district that has a minimum of 14. another one may be 13 and so the supplement is hard to compare apples and apples we'll have a beginning point july 1 where we can say if i'm given 15 and a 10 supplement then i'm doing better than the district that's at 15 with no supplements that's a good question but so typically folks have used a supplement in lieu of a salary increase even though it's all the same from an employee standpoint they like to think of the supplement as being a bonus that they may get once or twice a year gotcha okay mr lopes pointed out on the chart earlier buncombe county as he pointed
238out being in in the asheville area they you know theirs is ten percent right at that amount and this is that it's not by accident they're doing that they're just you know trying to help retention and recruitment yeah did um i i know i just attended the um the housing panel last week and housing prices have gone ridiculously crazy all over the state i don't know about the country but wilmington is getting particularly hit hard do you see any trends where this what you've come up with number wise is going to just get higher and higher over the next couple years or we were talking at dinner before we came in and just in the last two years what we've seen in house prices prices just in our home territories let alone what's happening in
239wilmington and so i don't know when it's going to end but we haven't seen it go down right and and so it doesn't like it's going to get better any time soon we we looked at house prices we also looked at rent we didn't put that on this chart for lack of time but we also look what it costs to rent a one bedroom two bedroom three bedroom and wilmington the wilmington new hanover was about area was about 20 percent higher than the state average so whether you're renting or buying it's more expensive to live here than it is in most parts of the state once again you'd be comfortable in asheville we had some of the same issues up there but for the most part across the state wilmington is going to be a
240higher place to live the other thing not only housing the cost of living i filled up with gas on the way in it was 86 i mean we all do that on a daily basis the cost of living is astronomical now the most it's been in 40 years so the time is crucial to look at you know the compensation study that you're going to have now a lot of districts one when you start looking at these numbers that mr lopes has presented that your staff worked up well a lot of school boards have tried to work with county commissioners to develop a multi-year funding model where for example suppose you look at the six and a half million dollars you know as employees look at this study once we finish it in the next two
241to three weeks and have it for your for your examination and review as you look at that well if a pool pool of funds is set aside then the board would decide if the question came up earlier are we looking at tas bus drivers what particular classifications and you develop a strategy of multi-year funding to try to alleviate some of the inequities because you know a lot of people are thinking that the general assembly is approving fifteen dollars well the funding there is going to be tied to state state positions only if that a lot of times the state has not even funded what they have increased so the point is you know developing a plan once you see the study a multi-year funding model would be huge and kind of what the goal of
242the study would be just a real follow-up do you see the trends of how districts are being able to pay for that because i know you know the state stops at a certain level and those local supplements are coming into it we had a little bit of coveted funding which we've really had a chance to utilize for this particular purpose because the argument is it's temporary funding i mean is there a strategies that you know asheville perhaps are doing that that helps unfortunately every district is on their own because like hank just mentioned there's a good chance that you're not going to get enough state funding even to cover the state employees and so the burden once again falls from the state down to the local level but you're the ones that take the hit
243because the employees work in in your county but because the money's not flowing proportionately you're having to pick up that extra burden but they're really there's this the districts that we're working with are going through the same thing you're going through we gave them some options we gave them some numbers now they're going to their boards who will then go to the commissioners to try to get the additional money because the compression we can't uh say say that enough for 13 years basically the state and classified employees have received minimal increases so to try to catch up 13 years in one year is expensive whether it's new hand over any other county to try to rectify that in third in one year is very expensive so with your recommendation of the minimum 15 with the
244one step increase how does that how is that how is compression addressed in that because if we were to move everybody up then we would still be stuck with the compression issue right what happened well what happens is if you move that lowest paid position up to 15 the one that's that was 1505 now may be 1550. so what you have is is the domino effect and so the domino effect is what makes it a little bit more expensive but each of these proposals does have a separate dollar amount for each step gotcha but the only problem the only issue is by being only one percent over a period of time it may not value that experienced employee as much as they can get if they go somewhere else with that same experience gotcha okay
245mr mcmanus um it's been recommended for a lot of people that and misunderstood that the esser funds which have we have two more years in the essence funds did that go into any of your planning and i'll finish my stay but because basically esther funds can't be used for a raise for state employees it can be used for bonus money but as if i've tried to explain earlier that doesn't go towards your retirement so if we're going to do it and do it right then we've got to be able to work with our county commissioners and we must have a salary schedule and i believe i heard the gentleman say that 15 you didn't want to go there not even think about that we should go to at least 17. i think i heard 17.50
246but that we go that so there's part of the retirement package and so if we're going to do it i think we all agree we need to do it right now that's going to be a budget for us and that's difficult because what percent of our funds come from the county commissioners 88 about 88 million yeah 88 million come of my county commissioners so we could never absorb that if they backed up or refused to increase that so that if they don't if they're going to have to join with us i really believe when it's all said and done they will because it's all for our staff and our students but we're not in this by ourselves right we don't have those resources and the state you know is pretty well margin the two and
247a half percent if people put the computer to it that's 30 cents an hour for some people um we've seen a lot of counties that are that have a plan already in place they've not been frozen since 08. you know a lot of salaries have been out counties and cities have been able to develop their own structure so you know unless you go to a number close to 17 it's not going to alleviate you're losing staff and if we use extra funds which can only be used as bonuses if i'm still reasonably understanding then those who get a state raise that goes toward their retirement right the extra funds do not of course you don't have to pay your contribution as well with the extra funds but we would not recommend esther so am i
248correct i apologize for you you would recommend we go with 17 immediately at least 16. somewhere at least 16 and and the esther funds are federal funds that run out in september of 24 so it's not sustainable so you wouldn't want to consider that to fund this anyway you could you could give still give a bonus if you wanted to but as far as determining those funds as being available to implement this plan we would not recommend that i want us to play your recording to every single person because they need to understand that it's not us that do not want to do this but we understand the limitations in doing it and for us to do it and do it right we've got to do our budget and we've got to have help with
249the county commissioners all right thank you very much one last i mean just real quickly and just so i understand which what are you recommending is the 16 [Music] what would your recommendation be if you if you had a funding source that was sustainable we would recommend the 16 with the two with 16 okay but once again each is different and that's something that you'll have to you know work out locally and and once again we need to remember the state is your biggest issue you know the yes we want to go work with the county commissioners but by the state not funding the allotments the way they should have the last 13 years that's put all of us in the same predicament so don't forget to include them in your in your issues that's
