NHCS Board of Education Regular Board Meeting | January 4, 2022

001hey did i count to 10 already okay good evening everyone um i'd like to call the january 2022 board of education meeting to order crystal will you please call the roll for us good evening stephanie craybill here stephanie walker here stephanie adams here nelson bullier judy justice here he mcmanus and pete wilteborg okay first um well before we begin the work session i did want to just um say just make a couple comments to everyone for tonight so welcome everybody to the january meeting um thank you for joining us in person and in our viewing audience as always we value and appreciate your interest and participation and advocacy of on behalf of all of your children and all of our children actually and their education i applaud and commend all of us all of you

002as we continue together to focus on what is best for all of our students before we begin i just want to take a minute to acknowledge that although we have masks optional in this building for this meeting it is still a good idea to wear one anyway especially since social distancing is minimal our community positivity rate is over 25 percent and in practical terms that means that one in four of us have tested positive for covin and not just one in four of us might have covet and not know it so please know that the board of education and new hanover county schools are committed to creating a safe and welcoming space for all of our students and our faculty and our staff volunteers and visitors to our schools and to all of our district

003facilities so to that point i trust that we all feel compelled to treat each other with dignity and respect throughout this meeting no matter what our thoughts and feelings are about an issue or even a particular person or group so i'm asking all of us to mind our voices and actions so the board can remain focused on completing its governance work that is necessary for all of our students staff and schools i also want to let you know that i'm going to try a little something new to try and keep our meetings going i have crystal is going to help me with the timing so if you look at the time on the side of each item she's going to let me know when we have one meeting one minute to go and if we

004are at a substantial stopping point then we may stop and carry on until next time um if we feel like we need just another minute then we'll go forward so i'm going to try that um and if you're the one talking and we're getting close then just keep an eye on crystal and she will give us the um the old gong um silent gong yeah so thank you so first on our agenda is the work session and i'd like to invite dr barnes chris barnes up to the podium to talk to us about allotment formulas good evening board good evening uh superintendent some of you may know that i just recently came back from a stint in tennessee and when i left north carolina i thought they will fix the state allotments by the time

005i get back and they are the exact same as they've been for several years but what i've been asked to do is talk a little bit about where the state allotments and our local allotments differ in regards to funding and allotments to schools so i want to share a couple of places where significant differences exist between what the state allots and what our local budget and what we do to lean in locally to support our schools so just as a review all of you know that our funding comes from three main sources local state and federal our state positions almost primarily come in positions not dollars and our state i mean excuse me our federal and local funding usually comes in dollar amounts federal funding usually comes under title one two three and four and

006we have some ec funding that's federally based as well the state budgets come in to our district and then we allot them to our individual schools so a couple places that i looked at i wanted to reference first the class size law several years ago an initiative was placed to ensure that we had a smaller class size in our k3 classrooms and that class size law requires us to have a district average of 18 students in kindergarten 16 in first and 17 in second and third so we are required by law to do an affidavit twice a year that shows our class sizes are no more than three over that number in all of our k3 classrooms and that our district average is underneath those three numbers so you can see that here the laws

007listed there and these are the state allotments if you look at the state will give us a uh school a lot uh excuse me a school class size of our district with a number of students they'll use that student number to offer class uh teacher positions for each of those adms for each of those grade levels so they take each grade level they look at the number of students that we have in a district in it and a lot of us based on that formula so as you can see in the state allotment it's 18 for kindergarten 16 for first grade on up from there the next slide shows you our district allotment which is lower in several areas than the state's allotment locally we will fund in a lot teachers based on 10 to

00812 1 and 1 for 28 not 29 one for 25 and a half in ninth grade versus 26 and a half at the state level so that helps us maintain a smaller class size than average even though the state doesn't send us any more teachers than they have allotted if that makes sense this is one area that i think is a specific pressure point the state will fund and offers us one position for every 210 students in our adm and that is for instructional support now instructional support at the state level is considered counselor mental health worker social worker media coordinator so if you think about our schools the state only funds 127 of those positions district-wide we have obviously we're funding here 32 locally funded positions but that's not even to qualify the number

009of positions that our instructional support allows every elementary school has a full-time counselor every elementary school has a full-time literacy coach high schools are allotted five counselors regardless of their size their traditional high schools to include one graduation coach so those are some places that locally we lean in with a different allotment formula than the state provides when you look at assistant principles and this is probably the most shocking one that i've seen they will give you one month of an assistant principal for every 98 students in your adm when you multiply that all the way out that funds the state will fund 24 assistant principals for a district this size when you look at those numbers to have a full-time assistant principal school would have to have 985 students to qualify for one assistant

010principal so this is a play where locally we have to support this in quite a a large amount that's currently our assistant principal allotments we have 25 in elementary 15 and middle and 20 in high school for a total of 60 we have to fund 36 of those locally because the state as i show only a lot for 24. when you look at our aig allotment this is one of the places that the state sends this in dollar amounts not positions they will fund us thirteen hundred dollars for every child for four percent of our idm so when you look at our average daily membership take four percent of that and they'll send us that amount of money that funds us approximately 20 aig teachers for the district locally we have one in every elementary

011school one in every middle and a half time in every high school so for a total of 34 so we locally fund 14 of our aig teachers to make that allotment happen for our schools the last one i pulled out this is how they explain the k-5 enhancement law that came in right around the same time they did the class size reduction for k-3 so i simplified that to what it says is one teacher for enrichment for k-5 for every 191 students now enrichment at the state level is classified as art music pe what we sometimes call specials or enrichment when you look at that number one for every 191 requires us to get 60 k-5 enrichment teachers we have three at every elementary school regardless of size which makes a total of 75 so

012we're locally funding 15 of those positions as well so those are just some examples i wanted to pick out to show you where the state allotments and local allotments may differ because we know that the state allotment doesn't always meet the needs of our students thank you does anybody have any questions for dr barnes i just wanted to make one comment on that is that um for us to all take note is that we locally fund a fair number of positions um out there that we don't have to fund so that is one thing that we um always keep we should keep in the forefront is that we we are funding extra people so i didn't realize it was quite so many extra mr bullier sorry dr barnes i hear often in complaint that oh

013the district is top heavy am i correct in assuming that our admin positions uh our show or our ap positions are showing up as administrative positions but we have to fund a lot of aps out of our budget out of our local funds uh and are those showing up as administrative positions our ap positions they're qualified as administrative positions and and this is one of the places where i know that that superintendents across the state talk to our legislators about administrators is a great example according to that formula there would be less than two assistant principals at hoggard high school for the entire school and that's not even two 12-month assistant principles that's this is one of those areas where we know that that support that our students and teachers need it's just far in

014excess of what the state provides but those those are classified as administrative positions thank you very much i'm mr wonder thank you thank you madam chair do we have an assistant principal at every school or do we have some that maybe share or how's that work currently there are some that are that are under a certain size cap our current allotment formula has assistant principles at every school where there is 450 or more students so some of our smaller schools may have retained one that they had before we changed the allotment formula or some do not have one there's a i i want to say four i think i'm close to that number is four that do not have a full-time ap do they share or they just don't have anybody at all they don't

015have anybody at all they have usually every school has a literacy coach there are some instructional coaches who sort of lean in instructionally but at our smaller schools we don't have one for every school now okay thank you sir oh i'm sorry yeah didn't see your finger poking i don't care um daughter barnes i was curious um because i think people have noticed uh that we are being less assistant principals now at some of our elementary schools and you just said that was because the allotment size changed is that correct well our local allotment form no the state allotment has stayed the same we elected as when we built the local allotment formulas to put a minimum cap on an elementary school to have an assistant principal would it ever be an instance where if

016they felt like that school needed an extra assistant principal would they would you guys put another one there we sort of lean in in places where there are significant needs either with some short-term folks or some some additional funding but traditionally we're trying to keep that where it is miss justice okay uh yes we have some specialty schools that have a far less oh sorry i think i told you no i'm so i turned 50 and i suddenly can't hear anybody anymore i'm sorry um we have a number of specialty schools that aren't elementary schools that have got less than 450 students do they have assistant principals some of our specialty high schools do some of our special schools do i know that lake forest has an assistant principal there's a special need there i

017do know that two of our alternative high schools share an assistant principle so that formula is is usually mostly for our traditional schools and we lean in those specialty areas where we need to do you know how many of those schools with less than 450 students in specialty schools that do do have you just mentioned three or four i i didn't bring that information with me what i like to do is i can send you i have that sort of encapsulated in my on my computer i can send that to you guys about specifically where that where they all are i just i want i could guess pretty well but i don't want to absolutely say unilaterally without looking at that mr mcmanus is there any intent to try to provide what help we can

018from where we can for those low performing schools because of the the challenge that in itself so oh sure we do probably those are called priority schools and they get first dibs on everything when i say that the instructional um emphasis um those nine schools uh even though they're getting an executive director that person reports directly to me and so we are examining we've taken them through um uh they're in our uh training force the social emotional for discipline we're making sure i will say this if you look at the data even when they had an assistant principal they weren't performing if you look at the suspension rate you'll see they were suspending kids so i want us to make the correlation of we have to do what's best and you have to also understand

019that we are above what the state and in order to and you're going to hear from my presentation later we are funding we're over the funding formula and so we have to make some adjustments in order to get us back in track because we're we give out too much and we're not receiving the money back in so the small changes through attrition and it's not if you have one that we get rid of an assistant principal it's okay you have 250 kids or 260 kids okay that person leaves as the formula does not match what we were giving and if we continue down this road we won't be able to sustain it and so we have to make great judgment calls financially and we also have to be able to give those schools the support