250right yeah the the second option we would recommend would be the 17 with the one [Music] is much much more sustainable from a funding perspective well with president inflation that's not even in the ball game that's right just something to keep in mind it's also that if we're talking specifically about teacher assistants several the majority of teacher assistants are in the federal budget and so federal is only going to give you what federal is going to give you and that's not extra funds that's the federal budget so three pockets federal state and local so in the federal if you go up then we have to increase federal which means that we take away from student dollars for classrooms and whatever so we have to really really consider and look at it on a continuum so
251creating a plan of i also have to say years because we've got to figure out how if if 16 is the the magic number with two steps we have to look at the federal budget to see how much that's going to impact the salary versus what we put into the classrooms okay thank you gentlemen so much for this is very informative and we got a lot to process we appreciate your time and we welcome you back thank you jen and dr barnes yes amazing work thank you we know we do thank you for acknowledging them okay folks um next up on our agenda is closed session um do i hear a motion to go into closed session pursuant to the information up on the board um mr wildebore is there a second okay okay second
252by everyone um all in favor all right any opposed okay we are in closed session oh we knew okay we're in the home stretch we have about an hour's worth of stuff left to go so we will work through that um do i call the meeting back into open session okay no all right all right well we're back for open session so here we go um next up on our agenda is the superintendent's report dr faust oh i'm sorry i'm i'm skipping ahead i'm trying to knock down that hour yeah i'm so approval of the minutes do i hear a motion to approve the minutes so moved second um any discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay great minutes are approved um next dr faust superintendent's report good afternoon good evening um
253just a point of clarification we do have an mou for our fingerprinting machine and it is at the sheriff's office and so the sheriff's office is working through everything so fingerprinting um fingerprinting machine is all the sheriff's office um dunkapalooza i was honored and a little nervous to be honest with this baby murray middle school's duckapalooza their goal was 2500 and they ended up raising over three thousand dollars for new hanover county special olympics roland greiz black history bowl new hanover county schools held its second annual black history quiz bowl on friday february 25th seven of our middle schools participated and rolling brice middle school was the victor congratulations to the winning team we look forward to bringing them for board recognition next month advisory committees i met with both student and classified advisory committees
254and we meet with teachers next week the conversations feedback and ideas are invaluable and we continue to improve how we distribute the information from those meetings to those groups cfces or college for all brilliant pathways at the high school level and i'm excited about the progress we're making for college and career readiness through our partnerships with the non-profit organization brilliant pathways establish newly established opportunities and partnerships include no-call summer programs at west point and uncw and pipeline programs to north carolina central university and cape fear community college aimed to help students who began a two-year path complete a four-year degree budget season and finally as you know we are at our highest peak for the budget season and i look forward to presenting the superintendent's budget in an upcoming meeting students have been and will
255continue to be the focus of our efforts and resources and this will be reflected in everything that the strategic plan and our budget priorities this concludes my report apparently somebody can't hear out there it is yes it is i'm sorry i think okay thank you okay next up on is the board chairs report so um it is my desire and my hope that the board shares um to collaborate in creating strong agendas but not lengthy ones for all of our meetings that is why the board vice chair and one other board member attends each agenda review to provide input and guidance on topics and placement of topics on the agenda next talking about meetings beginning april 1st all board and district committee meetings will return to in-person only the district will continue to live stream
256and post our regular interim and special board meetings to youtube those interested in attending committee meetings or other board meetings will need to do so in person this is in alignment with other new hanover county governmental agencies there will be no interim meetings in march and april in march we will have a one of our first participation meetings the format is still being finalized in april we will have a budget work session i also too was invited to participate in dunkapalooza and it was a little chilly um i enjoyed my time with dr faust um mr smith um and principal justin fischetti where they dumped ice cold buckets uh five gallons you know on our heads luckily it was warm outside um i also want to thank the the the number of schools that have
257invited me and i'm sure other board members um to their read across america events there's nothing more fun than putting on my dr seuss hat and reading to the elementary school kids um and then showing up with the principals you know with the hat one um also too i'm looking forward to the community celebration with new hanover high school where they're putting 100th anniversary plaque on their school on wednesday march the 9th so the strategic plan update i just wanted to kind of wrap that in i was hoping to get a chance to say something before we talked but as you know the the board and the superintendent are working together to create a strategic plan that will establish a set of priorities for the school district we're using our priorities to create goals for
258the budget and to ensure adequate services are available to our students and staff in a timely and methodical manner neither the board nor the superintendent can do this work alone the board clearly defines a vision for the district while leaving room for the administration to use its judgment in selecting an approach to implementing administrative procedures and education programs the board sets policies establishes priorities and evaluates outcomes and the superintendent leads the district's daily operations and school activities the superintendent ensures sufficient information and insight is provided to the board to make informed decisions and to evaluate the results of those decisions i am looking forward to as i'm sure my other board the fellow board members are looking forward to as well adopting a strategic plan very soon and using the information in it to plan
259its governance over the coming months and years so that concludes my report next on the agenda is consensus items do i hear a motion to approve consensus items mr bullier is there a second second miss adams any discussion all in favor say aye any opposed okay that passes um next on our oh wait a minute no we're good sorry next on our agenda is old business policies for second reading do i hear a motion to accept the policies for second reading mr mr boyer is there a second second mr wildeboar is there any discussion okay all in favor say aye any opposed nay okay we've passed that seven to zero next up the state required vote regarding masks in the schools before we take that vote i need to read a statement effective february 25th
2602022 the cdc is exercising its enforcement discretion to not require that people wear masks on buses or vans operated by public or private school systems including early care and education child care programs the cdc is making this change to align with updated guidance that no longer recommends universal indoor masking in k through 12 and early education settings in areas with a low or medium covered 19 community level so is there a motion about masks i moved here i moved that we continue our optional masking uh now and and additionally add the buses as options and the the early childhood thank you um is there any discussion could we wait and take as far as the buses go until a day after tomorrow so we won't have the confusion in the morning with the kids and
261the bus drivers and everything else give them one day you mean for the bus for the buses i'd like to admit it that just the day after tomorrow because apparently that can cause lots and it would not apparently it will so for some people so this [Music] will go into effect on um march the third thursday march the 3rd um and so we are we're still continuing the mask optional everywhere else and you want march the third for the buses and the early childhood centers sure yes that's okay i guess that's an amendment i guess i should amend it um mr wildeboard would you like to amend them amend your own notion so we don't have to do two votes effective for the buses in the early childhood effective thursday morning all right is there
262a second second okay um any more discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay that passes seven to zero next up on the agenda is um facility dogs uh miss walker i think that was a i think we still have to vote that was voting for the amendment and now we have to is that right change so we're good thank you okay um facility dogs um miss walker and miss john i'm not sure who bro oh you did miss walker brought forward yeah well yeah we all added as well i just you know i've had a lot of stuff sitting in our packets i've read a lot i've discussed a lot i've researched a lot and i i you know i've come to the conclusion that i cannot find any other reason and
263actually just had a discussion on colin earlier about the fact that you guys are working it out julie's not here to talk about and that's okay but you know i just wanted to reiterate that this was a board decision back about five years ago seven to zero decision to do this program and i feel like the the uh the teacher that runs this ran this program he has um an impeccable record he's got a good reputation and i feel like there's nothing that he has done and i just wanted to say that out loud that had caused this program to be done away with and i also believe that it is you know if the board has to take a vote again i think we should do that in order to just say let's get
264this program back back in gear and go in i don't i i think the sticking point was the employee couldn't be the handler but we've since found out that that's not an insurance issue and not a legal issue so i don't i don't know why we want to mess with a program that has done really well and never had issues before that and is clearly needed in our schools especially the mental health issues that the kids are having at the moment and i would love to see it expand further but i mean i would like to just go ahead and start with this particular program with this particular person if that's what it takes to get it back in in this swing so help me understand you said that we have worked out that it's
265not an insurance issue the i'm not certain that when did that change i don't think it was an issue i mean at all from what i read i've got the list here it was our when you told us before if you said that the insurance was um recommended that we did not have a the um the handler be a school system employee so i don't know if that's the case i don't think so there were a list of requirements the insurance company wanted to be met and so that's going to be those are all going to be included in mou but i don't think the insurance company was objecting okay so we're waiting for the mou and it's my understanding that the mou is um is that ms barnum has reached out to pause for
266people and it did say that it said that once an mlu is in place and the meeting requirements of the district and its insurance carrier will be able to move forward with the program okay all right so we're waiting for the mou yep okay clarification yeah um [Music] the difference between a facility dog and a therapy dog right because the thing we received the pack in our package was talking about actually a therapy dog that would have an outside handler not a facility dog from my understanding you might in miss walker tell me if i'm wrong but a facility dog would have a a employee handler correct mm-hmm and that's the whole point of a facility county schools employ him yes and that's all right that is the mlu that would be presented to the
267board would be for facility animals as you've described okay thank you i just want to clarify there won't be any other issues right with the handler being the employee because i feel like that's been a sticking point that we want to clear here right now if it needs a vote though yeah and that's the reason last time i got so excited about the whole idea i had no idea that that was going to be and i know that you didn't intentionally put but that was my understanding that that wouldn't have been a problem because that's what a facility dog is you can't have a facility dog unless one of the people in the facility is working with the dog so you know why is this so loud yeah so i i think probably what happened
268to is some people got confused with some of the media presentation but they weren't clear on facility versus therapy and service dogs so that was reported incorrectly um mr boyle yeah i just want to echo my support for the program and i do appreciate our administration putting together a working mou with pause for people and it is it's a wonderful program that's just really important that we cover our bases and we make sure that you know when we bring these animals into our facilities that we're doing so with you know under the guidance of the law and making sure that everything is is all covered and eyes dotted t is crossed yeah and yeah i don't think any there's ever been an issue that nobody wants it it's just a matter of how we get
269it done so we'll wait to see until the mou comes back and then that will be put on the agenda okay there's a timeline on that i'm not sure i know that there's been active communication between administration and pause for people we're working towards people ready to get palmer back in the game okay um yeah and i want to say this i mean this was traumatic for a lot of the kids i have no idea where this idea came to remove the dog but in the future whoever made that decision please be more proactive and think about the effect it's going to have on the kids they're no longer here i'm not sure whose it was but it started with the interim superintendent all right so we don't have to go back and see who
270did it we're not good no i just want to make sure i always put the kids first okay um so we removed the um that policy so next up is policies for first reading thank you madam chair um the policies you see before you are for first reading i do know mr wildebore wanted to discuss policy 7520 family and medical weave uh these are only for information but if there are no objections mr worldwar yeah it was actually 72.62 i'm sorry i apologize and i just would like to look at having more than one uh avenue of information uh this kind of as i read it anyway in my humble opinion it lends us to the health department being the sole uh place to get information uh with the cdc being the backup on that
271and uh i have actually had a conversation with the director of the the health department and he's you know because i was asking for four straight months uh information about masking or assuming that the sickness at the hospital for certain age groups and he said you know i'll be honest i can't you know i have no authority over them so i'm not saying we shouldn't use the health with all due respect to the health department i'm not saying they shouldn't be an avenue of information but i think we need to get someone that has a medical degree that actually uh gets nothing against the health of you know the health department but he does not have a medical degree and we're leaning heavily on his opinions so i think we do need to have some
272kind of a maybe a panel much as we do you know we pay for an attorney to get legal advice i think we need to go to a medical doctor or a team of medical doctors to get medical advice not a person with a health degree i actually have a health degree um and i wouldn't go to me for any kind of information like that so um i just you know i know what are you recommending do you want to pull this policy and send it back to policy or what i would like to yes yes i would okay we'll do that um miss billy will you make a note so we can get that to um miss joy okay anything else all right so those we just um move on the next section is
273um consideration for change order to the cmar agreement for brogdon hall gymnasium for replacement mr anderson you can do it from your chair or you can thank you madam chair come up i uh i'm pleased to present tonight a change order uh to the construction management at risk contract for brogdon hall gymnasium floor replacement this change order will establish the guaranteed maximum price for the project at two million five hundred and one thousand three hundred and thirty five dollars and fifty two cents so by approving this uh we are on schedule the work is proceeding uh this will authorize uh wm jordan company to proceed with the full scope of work uh currently underway and it will be completed in august of 2022. does anybody have any questions further questions for mr anderson recommend for
274approval madam chair okay okay multiple seconds all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay that's 7-0 thank you very much next up is the topic of middle school wrestling we have with us our district athletic director kelly lewis good evening dr faust madam chairman vice chair rest of the school board members uh thank you for having me here tonight uh just a little i was asked about what middle school resident would kind of look like for new hanover county schools so i immediately put together with the middle school ads and we came up with some items to bring before you and then i have a recommendation of what it would be currently our middle schools we're at 13 sports with the recent addition of cross country and lacrosse for both our boys and girls