020that they need for instance we can talk about um for seals so currently forest hills has a principal they have also a contract principal over there they also have an individual from the district office all on that administrative team and an assistant principal for 400 and forget how many students but they have a lot of um brand new teachers so it requires a lot of support so we are giving them the support when when needed and so we do go through and we walk the building and we make sure that it's equitable um but we do have to do what's best for for students at all times and sometimes it's hard to reverse some things that i don't believe as the leader of the district are what's best for the for the district thank you

021dr faust so in in oh i'm sorry miss justice uh yes uh for these priority schools uh the funding you get federal funding for any of the for grant through grants or whatever for any of these uh staff members that you're referring to like assistant principals i don't understand grant jordan system well i'm using that broadly extra funding beyond just our local funding and the state funding for these priority schools i don't if there's title dollars they are on certain times they're able to buy positions okay um with their um but it's very instructional to my understanding this instruction i would have to get the rules most most of our schools who have title one funding will use that either for class size reduction or for additional instructional coaches or that sort of funding for

022tutors that's generally where they're titled one month so they do have the extra funding so it is something those are the ones okay okay so um we're at the one minute mark i want to just make one closing comment that this sounds like something that perhaps we should be lobbying um um the ncsba to put on their agenda to take forward that we need more allocated spots um from the state funding would that be helpful our constitution says that the state is required to fund public schools and to the extent that we need them to versus what they believe we need them to i think is where that disconnect is okay great thank you so much for your time happy new year appreciate it okay so next um on our agenda we are going to

023um hear our invocation from pastor michael mattis from the salt box church and he is going to do that for us remotely so if we would all like to stand school board thank you for their service thank you very much dedication thank you for stephanie adams is she chair hello school board this is michael mattis and i wanted to say a prayer over your gathering that you think so father thank you for the school board thank you for their service thank you for your dedication lord thank you for stephanie adams chairs and uh nelson beaulieu and judy justice stephanie crabill hugh mcmanus pete wildeboard and stephanie walker and lord i want to praise you for their service i want to praise you for their dedication probably to give them wisdom and the lord as they

024meet tonight i pray too especially for the school principals and the school assistant principals the school administrators our teachers our staff lord i pray for wisdom i pray for safety and father i pray that you would stop the spread of kovid give us great wisdom as we as we work towards that father would you preserve our schools our kids our families and our city lord thank you for your time thank you for their time and we bless them as they meet tonight in the name of jesus we pray amen thank you all okay please remain standing and joining us in the um reciting the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and

025justice for all okay back in the chairs okay so rolling smoothly so far the um next on our agenda is the approval of the agenda do i hear a motion moved uh moved to um mr boyer yes sarah second second and second second adams okay now we're ready for discussion miss justice uh yes i noticed when i was looking at the agenda that has been moved around and uh we have an agenda that is uh stated in our policy that we've been told repeatedly that we need to follow and so i saw that the super the superintendent's report had been moved which i have no problem with but i do know in the past when we've moved things around we had to go through the process of sending it to the policy committee to approve

026changes and uh so i don't think that's been done at this point so is i i do think we need to do that if we're going to be moving up the superintendent's report or change anything else uh according to the policy um so i guess what i'm saying is i i don't think at this point that we should be approving the agenda unless we have some kind of i guess amendment to the agent to them to the approval uh that we will send it to policy before we do this again i'm not you know i'm having a hard time pulling up on the policies in 2000 so i was hoping we could pull that up because i believe um that i checked the wording and it says that we it does not say that we

027have to follow that format verbatim and in that order it says that we will use such a format so crystal could you help me pull it up and so um just to verify um miss um justice's point and then we can if we need to modify our motion to move the it up in the agenda i think it's on policy 2330 yep it is is it coming up on yours i must be i can't get it to come up the following agenda format is to be used in preparation for board meetings closed sessions may be added in the appropriate place where needed in the beginning it says the order of business established shall ensure that routine business is accomplished promptly and visitors have an opportunity to be heard and the information on any program or

028special interest or to the board is presented so um yeah that's all it says sir mr side so you know i think the operative language is the portion where it says the agenda format is to be used in preparation for board meetings it's not really entirely clear what impreparation means i think one reading of that is that this is to be used as a template in preparation for the board meeting and that it doesn't necessarily bind the chairperson and superintendent with respect to the ultimate format of the agenda that's something the policy committee could could look at revising to make it a little bit clearer but i think that regardless the board would just need to to vote to adopt the proposed agenda one way or another if a majority of the board thinks that

029the agenda format should be different for this particular meeting then a motion can be made to that effect but otherwise the board can just vote to adopt the proposed agenda okay um thank you for that clarification so the motion on the table is to is to accept the agenda as presented and it was seconded um so let's just go ahead and vote on that miss billy would you call the role please didn't i asked to amend that to include sending this to policy i didn't hear a motion i'm sorry okay i said i moved to send us the policy to have it looked at okay so the motion the emotion to the amended motion to the motion is to move this to policy before we proceed um with it so um is there oh sorry

030mr i think that um that would be it could be a separate motion okay after the board votes on whether or not to adopt the agenda okay they could vote on miss justice's motion to send this policy to policy committee okay all right so the original motion is that we will um we can accept the agenda as approved it was seconded um so miss billy would you now call the roll for me please miss adams aye mr bullier aye ms justice aye mr mcmanus here yes okay so the motion passes um oh yeah no that's fine you keep on the motion passes so we approve the agenda um as approved so now we've already approved the agenda so um i don't unders i don't understand why we go back and i believe miss justice wanted

031to make a motion to refer policy 2330 to policy committee is that correct that's correct going forward going forward is this the appropriate place to put that on the agenda or should we wait to the end i mean now that we're way out of order can we wait till we get to old business and policies to discuss that are you fine with that miss justice pardon are you fine with that waiting to until we get to old police i thought it would just be something simple so uh if you want to have a whole long drawn out discussion i'd be fine with it yeah we are having a long drawn out order madam chair i believe that would require a separate motion that would amend the just adopted agenda well the the agenda has been

032improved so we're moving forward with that i don't see where this needed two thirds i believe we would need a two-thirds vote to amend this so we have not amending oh demand the agenda again to vote on this oh my gosh is this is this something that we can just um refer to this justice i will i will i will take this up yet again i mean we are talking about how we talk about what we talk about this is absurd i'm not sure what you were just saying are you okay with us taking it to policy next tuesday yeah i'm i'm you know if this is something that we're going to do on a regular basis that seems practical because then we should just go ahead and put it in that format okay so

033we don't have to you know have it outside of what we normally use to follow as a template okay so i am recording um or miss miss billy will record for us that we will put 2330 on the policy committee um meeting on july i mean on january 11th we still have time to add that one in okay thank you so moving right along um to our next item on the agenda is closed session the um we are going into closed session the recommendation is to enter closed session pursuant to north carolina general statute 143-1 3 a 1 3 and 6 to consider personnel matters and to maintain the confidentiality of personnel records under ncgs 115c 31 and 320 i mean i'm sorry 319 and 321 to prevent the disclosure of student records rendered confidential

034under the family educational rights and privacy act 20 usc 1.1 and to consult with the board's attorney to preserve attorney-client privileged information including the cases captioned john does 114 versus new hanover county board of education at al new hanover county superior court case number 19 dash cvs-2745 jane doe one through two versus new hanover county board of education at al new hanover county superior court case number 20-cvs-1395 and jane doe 3 versus new hanover county board of education at al new hanover county superior court case number 21 dash cvs-4707 do i hear a motion i moved you don't have to repeat that i wasn't about to is there a second uh miss walker thank you um all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay we are in closed session it's very nice thank you

035very much don't make me use my teacher voice okay i'm ready okay um welcome back folks um from our um quiz session next up on our agenda is approval of the minutes do i have a motion move to approve um that mr bullier second second mr um okay good um next on our agenda item number eight um superintendent's report that will be dr faust good evening um first i want to just give some updates on some information and um i guess some more facts so esser which is e-s-s-b-r means elementary and secondary emergency relief fund it's comprised of three separate federal grants and the ultimate word is grants which means that they expire so sr1 was from the covet aid relief and economic security act or cares um and that was ensemble about six million

036dollars that one expires in september um then we have esther ii esther ii is from coveted response and relief supplement appropriations act and that one's about 24 4 24 million for which expires september 30 um of 2023 and then we have sr3 from the american rescue act which is in the sum of 57 million and that one expires on september 30th one of the things that i wanted to 2022 of 2024 okay thank you from 24th so there's a usually around about a two three year expiration date on that and so what i wanted us to understand is with a grant at the federal level the school money was delivered to us or wasn't delivered to us we have to apply for it through the state so the feds send it to dpi then we

037have to write what we are going to do with the money and you should have access to how the spending is not the spending but the actual rules and so there's rules that we have to follow so we just can't arbitrarily just say oh i want to tomorrow i want to spend it on this we have to submit it to the state get approval from the state and then the state will afford us the opportunity to to release the funds um i know there was at one point some conversation saying that the um 57 million dollars was unallocated that's not true by this state when that money was released we weren't able to allocate the state would not allow us to allocate now we can go back in and we can allocate so it was