275team funding for all 13 of these sports is stretched very thin if not pretty almost underfunded and if you didn't know new hanover county schools we have more middle school sports than any of the counties that surround us we have more than wake county guilford county and we have the same number of middle school sports as charlotte mecklenburg but none of those school systems even offer lacrosse and cross country and from the other research at brunswick county maybe has middle school wrestling because i talked to a school today and they are having a hard time finding coaches so they ended up having middle schools that weren't able to have a team this year because they weren't able to find anyone to coach the team there would be a very large one-time cost two for two
276things the wrestling match wrestling match are going for about 12.99 a square foot so you're going to go from 12 to 20 000 to purchase wrestling mat the only middle school that i know of that has a hoist is murray and so then we have to have a place to store the mats so if we're going to put hoist in our schools that's going to increase thousands of dollars to add our hoist most of our middle schools just don't have simply any storage where you can roll up the mats that takes a lot of space to store the mats now on the regular coming out of their budget there's the purchase of uniforms the mac cleaner the matte tape the cost of officials the cost of securing buses for transportation that's going to be a
277yearly cost to middle school wrestling and a big concern as i mentioned brunswick county was not able to have wrestling because they couldn't find a coach and if we're going to talk about middle school most would be entry-level wrestlers we're going to need qualified wrestling coaches that can conduct these practices safe and sound and teach the fundamentals and i think that you know and and the middle school ads were quite concerned about finding a coach that would be able to coach the wrestling um where to put middle school wrestling uh right now if we had to do it it would have to go into the fall because with our middle schools we have the extra season so our volleyball teams are getting ready to start typically in our high schools our gyms are now done
278because basketball's over but in our middle schools we still have another sport that's going to be in the gym so then you think about putting wrestling in the fall well if you put wrestling in the fall then you're going to take away a lot of participation because a lot of the wrestlers are going to be football players so then you're going to lose participation not to mention the fact that middle school wrestling has 18 weight classes from 76 pounds all the way to heavyweight 285. i don't know where you get 76 i don't think i ever weighed 76 pounds in junior high school so but they have 18 weight classes where our high schools only have 14 weight classes so if you put it in the fall you're going to lose some interest we move
279it to the spring we have to move volleyball well then i would have concerned that some of our female athletes we lose participation in softball and cross country so it's kind of hard where we were going to put where we would put wrestling into the middle school schedule the interest level is another concern if you're going to bring it on and only maybe three schools i know trash would probably have some interest as you know i came from ashley and so we had i think murray there'd be some interest but there wasn't enough i talked to the murray a.d there wouldn't be enough interest i think trask obviously with laney's success and the success we've had with wrestling without having middle school wrestling shows tonight with what we celebrated with laney so we're being successful
280we're being competitive with wrestling as it relates to our high schools now the budgets like we said it would have to be a significant increase in the budgets the athletic budgets if we were going to sustain wrestling on a regular basis you know i'm probably of you know i've been in athletics all my life i'm a huge amateur wrestling fan i was able to travel to pinecrest to watch laney but i mean i and talking to the ads you know they're full-time teachers they don't get extra time like our high school ads and if we added a 14th sport you know i'm afraid that you know some of them are going to think about maybe not being an aed anymore that's a lot to manage plus you have to find more game workers that's more
281game workers that we have to find as well so i am more inclined to try to work with the high school the high school coaches that have an interest and see if we can generate some type of where they can come to the high schools because that is within the north carolina high school athletic association our eighth graders can go to our high schools to work out in the off season i need to check on the sixth and seventh graders but i know our high schoolers can do it they just can't work with our current high school athletes so we could find an alternative where we have the most interest but as a whole for all seven i would i would not recommend bringing a 14th sport middle school wrestling into the mix right all
282right now anybody have any questions um mr world of war of course of course yeah well um mr lewis um i actually used to be the athletic director at uh trash middle school for many years i also brought uh wrestling there so um anytime we can do anything for our kids to give them and as we heard tonight it's a male and female sport now mm-hmm so i mean i we we had we we found places at trask we had in the back hallway we had the mats we usually you know you wouldn't have to do i disagree with some of the things you said because we could use some of the same masks that like laney has they discard some of their mats we could use them there's a huge number of kids that
283um that are you know at these gyms doing it because we don't provide it for them so i mean i think that we could definitely even if we started with one or two schools and then build it and build it then you know maybe go over to brunswick county and wrestle against them but i mean i think i think there's a huge number of people and i know the athletic directors they didn't i didn't have 14 sports when i was the athletic director at trask but i had a lot and yes it is a lot of running around and you're coaching yourself i totally understand that but i think we you know there's a lot of folks that would support it laney high school other other schools that would actually you know give their i.t
284to to start a middle school wrestling program so i mean i think we should do anything we can to keep kids in school and motivated to be at school and um so i totally understand well that anything we can is going to involve funding i mean you know you dr fowles tells me what to do i'm gonna do it it's just that simple um but the money i mean there just has to be a lot of fun and especially the one-time cost for the mats and the hoyts murray has an ashley matt it's down there at murray right now so i know there's a match that we could have at some schools and just just a follow-up question everybody gets a journal thank you sorry mr william yeah thank you madam chair you know if
285i could have one wish it would be to grant wishes i would love to be a genie and to tell everybody that this could work and this is a perfect idea and i think if you have a year or two or three you know maybe you can do something here but i got to be honest i won't support adding a single sport to middle school until we can properly compensate our ads it has become almost a full-time job these guys are there i mean almost every night locking up the schools and we're always talking about all we're putting on them and then we're just like well let's put a little more on them that's fine i mean you know and then that's big and i have to support the aeds that i'm representing and also
286all seven of them were like where how how can i do this yeah i mean and you know if you look across the state compensation wise for these ads um we're low and you know it's not a huge lift to get to where it's competitive with other counties and you know with the budget coming i certainly hope we can find a way to do that rather than put more money into another sport mr adams i have a question and a comment um the question is you mentioned that we have 13 sports currently in middle school which is a lot more than our neighboring counties who would they compete against first off is my question and then my comment would be is it possible just to do an interest survey i know that you've talked to
287the ads at the middle schools could we do an interest survey with students just to get some raw data just a one question if wrestling were offered in the middle school would you like to participate absolutely so that would be the issue who would they compete against because if we have our seven middle schools and say trask and maybe two others well we have three schools and then brunswick is fading talking to brunswick it seems like they're fading so then you're you know not that you couldn't not that it's not good you'd wrestle the same people over and over again there's nothing wrong with that it gives them mat time it gets them better but you know that maybe could work by creating a club type atmosphere and let the high school coaches the ones