038never um at sr3 where we could allocate the money um the money we allocated it internally but we couldn't allocate it um externally if that makes sense because the state wouldn't allow us at that point um you also have access to the esser fund presentation that we delivered to you on may 18 full blown out presentation so you know if you want to go back and look at that one um or it's in assembly where you can go and look at it local funding local currently we receive three thousand four hundred seventy dollars so locally for each for each student we receive three thousand four hundred seventy dollars and so we are rough act is about 24 500 students um and so that's what we see from the local and that if you do rough

039math that'll be about 86 million dollars that we receive from our commissioners and so if our numbers go down then that number goes down so if we we don't have 26 000 students we don't have 25 000 students we have 24 000 students so it often depends on if your graduating class is larger than your income in kindergarten class then your numbers will change and then sometimes their kids who throughout the different grades they move or they leave the district that's called adm that's your attendance and so we have to take an account of our adm and then also the state then gives us money based on our adm and that's another formula however right now we're i'm talking specifically about local funding so our commissioners fund this at three thousand four hundred seventy dollars

040um our current projection indicates um supposed to increase a 17 minimum wage with no other changes to salary schedules what approximately four million dollars per year and that's reoccurring so technically right now we only get funded and we have to do it through local because the state doesn't increase the state salary cap is a fake tower gap um or schedule that's it so but locally we add additions to it so if we were that's just the basic um if we were to increase for lctas um 17 million i mean 17 it'd be 4 million reoccurring remember the 86 000 locally has already been allocated so you don't have 90 000 which is what would be needed in an effort to to do that so you can't increase it wouldn't be financially smart to increase in

041the middle of a budget um for reoccurring so reoccurring every year you've got to find four million dollars to increase that however if we were result in significant a significant salary um compression so what does that mean a compression means that there are some supervisors who are already at 17 and so then you have individuals who are coming in with no years of experience making the same as someone who is their supervisor so you have your salary compression so what we've been doing is fixing the compression that took place back in 2012 2010 that time where there were no um raises throughout the state so that created a salary compression because no one got increases so um specifically 83 compressed steps would for the lowest six grades and so we have six grades so on

042a salary scale and i'm going through you'd have to have your salary scale in front of you to actually see it and you'll have a copy of this and you can go back in and look at it um so those lower sixth grades um in an effort to fix that they're 83 there's 83 compressed jobs that will take place so that meant that for x amount of years no one would get an increase if you were to do that um the estimated calls for a minimum 15 wage 16 for other child nutrition and custodians and 17 bus drivers and tas without the associated salary compression that means to fix it um it's expected to increase annual cost by 10 million 400 dollars of local funds so instead of having your 86 million you would need

04396 million to fix this and so you'd have to ask the commissioners for a 96 million in the middle of your budget which then would increase if you do it all um you have to do property taxes um that's the way they would fix it so then um we just have to remind ourselves or be reminded that local funds are not our funds they are given to us based on our allocation from our students and that's what our commissioners give us and so when they give us money we allocate that in the money that's already in there so you can say well what if you repurpose the money the majority of that money is in salaries so if you reduce it then we have to do what's called a riff which is a reduction in

044force in order to fix it so it creates long-term issues if you do it haphazardly so as you all know that we are in the middle of a compensation study and so the compensation study should be complete in march and we will be bringing it to the border actually complete late february and in the early march we will be presenting what the salary compensation study does and in that we would have to then allocate money for the fix because you can't fix it all in one year um it takes years because we're not talking about hundreds of thousands we're talking of millions with an s of dollars and you also have to understand that the state is also giving raises so this year they give a raise make sure they're going to give raise and

045so our raises will continue to go up with the allocation so we're able to pay above the state allocated dollars with the um supplements that the company that the county commissioners give us so um 197 million of course would be there to increase also remember that we have a three year so that 50 remember there was that 57 it said that it's not allocated remember we are a one-to-one district so technology in order to create a one-to-one technology um district it's about 54 million dollars you don't buy those all at one point because that means they all the end dates go all at one point so we have to stagger them out so the money is allocated um this year we're doing a couple of high schools next year there'll be a couple of high

046schools and the other year there's a couple of high schools and hopefully by that time we will have gotten back into the routine where we will be able to um have funding possibly from um endowments or any other place where we can ask for funding to assist because the year the life of like five years we would start to have to look at um replacing some of the the technology so in an effort just the whole product that's just the um that's not the training that's just the equipment for 50 million dollars remember we don't have enough technology so for instance remember when we went out for covert in the beginning all of our students didn't have technology and so we were having to pull because we had to bring your own device and you

047have to remember those things um not everyone had a device for students so we were in the midst of ordering so we took some of the funding and ordered immediately so probably thinking where did some of that money go well we had to order and then we went ahead and we've gotten to our rescue and that's where we are now so you know that we are working on a high school um after we do our compensation study that's when you make your budget recommendations based on the study and that'll create priorities so everything has a priority when we look at our funding and how do we pay for things so in the middle of a budget when you've already approved it and you've already allocated funds if you say do something different you have to

048pull it from something that you promised and i don't know if everyone understands that just for a month's payroll we pay off anywhere from 17 million to 20 million dollars every month in payroll already so if you pull things we have to find money to reallocate so i just need us to understand those things when we think oh you have x funding it's not that simple it's not and then there are restrictions that go along with the budget and the and the money the compensation and pace study uh results will of course provide valuable information regarding positions equity market information and recommended salary schedule structures so you want to make sure that when they what they will do is look at salaries that are comparable and making sure that we are aligned with the market

049so that we don't get too low or we don't get too high and if we're too high then that of course that message is up on the financial side pending state salary anticipated in july to include a 15 minimum wage and will increase state non-certified pay ranges so i was just stating that in july there will be another raise um which will take the minimum to 15 dollars of course the enrollment drop will have an adverse impact on state and local funding next year the down estimate we're down 1300 kids so remember dr barnes told you that at the state level where allocated positions and positions are based on the state what we provide for the state through adm so we may not be able to sustain those positions from the state so then we

050have to look at local funds and so those local funds will have to absorb some of those state funds so that is why we're looking at attrition and individuals are retiring we don't fulfill or feel that position there is a reason because we call it the the money vortex and so you get all this money but then it has an ending date to it and if you don't have the money you can't sustain it that'll put you in the red and i can't put the district in the red um which means that we bankrupt you can't do that because we have to be able to make payroll we have to um i also want to highlight that many staff including tas will have summer employment opportunities again this year um we do are looking at

051our summary ignite part two this past summer we paid 136 teacher assistance a cumulative of 158 445 in bonuses for their assistance with summer ignite programs so we were given out bonuses in the sum of anywhere from 1 000 all the way up to 2 500 um for some of our teachers it was if you get a student on grade level the state was saying pay the individual 150 we paid individuals 300 if they got students to read on grade level at the elementary so let's say if you had you got a signing voting so of 2500 if you had 10 kids in your class they were all on grade level at the end of summer school you got another um check for 3 000 in addition to your summer school paycheck that was just

052for 150 hours additionally while we have established tas to teach a teaching pathway so my goal and my job that i'm looking at is looking for opportunities where we can have a ta to teacher pathway and looking at funding through other sources to pay for four-year scholarships for teachers to go to uncw in the education program and then we can put them in a teaching position let's say that you have 10 years of experience as a ta the goal would be to give them half the teacher experience so they would start at five years versus um one one year which is at the state level it's about 35 000 but then we have our supplement and that's um but we would be doing a a one not a one to one but a half year

0531.5 for 40 years and through that it's like looking for 10 full-time scholarships that's what we want to be able to do to increase the education of our employees the climate survey classified and certified climate surveys are closed now the board can expect those results in this week's certified hardcopy board update you'll get all the results um sport recognition month is this month um thank you for the work that you do it's not an easy job and i know that you are dedicated employees and not everyone understands the work that goes on behind the scenes but again thank you so much for the work that you continuously do um board members and of course you know just kicking off and declaring um our dedication to our staff and but most importantly our students our students

054are our main focus and we need to make sure that we have and we're creating environments that provide the most effective educational stream lines for our students i know that each of you share my goal to improve student performance across the board and to provide a quality education regardless of where they live in the community given the political climate across the nation yours has largely become a thankless job um but i'm here to on behalf of the district just to say thank you um this concludes my report thank you thank you dr vause that was um pretty extensive so appreciate that um okay so um next on our agenda is call to the audience oh can i what i'm sorry let me see yeah i wanted to ask dr throughout the question i'm sorry if

055we don't usually okay all right all right all right dr faust at the beginning i guess about one third of the way through your presentation you said that you can you hear me yeah well i'll do it for talking okay um wow okay when um about one third of the way through your presentation you said that you would send us these facts and figures you were like could could you do that as soon as possible i appreciate it the ones that you had brought up at the beginning of your presentation because we are about yeah that's in the powerpoint presentation you have that now well i actually did look at it earlier a lot of it was in it but you had said some other things that weren't in it and i thought that maybe

056that's what you were referring to that you'd send it to us okay because i didn't look at that to approve the 6 million to 24 million and 57 million that's in a presentation you have access right i said i have looked at it yeah we will get it i'll get it for you but i want to let you know you have and you've had it is that what you're referring to then okay that's i was trying to understand that because there was a couple things that you had brought up that weren't in that presentation that i saw but maybe they will be doing it verbally when they're giving it uh also and and this is we are about to go into a budget season so this is a good time for us all to have