288who are going to be receiving these children let the high school coaches coach them so then we know that they're getting coached appropriately and the fundamentals are being taught because another another major concern would be finding coaches to coach our middle school wrestlers um miss justice well what he he said is that thank you sorry no please dude i'm serious so i take it you're not for it um no he said no i am i cannot recommend it at this time being for it is is totally different because i'm all about all of our student athletes participating as many things very well from from the input you foresee from all the coaches and the staff and sellers the funding and the staff and right being a high school principal for many many many years there's
289nothing better than a good feeder program but our priorities once again we don't need to overload anyone else right now no matter how much we want to do it i think that's two and one or one and two you know we've got a budget to work out and i'm convinced that the compensation plan that we heard tonight and that we need to discuss must be our first priority before we do anything else i like your idea and thanks for doing that about the club i actually started club soccer and hogging girls because nobody would approve it and then it became a sport the next year but that would show the interest right yes sir and if that interest is there then we can reevaluate that next year so i think that's a great but right
290now i just think we don't need to take on anything else because budget's going to be our priority and this compensation i hope is our first priority or at least one of our top two miss justices no thank you mr mcmanus i think these are good ideas i'm hearing good ideas here a survey be good idea having the coaches uh you know a club that's a very good idea and another thing um is community interest one of the things i brought it for and i brought it forward in the past because people reached out to me so and the first time i think it's been three years since we had talked about having middle school wrestling when it was proposed the first time there was all these wonderful ideas coming out of the community about
291how to get the mats and they're you know without you know even costing money so maybe if we started this process this way with the survey and with the club idea then maybe we can get more community input and find out if we should eventually implement it or not or just leave it at the club level if there's enough interest but you know this is a good starting point so that the community can give the feedback because it's obviously interest obviously yes ma'am okay um miss adams i mean looking right at you mr i like your idea a lot i think showing the interest working maybe a little bit with the high schools i mean in a way like say club soccer to club wrestling to see what the interest but also show that the
292kids coming up through to the high school level really are serious and want to do it maybe i don't know how you would suggest to do that maybe you can write something up or let us know or absolutely yeah i would love to hear your ideas that's a great idea okay so i'm hearing that we need to um that everybody has an interest if you and gave you some ideas and can we just you know ask him to do that when in his spare time yeah for clarity that's what i'm trying to figure out for clarity what we're actually getting i don't know we're asking for an interest survey to see if the interest is there um that seems like the first place but then but then you know if the interest is there then
293we got to talk about funding can we also ask for an interest survey of anybody who's willing to coach it yes ask the coaches and then we're still going to have to pay a club advisor a stipend because that's what we do at our schools right now that's another expense but before we do that can we see if we can because i would hate to get kids excited and then you can't find anyone to to do it so i think we might want to survey the adults to see if there's anyone who can include the high school yeah yeah i would include yes because our high school coaches they're going to know who our community coaches may be i like this idea of going to the high school yeah right now yeah let's go one
294at the time please well i'm just agreeing with all of them uh yeah starting off at the high school and seeing about the coaches there if they would be interested in doing that before you put out a general i guess i'll call to the middle school coaches wouldn't that make sense then do the interest right so yeah we're kind of like way over so um mr lewis why don't you work with dr faust and um and is it ms barnum you know his yes whoever you the doctor could also help you you guys put together a plan we do have the um athletics audit you know coming up so that some of that information may play in as well but thank you so much for your time and for hanging around here until oh dark
29530. right thank you appreciate you okay um so next up on our agenda is employee sick leave policy miss justice had brought that forward and just said discuss and vote on instituting a special sick day designation and funding for those staff who are diagnosed with covid or their family members well what is being done now is it just a regular and that was that was the question uh is it just a regular sick day um because i've had a lot of people say that they're having trouble because of the quarantines i know i know things are progressing and it's getting better but there have been problems and we probably should have addressed this earlier or maybe we didn't need to could you give us an update of how that works uh mr barnes or you
296can come up in front whatever you whatever's good i'm comfortable with can you guys hear me okay yeah we can okay so i'm gonna have to give you just a brief history lesson so about a year and a half ago or so the state had instituted something called the family's first corona vita coronavirus relief act and that provided paid leave in some form or another for individual quarantining for quarantining of your family member or for sickly child care leave if your daycare got closer things like that so that ended last march since then we have still instituted and offered what's called contagious disease leave which covers an employee if they are personally sick with covid or if they are quarantined by the health department without having a deduction to their sick leave the only caveat
297is if they are still sick past the quarantine period at then point their sick leave will then kick in after that um the only stipulations with that are you have to be a benefit earning employee to receive the contagious as easily which means you have to work 20 hours a day 20 hours a week sorry that's just tuesday 20 hours a week or more so we do offer contagious disease leave but it is no longer extended to your family members that would be normal sick leave and i don't believe that that would have been an issue i was just asking about the employees leaving i i guess it's the benefit ones that some people have been commuting i had been communicating about that they weren't employed with benefits i'm not sure if it's temporary or
298what was going on but they they didn't have the the sickly for the covet funds that you're providing for people with covet also there was one other thing you said you said that after you're done with your quarantine and you're still sick how does that make sense i'm a little confused about that well the health department may quarantine you for a period of time because you've contracted covac but then your illness may range longer than what your quarantine period may be your recovery period may be longer if i am have a pre-existing condition that makes me prone to this i may be sick for 20 days my quarantine may only be for 10. that might be the one that the the that and the benefit one of the ones that people have been contacting us
299i don't think i'm the only one that's heard about it does anybody else have any concerns about this i know that i've not heard one thing and as always we would encourage folks to call us if they have questions or concerns well that's what i yeah that's a quarantine now five or ten none right it uh it was ten and it went down to five i believe yeah well this is good information by the way so i can pass it on so i would say first call you okay thank you here to help thank you dr barnes we appreciate your time um all right so next on the agenda is suspensions for four five and six year olds and let's see here so judy um discuss and vote on ending suspensions for four five and
300six-year-olds except in the cases involving drug use weapons or acts of violence to themselves and others um miss walker indicated at the agenda review that maybe not vote now but just talk about a plan so who wants to lead okay okay i would like to actually vote now for a start date this is two been going on this has been going on longer i think than the other issue and if at least we have a start date and i know that they are working with the plc pbis but if you have a goal and you can reach it and the suspensions are so varied according to the different schools i i mean i can pull them out and start reading them again i i think miss brown had already said it when she was at
301the podium but the point is that we can't wait three years which is what some people want to do we need to do it i think at the beginning of next september that would be more than enough time for those high numbers schools to uh and most of them i think all of them are also being working with the plc situation if not they will be by then and it's you know one or two schools we can work with if they've got this real issue as for example what we're doing with forest hills right now we're really helping them uh we need to move forward we can't wait three years and and and that's something that seems very evident the public wants it i think a number of people up here want it they'll give