057that affirmation so thank you yeah i would encourage any of us that have questions for dr faust just to go ahead and give him a call set up a meeting you know and go to his office and talk about that okay so next hearing no more we are on to call to the audience item nine so first of all i want to thank all of you um for signing up to share your comments and concerns with the board as i've stated before we welcome engagement from our school community and from the community at large um i have several items i'd like to cover before we get started with call to the audience i wouldn't i would respectfully ask that you speak on the topic that you indicated on your call to the audience sign up

058sheet the public has asked this board and our school system to be more transparent and truthful and we respectfully are asking that you do the same and speak on the topic that you wrote on the piece of paper i will call three names at a new this is new this time i will call three names at a time to give the flow of participation keep it moving um there's three seats right up here in the front row so as i call your name come have a seat up here in the front and then wait to be called individually at the podium i have we have wipes that if you feel the need that you want to wipe the podium in between them just feel free to do that the i would like to remind us

059to please refrain from using profanity and other slurs against beliefs and people disruptions by any persons or people at a public meeting will be subject to action including removal from the meeting per general statute 143-1318-17 a person who willfully interrupts disturbs and disrupts an official meeting and who upon being directed to leave the meeting by a presiding officer willfully refuses to leave the meeting is guilty of a class two misdemeanor not worried about that but i just wanted to remind you audience members um should refrain from yelling out or responding to comments made by speakers during call to the audience via letters of this will be given one morning and if the behavior continues they will be asked to leave we must respect the rights and of individuals who have come here to respectfully address

060the board so um given that um madam chair yes sir uh at this time i would like to make a motion to combine our call to the audiences from two into one the um we don't have to get to the second call of the audience i just want to make a point of order the um that and again it's going to take two thirds because we've already approved the agenda so that would have needed to be done in the beginning so um there are only two people that have written down items that are not listed as an agenda as an action item and so um i think it's it's okay to allow those two people to move forward i'm happy to entertain your motion though if you still want to make it yes please is

061there a second so all in favor of combining the two call to the audiences say aye aye any opposed okay um so first we have sandy isles veronica malor mclaren brown and back of idol please come forward and take one of those three seats missiles you can just go straight to the podium and oh let's go ahead and put uh mr you're already in the front um cynthia silva over here second okay cynthia silva and have a seat next to miss bidal okay thank you miss isles good evening first i would like to thank the board for adding seclusion and restraint to the agenda for discussion i hope this will be the first of many discussions and a step towards adopting safer practices i hope our district will be honest and transparent with the data

062no excuses no gaslighting no blaming i ask that we stop blaming children for their struggles and start asking why they are struggling in the first place what role do adults have in student behavior and how can we do better so that our children can thrive in school i also ask that we stop misrepresenting what seclusion does to a child when we lock children in seclusion rooms it does not teach them skills or calm them it breaks them and forces them into a traumatic disassociative state where they disconnect from themselves and their environment it is called ptsd in children impacting them for life do not mistake a child's eventual quiet state for calm what you are witnessing is a broken child as a board you are required to adopt policies that protect all students and staff

063seclusion and restraint is always dangerous and never without risk of serious injury or death it simply is not safe for anyone teachers are not proud to say say they seclude children secluding your child feels like defeat no one wins our district also is not proud of the practice it's a dark secret no one wants to talk about we'd rather pretend it does not happen new hanover county does not celebrate that we have the highest rates of seclusion restraint in the state because we know it is a failure on our part yet we continue to do it why why are we engaging in a practice that brings shame to everyone involved our practices and policies should not cause shame and finally mr boyer you are up for re-election you told me you support this policy as

064it is written i hope every parent in new hanover county remembers when they vote that you support this practice of locking their disabled children and petted cells thank you [Applause] [Music] the last sentence of policy 21 states that your first and greatest concern must be the educational welfare of students you are on record acknowledging the harmful effects of suspensions on young children you are on record acknowledging the inequities in the application of suspensions now is your time to go on record voting for a disciplined policy that supports the educational welfare of our students especially four five six and seven-year-old babies revise policy for 4300 at your february meeting add the following statement to the current discipline policy suspensions will not be used as a consequence for four five six and seven-year-old students except for guns

065or drugs or serious bodily harm begin implementing the new policy in august 2022 use some of the almost 90 million dollars in unspent essa funds to provide the schools with the resources that they need pass a policy that gives our babies a warranty against being thrown out of school for a minor infraction such as uncontrollable crying for god's sake when our babies cry they need a hug not an out of school suspension when our babies cry maybe they need a virtual hug not out of school suspension when our babies cry they need a hug not out of school suspension [Applause] um before you begin my spider is there something that we can do about i don't want to be mentioned about a crying baby but it's kind of hard to hear um is there something

066a room that you can go into to listen for that i don't even see a baby so i don't know i believe that was part of the call to the audience i feel like it was a recording i don't think it was really that was part of the presentation okay sorry i was just having a hard time staying focused on my speaker when the baby was distracting okay thank you miss bidal here i am again pleading to you for you to hear what classified staff are saying and to act on it thank you for the bonus but by the time taxes were taken out i received 649.50 this is not enough having my hourly pay raise to fifteen dollars an hour in july after working as a teacher assistant for fifteen years is not enough

067working in an environment where there is no time for a lunch break because when would i have time to clock out is not enough having to work two or three jobs when you're titled a professional is absurd a fellow teacher assistants last day was today because and i quote i have never felt so unappreciated and undervalued by the system i'm spread too thin the pay is too low and i don't feel i can do a good job unquote she is the type of employee you want to retain she is educated a team player and a hard worker we are pleading for you to give all classified staff a starting wage of 17 per hour with increases for years of service or give us substantial bonuses or supplements until you can come up with the numbers

068for the pay raise as i'm sure you are aware in october randolph county gave all full-time employees a five thousand dollar bonus we have a right to know what is your plan for the unspent esther money with the rise and covet cases once again teacher assistants will be prepared to sub any subject in any grade level on a moment's notice while more teachers are quarantined we will do this because we care deeply about our students but we deserve and need a livable wage thank you thank you next we have peter wallace [Music] i have some comments about the policy review for 2120 and about having effective board policies we're looking forward to next month's quarterly update of out-of-school suspension data from ms farnham the number she presented last time were pretty general so my hope

069is that you will do a deep dive into the data and here are some questions i hope you will ask her how many children were suspended from kindergarten from first grade and from second grade what was the breakdown by race gender and special education what were the root causes of the children's misbehavior which interventions were used to help and support the children before they were suspended and why were the children suspended i mean how many brought guns to school who brought drugs to school or committed a violent assault and how long were the suspensions how many children received more than one suspension and how much instructional time was lost for each child and what kind of help and support did the children receive when they returned to school my understanding is that most of this

070data already exists and is available in the educator's handbook i hope you will use ms farnham's answers to better understand the harm that out-of-school suspensions have on four five six and seven-year-olds and the kind of support our educators need to keep children learning in school and out-of-school suspensions for four five six and seven-year-olds except for guns drugs or a violent assault thank you [Applause] as ms silva approaches the podium can we have angie caney tracy nowak and loretta stackhouse come to the first three seats please are you ready okay thank you dr faust and board of education members i'm here tonight to ask you to ensure that all students have access to teachers counselors nurses and other school personnel to support their safety social emotional and academic needs by delivering the following without delay first

071raise the minimum wage to 17 per hour for all classified staff the new hanover county board of commissioners placed retaining and recruiting tas as a budget priority and we should have this as a priority as well two show us the plan on how the 88 million and sr arp covid relief funds will be spent and please share this evening the input from all stakeholders in regards to how the money should be spent the new hanover county board of commissioners expressed concern in regards to how the relief money will be spent number three i ask that you reinstate the mass mandate immediately and provide rapid testing to students and staff that present symptoms so they can either return back to class in 15 minutes or go home i have great hope that we can work together

072as a community to meet the needs of our students without any further delays thank you thank [Applause] next up you angie caney cheryl emma you can make your way down to the front row we appreciate the data being released with regard to seclusion and restraint now let's talk about solutions i've worked with abuse reactive ec and trauma-informed highly aggressive children for decades and i'm certified in therapeutic crisis intervention i understand crisis management and need to place children in therapeutic holds for their safety and those around them but that is the only time that restraint is to be used and it should be done only by a trained staff member and only after every de-escalation strategy possible has been exhausted change your policy to reflect that in addition any time a seclusion or restraint takes place

073an incident report should be provided to the parent within 48 hours in a follow-up debriefing reflecting the incident yet it's virtually impossible for parents to obtain these why the data shows that the number of times seclusion and restraint is performed in new hanover county schools accounts for half the numbers reported in the entire state and surpasses most mental health treatment facilities that is disturbing as a certified conscious discipline instructor we practice skills to avoid crisis and we do not support seclusion rooms we use a proactive student-led structure called the safe place which teaches children calming strategies to regain composure so that restraints seclusion behind locked doors is unnecessary new hanover county schools claims that conscious discipline is being implemented in both freeman and snipes elementary along with the pre-k program to include head start it

074appears that those schools have somewhat lower numbers but staff could certainly benefit from additional support and why aren't we providing equal access to this curriculum and investing in it across the entire county we also know that the presence of communities in schools reduces these numbers yet some of our schools with the highest need do not have access to cis coaches why we don't want excuses we want viable solutions and we want safety to be the priority of staff and students in closing we continue to watch the actions of this board and hold you accountable as you attempt to quickly dismiss victims of sexual assault due to statute of limitations to excuse the behavior of convicted child predators and barbara garrow you can make your way to the front row good evening by now you've heard

075all you need to know from from us regarding our job responsibilities and the need to retain experienced tas and other classified staff to support the needs of our students who are in crisis i'm speaking again because the outcome of the december meeting was totally discouraging the facts and figures needed weren't gathered although i know that you have given us some more facts now but we needed to know about the exact use of the esser funds or how much it would cost to fund the 17 minimum wage we were asking for you simply approved the state what the state gave us which wasn't enough and most certainly does not reflect my job responsibilities or my 12 years of service we had a productive meeting yesterday with dr barnes who clearly understood the need for the pay

076increase and he stated that the salary study was to be completed by the end of february we were confident that it'll show that we what we're asking for is appropriate and maybe even still not enough based on the cost of living here in wilmington unfortunately the time that he said it would take to interpret the results reallocate funds and come up with a plan for the raises does not help us now and we cannot wait any longer even the county commissioners have said that one of their priorities for the next school year was retaining current tas and hiring more they're asking that you look closely at the current budget to better manage and appropriate funds to make that happen mary hazel smalls said that esther funds cannot pay for raises but the department of education

077says esther funds can be used to quote invest in staff capacity and ensure that all students have access to teachers counselors and other school personnel to support their needs doesn't paying people a wage that they can live on translate to retaining tas and other support staff which in turn supports that statement isn't there a way to label the use of esser funds in order to compensate us now while working on a plan for a sustainable raise people are leaving in droves and there is a cost to our students when experienced tas leave tell us tonight that you've heard us that you've gotten the facts that you need and that you're working on a plan to help us now as well as in the long run that is how you tell us that we're valued thank

078you mrs and pat bradford you can make your way to the front loretta stop suspensions of four five six and seven-year-olds keep pre-k kindergarten first and second graders in school when a child acts inappropriately in school he's sent home he comes back and repeats the same action the adult repeats the same action and sends him home again the inappropriate action creates a teachable moment what is the lesson learned who is teaching whom who is smarter the child or the adult the child learn how to get to stay home what did the adult learn how many times does this cycle need to be repeated to determine that this does not work suspensions do not improve behavior suspensions harm children there are alternatives to out of school suspensions you can break the cycle you can change the

079policy to stop out of school suspensions for four five six and seven year olds except for possessions of weapons or drugs or violent assault with one sentence stop suspension [Applause] um vance williams would you like to make your way to the front row please and um donna garrett or garget i'm sorry well i'm back again for the third time pleading with you to give tas and other classified staff the starting wage of 17 an hour with substantial increases for years of service the december 7th meeting was disheartening and frankly a stop in the face you simply approved what the state gave us and added a couple little bonuses while we are grateful for the money it is just not enough now the meager pay increase for the state which only gave me 16 raise is

080not enough by any means and certainly doesn't reflect my 17 years of service and experience you tell us that the esr funds can't be used for pay increases and that you don't feel you should give raises out of that money with no means to sustain it after three years however you can give bonuses now to bring us up to 17 an hour temporarily while the salary study is being completed and reallocation the funds are made to pay us at the higher rate this the study will find we deserve we have found that the us department of education says esser funds can be used to quote invest in staff capacity and ensure that all students have access to teachers counselors and other school personnel to support their needs end quote raising the minimum wage to 17

081an hour would clearly invest in staff capacity and ensure that students have access to educators in appendix a section 18003 d uses of funds of the department of education's certification and agreement for funding under the education stabilization fund program it states that funds can be used for quote other activities that are necessary to maintain the operation of and continuity of services in local educational agencies and continuing to employ existing staff of the lea please make this happen thank you [Applause] we are asking you as the policy makers for the new hanover county schools to please add one phrase to the sentence concerning out of school suspensions in new hanover county schools behavior policy 4300 should read out-of-school suspensions will not be used as a consequence for four five six and seven-year-old children except for offenses

082that endanger the health and safety of others such as the possession of weapons or drugs or violent assault there are more effective alternatives to out-of-school suspensions that are already in your policy manual dr faust has told folks that he has a plan it is hard to believe that he has not taken an opportunity to reveal it in the 10 months or more this request of you the policy makers has been a discussion topic he is losing credibility with those of us that want to see new hanover schools be excellent at keeping children in school learning helping students utilize coping mechanisms so they can become contributing adults and minimizing community violence what is the plan and without a policy any plan is meaningless thank you ms garrow um ms bradford is up next and then if

083we can have making to the front um david perry and natasha too good evening i signed up to speak to the superintendent's report and i was encouraged by some of the things that i heard because i had some curiosity as to why some of these issues weren't being addressed and it for me there's four things i can go and get a job at domino's and get paid more money than our teacher's assistants and yet i want my teacher's assistant in the classroom teaching our kids doesn't make sense to me so you're going to spend 54 million dollars on new equipment but you're not going to pay the teacher's assistance more than somebody who works in fast food it doesn't compute you're locking children in padded rooms for for bad behavior i'd never heard of this

084before i came to these meetings that's absolutely freaky and i think if the county knew that we did that there would be a riot um hopefully you're going to address this that we don't put children in padded rooms particularly learning disabled children i have a friend whose child was autistic and the idea of an autistic child being shoved in a padded room the door locked is just horrifying okay i've been coming to these meetings a while now and i can just about repeat the entire drill for in out of school suspensions for the four five six and seven-year-olds why are we suspending little people why if they don't bring a gun to school if they don't do you know throw feces at you why are we suspending these little people you're scaring them for life

085you're concerned about loss of students you're down 300 students some of those parents have pulled their school their kids out of our schools because they don't like what's going on can we please return to teaching them how to read and write and do a column of math thank you [Applause] in school suspension for ages four five and 7 year olds in 2019 the federal crime report on a national level during a pre-sentence investigation report showed over 73 percent of offenders had history of suspension and expulsion during the third and sixth grade there was no data track on second grader because it's a unheard concept it was not even worthy tracking the data as far as um second graders but they saw a trend the third grade and the sixth grade show history of them being

086disconnected from public schools when i look on your your website i can find no evidence-based strategies that's visible and if there are um could you please produce it i will you know give you my email because i would like the parents to have a basic concept what new strategies are you using to deter negative behaviors is not visible on your website and i definitely know teachers can't share it with parents if it's not visible also what cities right when you talk about evidence-based strategies what cities are you modeling your educational structure after when you look at new practices when you look at new methods to deter negative behavior what other cities are you looking at to come up with new solutions and new ideas again in school suspension ages four five six and seven year

087olds thank you next up is donna garrett if we can have um mullany cooper and alicia ogundiali i'm sorry that's terrible mess up we are excited to announce that myself and denise yanone together with a group of determined advocates have gained widespread community support for chartering a special education parent teacher association septa septa advocates for exceptional students and collaborates with school district administrators educational staff and help brings about the most positive educational and social emotional outcomes for our children septa provides families with resources and the opportunity to be a collective voice for their child and all children since the formation of the new hanover county septa we have heard many parents concerns the most heartbreaking is about seclusion in the blue room a room that has caused easy kids to seriously regress this regression screams

088trauma and not a safe place to calm down septa seeks direct collaboration with new hanover county school student support services and we look forward to working together towards healthy solutions we hope to meet with you in the very near future our goal is to create a strong connection between school and home this painting the advocate by mary radcliffe harnito tells the story as parents we compassionately feel our children's pain and their struggles when their needs are not met on the other side our advocating feels like a battle as we begin a new year we look forward to building a bridge for our parents we want to stop the battle of us versus them and truly unite exceptional students need support to thrive and we hope we can count on the new hanover county school board

089administrators and educational staff to help form a mutually beneficial collaborative partnership with the special education pta thank you thank you very much mrs um next up is david perry uh good evening i'm david perry uh there are two reasons i'm here tonight both involve the mass mandate but the first reason i'm here is from my grandson who's five years old and attends kindergarten in the school district so i want to applaud the board for finally getting rid of the mass mandate last month but we know this is a monthly thing and i know that there was there's going to be pressure on you based off increased covert numbers to maybe renege on that and revert back but this i was pleasantly surprised at last month's vote from listening to what i heard on the uh

090in the november meeting you know you guys wanted to extend it to january you just but what people were saying was hey just let the parents get have an opportunity to get their kids vaccinated then we're going to get rid of this okay january's here forget the numbers forget anything else that you had every parent who wants the kid vaccinated has had that opportunity it's time to get back to free choice and we act like we act like this math man it doesn't have any effect on our kids go study google it there are plenty of studies to show it has very negative effects on learning especially for young kids vocabulary bonding with their teacher bonding with their fellow classmates you can't see those facial expressions so i would hope that you would uh keep

091mass choice as the policy going forward secondly i'm here because you know i'm suing you uh over requiring the mask here in these meetings um you know if you decide to go back to having a math maintenance schools you don't have to have one here at this meeting you can separate the two policies you made exceptions even last month for like buses you have to have masks you can make exceptions for this here you could instruct your attorneys to get we could go in the mediation tomorrow was supposed to be in court at 9 30. and we can ask them for to go in the mediation and let's just forget this whole thing i urge you to do so thank you [Applause] i guess you didn't come okay i'm sorry um next up is milani

092cooper and can we have coming to the front row gail major and leslie posey good evening my name is malani cooper we are here to advocate for our children and put an end to school suspensions for four to seven-year-old children with the exception of gun or drugs each of you before me has an opportunity to change the path of the children who were wrongfully suspended for minor behavioral infractions we are essentially suspending those who still believe in santa claus in my opinion you all should be on the naughty list and should have to work for the same wages that you want to pay to teach his assistants this policy is intentional and deliberate desegregation is the process of ending separation of two groups however we can see by the numbers that we live under this