302their parents i mean teachers more than enough support to be able to put in place systems so if you do have a child that needs more intervention ahead of time whatever they can at least be prepared and start doing it next fall so that's actually what i was going to request is to have a vote to begin it next fall mr boyle had a comment or a question yeah thank you madam chair you know i'm preparing for this i heard from a ta who had a student who they walked up and looked at the teacher and said f you i'm going to kill you that student was not suspended that student should never be suspended we are working the people who come up with these policies the people who work in our central office are
303not obstacles to what we want they're partners in achieving what we ask for and the very best minds the doctors who get you know eds in education these really dedicated committed people have taken our charge of saying please do this and they've come up with a plan we heard about that plan two weeks ago we heard about that plan at our interim meeting where they said this is how it's going this is the data we're going to continue monitoring it we've come up with the plan it's a three year plan but i haven't heard anything from them that says we need the change or we're ready to change and i trust that process i want this done but i want it done right miss walker well i would just say go ahead yeah i would
304just say i agree with miss justice and the fact that i don't think i think three years is too long i think i think the ask is for the littlest ones and i think if we look past data we look at what kids are being suspended for out of school are not violence guns and drugs and i feel like i don't think it's unfair to give us ourselves a goal an expectation that that at some point in in time that we can pinpoint that we're going to reach that goal that way because we know there is disproportionately hurting particular parts of our population black male ec students especially and we got to dig deeper to find out what those problems are and if they're um you know the exceptions i mean if there is violence
305there's drugs if there are weapons of course but you know a lot of the lists that we saw with disruptive behavior talking back i just feel like we can do it a different way and i like the fact that we have a plan i feel like that is positive i love seeing that and i that's the reason i asked the question about culture change because i think that's what we need to focus on is thinking about the child the child itself and and what he or she is going through and what he or she needs intervention wise with help with therapy with whatever but we also need to look at giving um resources these teachers as well that's all a part of this conversation and that's part of our strategic plan so mr one board
306i just had a question for dr faust do we have the capability at at the individual elementary schools for say for instance to have an in-school suspension you know obviously we can pay for but do we have that currently or is it you know either out of school suspension or kind of nothing do we have that ability i would have to research that okay for our elementary schools okay because you know i'm thinking about in in the situation you know that boyer brought up you know what do you do with that child if if you don't have out school out of school suspension then it becomes well then you know that that faculty member feels like oh my goodness this child can basically tell me that he's going to beat me you know kill me
307or or whatever else we do need some other avenue in place you know whether it be in school suspension or or whatever so um sorry i i would just like to say that i agree with love our children i think that the suspensions for k2 or 4 5 and 6 year olds is something we need to move to get away from but to mr wilderboy's point our educators need resources i was volunteering in a school in a second grade class and a child threw a chair across the room and i watched a classroom of 17 kids get evacuated those are the realities of the day to day and what is happening with the plc's is we are trying to learn figure out look at the data what is working because it's not so simple to
308just say let's turn this off we're leaving our educators with nothing if we do that we have to continue to keep mining the data figuring out what's happening in our schools and and do what's best for kids and i'm not saying that out of school suspensions is the right thing i understand the research too i've worked in education for years too okay we see that we agree with you but we need i'm very grateful that our administration is working with the schools that are high needs to put together a plan and they are working hard to do that my son goes to one of those schools that is in the plc program and i am watching it happen every day there were two fights in his classroom last week one of which drew blood do
309you know what that feels like as a parent it's not fun twice in a week right so i'm speaking as a parent i'm speaking as a board member i'm speaking as an educator i agree with you i don't want to see four or five and six-year-olds in out of school suspensions but we need to continue to figure out what is working for our kids all of our kids and i want to give the time to the administration to continue to do the good work that they're doing in the 12 schools that they're piloting it with three years seems like a long time but to mr bullier's point i would so much rather do this right than rush to change something and then we have to go back on it that's just my thoughts so my
310thoughts to that point as well are that we've heard from three different schools where they have restorative practices in place the teachers are feeling good about it um and we mr voterboard mentioned something about in-school suspension well i think we're trying to get away from the whole suspension word anyway so each school there's no way to say let's my opinion i don't think there's any way that we can say designate a special room because each school is developing their own plan for what works best with their culture what works best with their students what works best with their building layout what i loved about hearing when wrightsboro is they have you know their tier program developed where the teachers are helping each other like stephanie's acting out so stephanie might have to go to stephanie
311um w's class um or she might have to go to mr wildebore's social worker you know um area or maybe stephanie just goes to the to the calming space in the classroom so that each school has has to have the opportunity to do that and before we were to ever just say suspension i mean you're the only middle school principal i mean elementary school principal that we have so i've heard you say a number of times is if you take that away from me then things might not go well in my school i mean i listen to that as well so i i think that we have a goal but i don't know that it's up to us as a board um to set what that goal looks like you know after we've had a
312chance to um and maybe we asked principals you know if we were to take this away tomorrow maybe your principal advisory if we were to take this away tomorrow what would you do you know some of the schools already have those plans in place where we're looking at them and they're saying um those are the schools that are low they already know what they're doing we've got to help all the other places get there um so miss justice there's not that many that are high but those are the ones that need to be addressed i too was an elementary school principal excuse me i was only an assistant principal but i anyway the whole point is is that there are schools in the district right now i'll take snipes as former grandson goes they've got
313a room called choices where they have wraparound services and they just talk about that the last meeting we've got between now and the end of the summer to establish programs like that in the schools that are high risk and if we go ahead and say across the board if we enter this pro this this suspensions now by the fall then those schools those few schools have got these numbers that are really concerning they can come up with a plan by the end of the summer and i'm very surprised considering that they did present this last week i mean last meeting that that wasn't brought up by anybody else here because i really paid attention to it close because i've actually worked with a choice called choices and not in school suspension and it's very effective
314and it's done in other districts um also you know also there all this data three years we don't need to wait three years we can see what's going on you've been presenting it we've been sent it it's just a certain number of schools and then focus on them and then keep on expanding the program across the district to change the culture but why does even one or two or three kids need to have their lives messed up or even half a dozen because we won't take the stand put got six months leeway here you got time to do this you're talking about kids whole lives and this is where it starts when you do these little bitty kids and start teaching them this is gonna be the result and this is the way we're not
315you we're gonna deal with it and just you know keep on screaming for help and nobody's helping you that's usually what these little kids are about and we've already got so we've got systems to give them some wrap around services when they're in that position uh as far as throwing the desk across the room that's the kind of situation that's very violent that we were talking about we've got exceptions so i mean mr mcmanus i don't think anybody's wrong what they've said tonight collectively and individually and i understand i've heard i've listened my heart says do x and my background says why i don't think we have a plan yet if we stop suspension and we we've got to do something i'm all for let's start answering our public but if we stop it monday
316we we we're going to have a kickback the likes of what you've never seen and if we going to do it next year then we need for the schools to begin to plan now what the and that may involve a budget consideration but i'm confused because you said choices that's a that's a that's a form of you know it's a room in a i understand that but when i talked the other night about not going into technically in school suspension i was told rightfully that the state says if you're taken out for discipline you are suspended no matter where you go because i said don't call it issp call it focus anything they're in choice if they're in school though and they're working in school if we put them in something called not considered they
317get mental health they get guidance and why's that suspension in choices is not well that's just that word choice each from what i'm gathering from their presentations each school is calling it whatever makes sense i think the college park calls it like the wise owl program you know and i'm looking to see alderman gave us a name but i can't remember what it was so they're all trying to manage it their own way and not to call any of it suspension because every time they're removed from their classroom they're going someplace positive but i made a suggestion i think this is now the third time since i've been on the board that we could drop in school suspension and rename it yeah and the kids had to have mental health whether they're at two hours
318or they're there for two days they had counselor and somebody was there trying to keep up with their studies that's a great idea but i was told and i'm not throwing anybody on the bus but i was told the last meeting and i know a lot of people remember it you can't do that but now i'm hearing every school's doing something else and not calling it in school suspension right right and that's what that's what i can answer mister mr mustino who who now is it legal to take a child out of class for any type of discipline related behavior and not call it suspension because i was told at the last meeting the same issue it was called suspension and that was the law but i'm hearing that these schools are all doing something
319different and so are they breaking the law or are we missing an opportunity here as one of many things we need to do to deal with this situation so dr faust or some other somebody else administration correct me if i'm wrong but i think statutes only speak to out of school suspensions and so the general statutes are actually addressed but i specifically addressed in school suspension to change the name of it and to require mental health which we've hired all those earlier this year counselors and keep up with your academics so let's do this can someone solve that problem by our next meeting so that we can make a decision and put this to bed whether everybody agrees or doesn't or what are our parameters and what legally can we do because i still believe
320you're doing away with the word suspension you're putting them in a situation where they're going to receive mental health which a lot of these kids need and counseling and they still try to keep up with their studies they're not out of school and i'm hearing this but i'm hearing that the schools are doing different things taking kids in discipline situations and putting them in somebody's wrong and somebody's right i just like somebody tell me and then i think we could make some decisions that make this better and dr faust wants to add something i was just going to say i think what ms varnam as i remember and you know i'm getting older too so i might forget but i think what ms farnham said is the reporting to the state is you have to
321report it as in school suspension they state only says either in school suspension or out-of-school suspension so if you pull students out for a discipline reason but chairman of the board just said it is not suspension now about throwing 100 bucks but that was my belief too these alternative classes are not suspended related but they're there for discipline right i just want but if you look at everybody's presentation it's talking about they're taking somebody out of the classroom putting them into an alternate learning setting where they're still doing their work yeah and they're still getting the mental health counseling that you suggested so if you go back and look through all the presentations that's what's happening they're just moving their setting from stephanie's classroom into hugh's classroom into the counselors in school suspension we are
322we're not talking about that we're talking about mr runivore was the one that said in in school suspension right so so we're not using that we're not using that terminology anymore we're creating a different learning space is that right are they still called do we still have in-school suspension classes in the elementary schools teachers that's what we're going to be looking for that's right that's what mr william we still have that right that's what i said i don't know we i have i'll have that in your memo how many schools show them drop the word in school suspension wait wait wait wait wait wait you've asked a lot of questions i don't know the answer to what you're asking is what i'm saying there are several schools that use different names to get away from
323using in-school suspension but it's still when you look at it it's still in school suspension if you remove them from their general curriculum and put them in a place for a disciplined consequence of skill in school suspension i just may call it choices because it's not we're not calling it in-school suspension but i would have to have and that's what i have jackie and jared doing right now asking all 27 elementary principals what is your program called and i'll have that information for you in your memo but you're saying it is in school suspension but it's not called in schools i said i don't know that what i know is what those programs that i know that um what i heard i know that well let me defend so what i'm saying is that i
324know of two schools that have said and they use choices instead of the word in-school suspension so there's just semantics but i'm going to get the actual number of how many elementary schools have in school suspension and i'll have that number for you because i agree if you take they're still going to do something what they will if they don't have if you take away all options they don't know what to do oh yeah they're gonna do something and i know that i hadn't been a principal since but there were times where it's like if you take charles home and i know everyone who's been a principal said just take him home we will deal with it later call the mom and they they will get around the word suspension if you push people in
325a corner that's what i'm trying to get through to the board to make sure that we aren't putting people in legal jeopardy by taking away everything and then if they don't follow the policy then there are personnel issues that we have to come up with and then we have morale issues because it was a one-stop shop and we thought we were doing something it's like they don't have anything so then it's like i will be writing people up on a daily basis because i will be researching and trying to find out you something that's to me a key of jumping off points to make a decision yes hang on your next justice where were you finished with the congress i'm just saying i i don't we don't have enough information of i can't answer your
326your question okay miss justice okay wow trying to follow all that uh mr mcmaster you did a great job of describing what every school needs to have for kids alternatives if they haven't done anything so egregious that it's already been spelled out that they shouldn't be in this school dr faust even mentioned something will be done well what needs to be done is what we're talking about having those alternatives in the schools in one form or another by the beginning of next school year i'm now motioning that we in the suspension for four five six and seven-year-olds except in those extreme cases by the beginning of next school year here in new hanover county schools is there a second to that motion i mean i will second that because i feel like we need a