093legalized caste system and is still in effect by permitting this policy you are contributing to the school prison pipeline which overwhelmingly suspends 60 percent of the 18 percent of black and brown children who attend schools in new hanover county it's 2022 when are you going to do something new it's a scary and dangerous place to live in when your privilege gets you off for murder after firing ar-15 but a believer of santa claus receives a school suspension for behaving like a child in this oppressive climate this is a moral issue dr king's dream has not been fulfilled and it doesn't make any sense and one two three four five six seven eight get it together and stop the nonsense [Applause] um please make your way to the front miss gail major leslie posey and yolanda

094hernandez so that i can see that you're here and ready to go okay um robert bellamy and barbara anderson okay go ahead good evening my name is alicia ogundelli let's talk about student behavior policy in your manual it states that the policy established in a system that ensures the equitable treatment of all students data from the new hanover county school communication office shows that out of school suspension part of the system is indeed broken in the 2018 2019 school year 59 percent of the elementary students were white only and they only made up 21 of the suspensions and 12 no excuse me 18 of the elementary students were black 18 percent of the elementary students were black and they represented 60 percent of suspensions that is not an equitable treatment the policy also states that

095consequences for unacceptable behavior will be designed to help a student learn to comply with rules to be respectful to be responsible for his or her behavior and to develop self-control how exactly are four five six and seven-year-olds learning about rules respect and responsibility and self-control when they now have been kicked out of school the answer is they're not the faster way to fix the problem is revise the policy 4300 and keep our youngest students in school so that their mistakes become teachable moments in out of school suspension for four five six and seven year olds except for guns drugs or violent assaults by you ignoring those that are most effective by students that are this is a policy effects means that you are not sick okay well that's fine too keep our kids in school

096thank you um so miss major you will be next is leslie posey here okay is yolanda hernandez here robert bellamy okay barbara anderson okay stacy kitt okay no stacy kit okay um reverend reginald pickett see here you can make your way to the front um merrit blaylock okay rob rocky jeter webb the michael fox sonia patrick okay you can make your way to the front all right miss major thank you for waiting good evening everyone um i'm gail major i did want to introduce myself because i do see that we have some teachers here and i'm very happy to see that i want them to know that i'm the child advocate for new hanover county representing parents teachers children and the community i'm here today to talk about the curriculum i think the last email

097that i sent to all of you including a couple of members of the commissioners was december 3rd it was pretty loaded it was pretty direct a lot of different things on data curriculum many other things but what i'm doing with the curriculum now is working with other counties within north carolina that present to you which i did i put out a hand to speak to you in person to present to you the research and documentation that we have a lot of it comes from the curriculum that we have questions on with the budget and so on so now the commissioners are all aware because i've been to a couple of their meetings that's why you haven't seen me the last few months so there is a large amount in the community that are looking to

098bring you together with us and if you choose not to we are going directly to the commissioners they are aware of that we have every right to that we will take apart the budget the budget is not only here in new hanover county you talked a little bit about it ms dr faust about the state what about the money that's coming in from washington dc to education we're done 2022 is going to be in you in the sense of we will show you that we have a voice and you will listen to us i think it's an election year so please keep that in consideration too please thank you next we have reginald [Applause] he should show up okay um mr jeter webb can you make your way to the front please and reverend pick

099it sorry musical chairs greetings school suspension in 1712 willie lynch a slave owner writes to all his slave owner friends along the james river virginia about how to bring the order and the annihilation of all the slaves that they considered to be their property it gave them the best means and information of how to bring these people to a desolated end even to the point where they taught them how to burn their children alive it is written he who controls the past controls the present he who controls the present controls the future we cannot allow the grim reality of our past to dictate the present or it will surely destroy the future of our children suspension from education promotes mass incarceration ask me how no because i was a victim of school suspension it led

100me to my first crack pipe smoke it led me to my first drink of alcohol it led me to my first education of child molestation school suspension without the proper supervision will lead to a society of degradation so i leave here with a thought in my heart today will the new hanover county board of education vote on a bill or an amendment that will cause the lynching of a social society of our babies i bid you today and not only this board but i challenge every mother and every father to come together with this boy that we might get together on one accord for when we began to come together on the court your time is up thank you school suspension must end um is jeter rocky jeter you're up um is michael fox did

101he show up um then april farr and josie barnhart you can make your way to the front i'm sorry go ahead thank you how many lies have y'all told the public and students of public schools what science says children are at risk of catching covet and that mass work why is critical race theory being secretly implemented into our schools when it's based on a lie why is the sheriff department blocking us and against us from entering the building to exercise our constitutional rights why is the board of education scared of public criticism why are public schools getting the shots and trying to force them on children why did newharver county sell out the health and freedom of our children for 57 million dollars again 57 million dollars all these questions still have no answers if

102i'll spend time doing actual research you would know children pose little to no risk of catching coping if y'all did actual research you would know children pose excuse me you wouldn't know that children are more likely to be struck by lightning than catching covet have you never read a medical book have you never read a history book or are you just an elected bureaucrat hungry for power either start listening to us follow the science and not the scientists do your research or get ready to lose your seats in the next election section keep the mask off of our children let's go brent next up um sonia patrick um if we can have um josie barnhart melissa mason and morgan wallace make their way to the front thank you my name is sonya bennett and patrick

103i currently chair the national black leadership carcass our membership consists of public officials faith-based leaders sorority fraternities retired educators and i stand before you to end school suspension for ages four through seven except in the events of drugs or guns gun violence live in an institutionalized racist system they've had ins they've had school suspensions from four to seven since i was in new hanover county and i have adult children and grandchildren in this system we cannot change the past but we can look forward to a better future for all children because we know that our african-american children are grossly impacted by by school suspensions from four to seven it leads to mass incarceration and school to prison pipelines we cannot change the past but everyone today this board can change for a better future let's

104work together better for new hanover county and a better new hanover county board of education system by ending school suspensions from four to seven thank you for listening okay next up april for hello i'm april farr and i'm just here tonight wondering if those of you who so passionately and vehemently advocated and pushed to make mass optional and our schools are surprised when covet infections increase [Music] judging from the lack of mass on most of law enforcement here tonight it's safe to assume that they're not wearing mass in our schools either do you think that contributes to covet infections thank you next up josie barnhart [Applause] good evening first i'd like to address the call to audience i would propose that the call to audience be combined back into one period for board meetings out

105of respect for our public um one of the things that i think that needs to change is the first come first serve sign up basis so i'd like for us to think about that in addition i think that people can sign up to not only speak but to sign up to transfer their time so that one individual could have an opportunity to speak for 10 or 15 minutes having a longer more in-depth speech but representing dozens of our community members that deserve to be heard now another thing is on to quarantines in october of this year quarantined protocols changed such that school nurses were not issuing them because some of them were issuing kids quarantines for 21 days that is absurd for education looking over our data from october of 2020 to june of 21

106roughly 1.4 percent of india individuals placed into quarantine actually got coveted that was over a 10-month period when a vaccine was not readily available tonight i'm asking that schools remove themselves from forcing quarantines on children without symptoms that have been exposed while i encourage families who are sick to stay home and keep their sick kids home the health department will notify families and they will figure out the protocols that they need to proceed forward the updated north carolina tool kit that allows for medical discrimination of different quarantine protocols for those who are unvaccinated and vaccinated as well as they don't mention the natural antibodies providing subpar education for anybody who is not fully vaccinated unvaccinated or has natural antibodies is downright discrimination and it's not acceptable the learning loss created by mandating quarantines of healthy

107kids needs to stop and i'm asking you to do that tonight we are not even measuring how much spread that we are actually eliminating in our county with that being said i hope that you make what is best decision as far as education goes because our kids deserve to be in school learning all of them regardless of their medical status thank you [Music] [Applause] hi i'm melissa mason and i'm here to talk about two things changing the current quarantine policy and some misinformation that was spread to the media um first the quarantine policy as of right now children are being placed under quarantine as josie said some 21 days most of them for 10 to 14 days in recent decisions the cdc changed their recommendations from 10 to 14 to 5. there was also discussion

108regarding a negative covid test allowing for a return sooner i propose that we use these protocol since they have been recommended by the cdc according to recent studies the omicron variant is much weaker than previous variants and according to our data here in new hanover county there have been zero hospitalizations of children this virus isn't going to go away but our students need to return to a stable and normal routine our children have already missed too much school secondly misinformation i want to address that because we were sent out a survey beginning of december as parents whether we were interested in a vaccine clinic being offered at the various schools if you are unaware of the questions i would recommend you seek them out the last question was kind of the most concerning to me

109and it was what time of day do you prefer to schedule the vaccine there were two choices morning and afternoon there was no third option of i don't want this that put out a red flag to me and when i read the article that said that all 612 responses to the survey expressed interest in a vaccine clinic lots of red flags went up i know and have talked to many parents who do not want this honesty and integrity do not look like this thank you morgan wallace i'm morgan wallace i'm a 10 year employee of new hanover county i worked in the cardiovascular icu for five years i was your last line in a fence with covid we ran your heart and lungs outside your body with your chest open while you're bleeding on the