327plan i feel like we have a strategic plan that wants to do the same thing just like the last strategic plan that had that goal as well i felt these programs are great i feel like we need to give more resources like all the things i'm not suggesting we leave teachers high and dry because i know they need what they need and we've heard what they need and so i don't want to ever you know make a teacher think they they what they're doing is wrong or bad or that they're not supported but if we just at some point have to set a goal and try and stick with this goal and i think it's attainable i feel like these programs are wonderful and i think that if we we have we have the will
328and the desire to do it and we have programs in place that we can model after for everyone else then i think that's an attainable goal for out-of-school suspensions for the little ones point of clarification yeah can we vote to amend a policy in the future in the future what future you talk about kind of along those lines i was going to um suggest that we this has to maybe come back to the policy committee because that's normally what we do um for that but i wouldn't say it has to come back to the policy committee i just didn't know if we could say yeah to make sure the wording is right so that we're not creating policy from the diets but as as miss as mr shiva said before we can we've got if
329we get four votes we can do what we want correct so you could pass a policy or you could vote to have um the new policy go into effect next year you can do that and you don't it doesn't have to go to policy committee if you don't want to okay right i think we've been beating this to death for over a year now and i think the public's yelled more than enough and i know that it's good for kids dr faust himself said you will come up with something and we know what to come up with the right thing by our kids and we can do that we've got until september well i ended up august to do it and a lot of school starts in july school starts in july yes we have
330year-round schools oh yeah they're early most of them already we're talking about cutting down even more plans for a cup poor couple no it doesn't matter a couple is a couple and some of those schools in our year-round program and our restart program are the schools in this pilot program that are working i know and they have already got programs in places for example snipes their work is working okay and they can share they've got time to share we're talking okay in july the end of june oh this needs to be done we can't keep kicking this can down to you know three years is way too long and we already have the resources we've identified them we've got to have the will to implement them and use them my final comment on this we
331have school starting in july we've got 12 that have been piloting this it is march 1st we are still figuring out what works and we've got how many other elementary schools that will need to also have this process implemented that have not been going through any type of resource training i do not think this is the best time to do this i think that i have no problem with upping the timeline out of three years but i don't think that starting with the 2021 22 or 22 20 20 23 school year is the time to do it can i ask yeah yeah um thank you madam chair i don't have a problem upping the timeline either but we're sitting up here and first of all i really take offense the idea that there is no
332plan because people worked really hard on it and people presented it and people keep updating us on the play everybody so mr mcmanus doesn't think we have a plan yeah so we do have a plan um if you were saying it's not fast enough okay but nobody has asked the question of you know miss barnum dr phil hey can you do it you're sitting there telling them yeah you can do it you can do it we can do it we can do it but you know miss justice you have a lot of expertise but we i don't think you've run a school system with 26 000 kids and 4 000 employees and you got other principals up here telling you yeah i don't know how we do that it's really really complicated and i've never
333seen i would just like to hear from our staff before we say we're changing it if they can because they're telling us yeah we don't think this is a good way to go and i think it's important to listen because we are on a path to eliminating those suspensions miss walker i would recommend that we do one of our forums on this because i think we could get a great ton of ideas i don't think i think three years is too long i think we um change is hard and i know that but if we have the will and we want to do it and it's part of our treated plan and it's something that's beneficial i don't see why we shouldn't be setting ourselves goals they don't have to be strict it's super strict
334but we're talking about an age group and we're talking about exceptions with violence drugs and you know et cetera so it's not as if we're saying the whole school 26 000 kids can't be suspended that's not what we're even talking about here we're starting with the little ones and i just think we need to set ourselves a goal at some point we can't be we can't be scared to do that because i feel like if we do we'll find a way we'll figure it out and i think we can do with e4 on it that would be perfect we could get input from teachers and input from everyone else in the community of ideas and i think that's our job our leaders and you know we can and since we are talking about it and
335that did not really i was not focusing on that but yeah we can have a move back day on the schools that start until july and maybe do until their next you know they're trying to think of the term now where they have their interim intercession i mean there's ways we can do it we we have the ability to figure them out we can't keep kicking this can down the road it's not fair to these little kids or their families or their futures did you have a comment two things first else we do have a plan we have dr varnam and we've had success with that but if we stop it we don't have a plan what she's doing is gonna take time years three that's what i think are going on so i think
336we need to first find out the legality of these other classes so that we can answer the question technically these kids are being suspended because i think that's part of the umbrella that we don't want the kids having anything that is suspendable as far as written word files otherwise so we can resolve that but i do think we need to involve the staff in the schools i'm not so sure that each school should be doing their own thing i'm not saying that they're not or they i just think that consistency speaks volumes about all schools treat these kids in the same way and the same expectations when everybody does something different you're asking for it and we're getting it madam chair can we call the question so i'll hush yes okay so the motion on
337the floor is and with the second is to end the suspensions for six four five six and seven year olds um by the end of school year twenty one twenty twenty one 122 and to start it in 2223 with the exceptions of the special programs who should be given extra time periods to implement it commercial programs i well special special schools right we have two separate votes on that because i think some people may have um may have different opinions on breaking it apart either we start it or we don't because it's going to be kind of hard you know to manage all that great we're trying to sir yes um you said suspensions and would that include both in-school suspensions and out-of-school suspensions or is this just applying to out-of-school suspension well what everybody's
338talking about is suspensions out of school okay all right so then we will clarify that to be out of school suspensions excuse me we're not allowed to talk in the audience out of school they're not supposed to be talking to us no it's just the way you're talking no you just so the miss justice restate your motion okay i move that we end out of all out of school suspensions for four five and six and seven-year-olds with the exception of those three drug drugs uh harm to themselves and others and weapons weapons that weapons right uh at the beg at the beginning of the 2002 22 22 and 23 school year okay that's a lot of mouthful all right so um miss billy will you call the roll yes mr mcmanus no miss walker yes
339ms craybill no miss adams no mr wildeboard yes and mr bullier no okay so the motion fails three to four okay next on the agenda is call to the audience but we do not have anybody left on that so we'll move forward um committee reports i haven't heard from anybody that has a committee to report on um correspondence i have not received any other than what i um passed out to you in closed session um announcements the policy committee will meet on tuesday march the 8th 2022 at 9 a.m at the board of education center the general public will have the option to review remotely on new york county schools tv youtube the equity diversity and inclusion committee and title ix committee will hold a joint meeting on thursday march the 10th 2022 5 pm
340at the board of education center the new hanover county board of education will hold a special meeting um a special participation meeting on tuesday march the 15th in the board of education center the meeting format has yet to be determined okay um next on the agenda is adjournment do i hear a motion to adjourn moved is there a second second okay um all in favor aye aye aye any opposed okay we are adjourned you