110floor and what i realized was that patients were needlessly dying because of government's withheld policies for treating covid everyone who died with covid should be considered murdered early treatment has always been affected i walked out of the hospital on the mandate day i have my own practice and i am the only person in town treating coveted patients prior to hospitalization i also watched the entire staff at the hospital including in my unit get vaccinated and then get covered amongst all kinds of other ailments you have now loaded your body with millions of spike proteins and you are a ticking time bomb for cancer blood clots and whatever kind of ailment may come up in your body and i'm tired of hearing people go and ask doctors can they be treated for covet and their only

111option is a vaccine or go home or go into the hospital we are not going to make it out i will be happy to treat any one of you for covid prior going to the hospital because early treatment has always worked i'm a member of the flccc alliance nc physicians for freedom and the medical freedom summit and i would choke i would ask god please stop choosing fear and putting mask on our kids the vaccine is not going to work early treatment has always worked and government mismanagement of patients is why people have died and families have realized this and they are rising up and they are going to come after governments and the hospital i was highly decorated and highly respected at new hanover i was the november 2020 employee of excellence and i

112had a job opportunity this year from the chief medical director at the hospital and i chose to walk out and stand up for what is right so putting these masks on our kids is not going to help nor is vaccination and we all need to realize that it is out the cat is out of the bag and people are speaking globally including the inventor of the vaccine okay that concludes our call to the audience section of the meeting next we will move on to consensus items personnel report do i have a motion to amount of chair i move to approve the consensus items is there a second okay the uh mr wildeboard or miss walker either one okay give it to pete okay he's a grandfather now congratulations forgot to mention that um so um

113all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed okay next on our agenda um we're into old business policies for second reading so um is are there any that we need to pull out or is there a motion to accept as presented madam chair uh before you you have the policies discussed during the november 9th policy committee meeting i have not heard anything from board members about anything in particular that they would like to discuss so unless there is objection i would ask for a motion to pass these policies as listed do you want are you making the motion i would ask for the motion okay you're not going to make the motion i'll move to pass these as listed okay is there a second okay okay um we'll give that to mr mcmanus um

114all in favor say aye any opposed okay those are all approved next our agenda covet update like to invite ms barnum to the podium please good evening i want to introduce miss carla turner and mr david howard mr howard is our health director with new hanover county health and human services and ms turner is the assistant health director good evening thank you for having us i'm just going to take a few minutes to uh share some of the metrics that were impacted in the county the data from i get the transmission uh mini transmission from the cdc uh the majority of the rest of my data comes from north carolina dhhs and then um our data from hospitalization comes from our our communications with the hospital so i just want to let you know though

115okay so for the week of december 24th through december 30th we had 1 121 positive cases in new hanover county and i picked that week because we do a weekly trend and i've i've sent that to julie kind of late so she if she hasn't been able to get that to the board members we can get that to you um we do our trends friday through thursday our weekly trend graphs are put together so for that week and we'll have another one that will come out this coming friday for the week we're in right now but for that week we had 1 121 positives in so according to north carolina dhhs as of today i checked at lunchtime today uh the positivity rate for our county is 20.6 uh in the hospital uh hospital patients

116who are cope with positive as a as of yesterday uh there were 57 patients in the hospital with coping six were in icu and five were on ventilators now i do want to compare that uh you know we are in the middle of omicron right now compare that to delta back on august 25th um at that point when we were in the midst of delta the hospital had 111 people admitted for covid 28 in the icu and 27 on ventilators so david's going to kind of speak to that in a little while um as far as deaths we've had three deaths in the last seven days so we've had a total of 305 deaths since the beginning of covet back in march of 2020 um and according to the cdc and this is no surprise

117our community transmission rate is high the whole state the whole state of north carolina is high um but i do want to just give you some information on on vaccinations by age so as you know the cdc has just now the fda has had recommended posters for the 12 to 15 year old group and the cdc how now has to approve that and when that will be able to move forward but as of today our five to 11 age range we have 19 of that population fully vaccinated which means two doses of pfizer um 12 to 17 49 18 to 24 41 and then i pulled a couple of other categories for our for your staff um age ranges 25 to 49 we've got a 64 vaccination rate fully vaccinated and a 50 to 64

11850 to 64 year olds we have a 73 vaccination vaccination rate now for our county as a whole um five years old and greater uh 62.9 of the county is fully vaccinated and i do want to say that fully vaccinated is still either the two of a full series of modern pfizer which is two shots or the one johnson johnson the booster shot has not been incorporated into the definition of fully vaccinated at this time um so that's kind of the metrics and i'm going to let david kind of talk to some of those points happy new year um so as carla mentioned we are operating under the belief that uh the vast majority of cases we're seeing are that has spread very rapidly across the country in in the in the world really and

119uh is spread very rapidly across north carolina and here locally um bbc does that on a randomized very um strategic basis and they're telling us that i think a week and a half ago we were at 70 percent at least uh omicron and by now we're probably close to 90 plus um someone said i can't hear him um we're having if you can just hang on for a minute we're having a little bit of a technical difficulty okay you're muffling huh yeah i think you're getting some muffling through maybe zoom yeah some reverb or something maybe okay how's this yeah better okay so yeah omicron seems to be certainly the dominant variant that we're seeing uh case count and percent positive uh seems to be quite high um as carl indicated though severity indicators uh

120hospitalizations um numbers in icu elderly uh presented [Music] better [Music] i think we're losing them again i think we're losing you again it's not that we can't it's not your mask it's the i think it's the connection no you're kind of crackling okay try again you wanna try again is this any better yes okay so i'll um i'll just i'm just wanting to run across some of the impacts uh that you have to consider your specific environment in circumstances for the school system of course i also want to point the board to the updated cdc guidance which north carolina healthy and services and we locally have adopted the what we're calling the five plus five uh isolation and quarantine guidance uh if you haven't looked at that that's an important document to review um functionally

121they are when i say today cdc has indicated they're they're leaning toward considering uh being boosted as fully vaccinated the reason i say that is because the guidance for isolation quarantine provides some differentiation for a person who is boosted when they're eligible so it's actually just today they went from six months to five months from a during over five measure or within uh two months after the jj um so please review that and consider that in terms of your decision making the other impacts for your population i think really comes down to uh your operational realities and staff and bus drivers teachers crusades et cetera and the in the potential impacts of the omicron spread we are not seeing the severity of illness with omicron but as i've heard many times and have read many

122times a small percentage of a very large number of cases is still a pretty large number whether you're talking about um hospitalizations but also persons having to be out with an illness uh with omicron or some other illness so that could impact your operations if um if you experience a lot of cases when you come back to session when uh go back to school and a lot of teachers teachers aid staff and children have to be out sick other than that we're open to questions i'll just point out again that some of the guidance we try to give you is really around your environment not necessarily applicable to the entire community you have a very large operation to run and we'll answer any questions specific to your your circumstances and as i mentioned i've got

123the we have the the new cdc isolation quarantine guidance here if you have specific questions about that what that means we can try to look at that and answer those questions as well um thank you mr howard so would you prefer to have mr wilbur asked this question and then you go or you want to you want to hold is it you want to hold it or you want it yeah that's fine you just ask for questions okay go ahead mr woodward okay oh well you you had mentioned and i had asked this question last month also about the number of hospitalizations how many of those are in the 18 and under uh age group so how many of them would actually be our students did we get that demographic uh we don't get it

124broken down hey hey mr little boy we don't get that broken down to that level from the data that we get from the hospital i can't tell you mr world of war we've been told by the hospital they've seen an increase can you hold for one second we are not calling out from the audience please you're being disrespectful for all of us to try to listen and make a decision i'm sorry mr howard i'm sorry the um the hospital has told us they've seen an increase in positive census uh patients in missions of uh 18 and under which they consider pediatrics but again they're not seeing a great deal of severity so the reasoning for that is not necessarily explained it may simply because we've done a good job of protecting them up until now

125it may be because the coupled with the fact that the unicron variant seems to be transmitting very easily and rapidly uh and so it's it's covering the entire population quite easily and if i could follow up with the second question i've been in contact with the county commissioners and they said a lot of these numbers are skewed simply because they've held vaccination or or testing they did 700 last week so is that is there a truth to that that a lot of these numbers are skewed not the hospitalization necessarily but the number of tests and positive are skewed number one because a lot of people have been traveling but also because of the vaccination or not vaccination but testing protocols that the county has done well i'll say um to some degree the the waxing

126and waning of positivity rates um is definitely going to go up uh day to day that's why those figures that we use is a 14 day running average so what you're hearing is an average over the past 14 days as opposed to a few days or even just one week the positivity rate you see on the cdc tracking page their their their dashboard is a seven day average we use a 14 well as i say that but um i i don't think i got to answer my question i have from a county commissioner here that over 700 people were tested just last week at their their their testing site that they did uh and those numbers feed into your numbers so that would you know if we had 700 additional tests that we were given

127uh that would feed into that whole number would it not i would say we actually did just under 600 tests at that drive-in site that we did at our annex mr littlebore and of those about 25 of them came back positive okay right that's correct um and so and every bit of that data that we get goes into the state website so that is fed uh up to the state and so that is placed into their rolling 14 day average on the ncdhhs website well thank you okay um ms barnum would you like to jump in yeah thank you all hang on just in case we need you again i certainly want to thank carla and david for joining us i want to bring your attention back to your item on um assembly where you

128have the supporting documents at the bottom you have a link or supporting links the first link is the new hanover county schools coveted dashboard of course we don't have any updates for this week because we haven't had students in since the 17th and those data are there but if you go into that dashboard you will find there's a link at the top for precautions and the toolkit sits there and it's a live link yes and clicking on that goes to the updated precautions that we have for schools but then at the top of that the toolkit is there and then the county dashboard that has been referred to is that next link miss billy could you pull that up would you click on that link for us please i just wanted um people on the

129board in case you haven't had a chance to really look at that or people in the audience at home who are watching and you um have questions on how to find the data that we're talking about and the information quickly then i just wanted you to see that um so this is what you'll see and the items in red are the items that um have been changed as of december 30th actually if you click on the the blue link you'll see the items in red that are changed and this is the state's toolkit that has adopted the cdc recommendations thank you okay so is that it yes okay so does any all right miss justice okay i'm looking at this right now and they're doing they're and they're they're having information on mass which is

130absolutely important um now they did the cdc did come out with a change in quarantine and i haven't had a chance to look through all this the toolkits update has toolkit been updated to reflect and are we also now reflecting the fact that the quarantine is no longer going to be the 10 days but now five yes okay in this tool kit um on page and i did not bring my glasses so much 16 page 16 through 17 it goes through or 15 through 16. it goes through the different um variations of the type of either covet exposure diagnosis or symptoms and based on vaccination status or type of exposure the amount of time thank you very much and that's a really helpful chart yeah um to look at looking forward to doing that mr

131wildebore just want to make sure first off happy new year thank you for everything you're doing um so the new covid positive uh for the week of 2012 17 21 we had 41 cases uh total is that correct i don't have the dashboard with me but if we can go back whatever's on the dashboard is correct okay so we already went 41 cases out of and you said we are at 24 000 students so by my number that's 0.00017 so okay thank you i just want to make sure i have my numbers in front of me thank you and um to clarify that do you recollect at all how many quarantines those 41 cases led to so if we scroll um over on here if we can scroll to the right into that final week

132so i can see that total right there is that 100. so we have 100 exposures or quarantines due to exposure at school again these are school exposures that we're measuring but not just not community exposure where they just have it and they're out of school right okay and i can't see on that and my computer's not scrolling is that students or is that total cases within our school system total it's a combination of students and staff okay are there any more questions for um miss farnam or for miss turner or mr howard [Music] okay thank you so much thank you thank you okay so next on our agenda is the state required vote um regarding masks in the schools um do i hear a motion i so move uh i move do we delay the

133vote until after the new hanover county hhs meeting later this month which i believe is on the 18th they'll be meeting at 8 o'clock on that day and i think we should follow their their guidance okay is there a second yeah i mean i think i think that's what we did the last time so yeah i'll second that okay is there any discussion yes miss adams i'm not going to be able to sorry i'm not going to be able to support that i believe that we need to go back to mass mandate starting with school on thursday for the safety of our students and staff miss justice obviously and there's been a lot of studies on some blood of studies because of everything moving so rapidly omicron is appears not as severe as say delta

134but on the other hand people still get it and they get sick people have to can't come to school when they're sick either the students or the staff and that's what my concern is that we've only got so many you know we've got to protect everybody protection is important but the reality is we also have to be able to have people in the classroom teaching and students in there and people in the cafeteria and if this thing is contagious as measles and i'm i live before we have vaccinations for measles it's not going to be pretty so that's what my concern is just the practicality of just being able to have the schools function under these conditions mrs grebel if i could i would like to add in there that we do have students in

135school right now our restart programs are back they started on monday and we do have staff teachers faculty in in schools right now with um doing training and um professional development so we do have people um in our buildings right now that um just pointed yes mr wildeboard and if i could share again um just a a quick thing that one of the county commissioners has asked me to share with us as we think about this think about alternatives to masking free rapid tests at schools which the county commissioners are also doing at le or at least wait for health professionals to weigh in on this and uh at their morning meeting on january 18th if not you will be acting as health professionals and that is easily challenged as none of you are just

136some food for thought also positivity rates are not what you should slowly need to be looking at because we have been testing more than normal as i mentioned before due to holidays and travel the county held a rapid test clinic last week and tested nearly 700 people all those numbers feed into the percentage numbers so you have to look at hospitalization rate and icu and i believe we were told tonight that zero percent of the students are actually in the hospital all well within and under capacity no hospital issue hope this helps so just a point of miss miss adams go ahead i'm just curious are we allowed to ask a question to that i'm curious which commissioner is sharing that information with you whose comment is that i don't i have not asked her

137if she wanted me to share that so i better not okay i mean again the county commissioners have their responsibilities our responsibility is the school system and making sure that we are making the best decisions for our students keeping our students in school being educated and if you look at the cdc if you look at the toolkit we are going to have massive quarantines if we go back in mask optional i am not saying i want to be mass mandated forever my hope would be that omicron passes quickly and by february we can come back down again that would be great what i'm saying is for right now for the way this is spreading for the amount of people that are being infected and for the amount of students that would be out of the

138classroom staff that may have to come out of the classroom we've got to do what's best to get our kids in the classroom excuse me excuse me whoever is making the comment um can i get a sheriff's deputy to the person who's talking through her megaphone she needs to be asked to leave [Music] madam chairman i do want to remind everyone that the health department last month also commented when i asked the question of the effectiveness of mass they said and i uh quoted 20 he said that was yeah that was probably about right so we're talking about something that might at best be 20 effective so 80 percent ineffective um yes um mr mcmanus oh i'm sorry go ahead okay miss walker i just wanted to add to the mask issue you cannot go

139to your doctors without being in mass you can't go on transit or to the airport without a mask and there's a reason for that it is not that it protects a hundred percent but it does help and so that is the only one of the only things that we have tool wise at our disposal at this time mr mcmanus um what i'm not sure everyone understands is that with a mask mandate requirement however you want to label it that only those students who tested positive are required to go home if not if there is not then everyone that is exposed has to go home if we've learned one thing in the last close to two years give or take is that our kids need to be in school i hope everybody remembers how far behind

140our students are particularly our lower socioeconomic and our priority schools god knows they need to be in school if a mass mandate keeps them in school except for those who are tested positive who in god's world doesn't want them in school we need to be proactive two weeks from now if it goes down we can revisit we can revisit tomorrow but we need to be proactive and not reactive our kids need to be in school absolutely thank you mr mcmanus all right so i heard a motion and would you please repeat your motion mister um absolutely i moved to delay the the vote until after the new hanover county hhs meeting which is on january 18th and i didn't hear a second if you did nelson second in that oh i'm sorry okay so um

141it looks like we will take a vote on that motion and um miss bowie would you please call the roll miss adams mr bullier yes miss justice no mr mcmanus no miss walker no mr wildeboard yes and ms graybill no okay so that motion did not pass um by five to two two to five okay um is there another motion that we would like to make miss justice yes i motion that we vote on whether or not to continue the mask i suppose that we've continued that we've reinstalled we put the mask mandate back in place in the schools until next month's vote again so your your motion is to have masks mandatory in the schools effective wednesday tomorrow okay yes thank goodness the kids aren't i shouldn't put it together in school i know

142i've got one in school but i mean the majority of the kids aren't so they will have notice okay is wednesday enough time the next day thursday thursday thursday's fine okay all right so can you would you add that to your emotions i'd add that to the motion uh yeah thursday although i would think i really wish people would put these masks on when they're doing that okay so your your motion is to um return to mask mandatory effective thursday january i mean january the 6th yes okay is there a second to that motion stephanie adams seconded um is there any more discussion ms crayville yes i'm sorry we have clarification as to whether or not uh that motion would apply to all school system buildings i believe yes let me let me ask judy

143miss justice if she would consider adding this that it applies indoors in all schools and school settings and at school related events um indoors and that that includes sports that do not that is it's not a hazard like swimming and wrestling would be exempt but basketball would not would you be interested in um adding that to your motion that's absolutely fine the more protection the better okay i'm sorry could you repeat that okay so the motion is to go mask mandatory effective thursday january the 6th for all indoor pre-k through 12. can i add that miss justice prequel that would be a given no it's not a given we just need to state that oh we'll go right in okay for all indoor events in school and school settings and in any school building it

144would include athletic events for spectators athletes on the bench and athletes that it is not a safety hazard to have a mask on point of clarification so you're saying like a basketball player say we have a team that comes in from pender we're going to require the pender team also to wear a mask in basketball say girls basketball i'm sorry can i just yeah amend that to let our athletes at least participate on a neutral playing field let our athletes be without masks what was our stance before i we've already discussed this once um and i it was my under impression that our athletes were exempt um except when sitting on the bench so in the past we followed the north carolina high school athletic association guidance and then at for this school year the

145north carolina high school athletic association association left it up to the districts based on their mass mandate determination or mass determination so at last when masks were required within school settings regarding athletics um they masks were not required for wrestlers on the mat as that would be dangerous were not required for swimmers in the pool as that makes no sense but were being used by other other indoor sports but exterior sports because we didn't have an outdoor mask requirement did not apply and you know the fact is to be fair if they are coming from other school districts they should have to follow the same policy that you know there are that our athletes do i know this isn't scientific but i play yeah that's a good question what's the question the question was um

146are visiting athletes required to follow our rules i don't know um on the one hand i think we could set the policies for our own buildings i mean that'd be my initial thought but i've not looked in that question what are you gonna do when they they show up and they don't have mass on you're gonna give them too much i mean come on it's getting a little ridiculous all right i'm miss miss justin if you want to add that to the motion then you wanna stream well that they outside anybody from the outside that comes into our building should follow our school policies and that would be including the athletes except for those exemptions things like well we don't have any swimming pools but the wrestling okay so the motion on the floor once

147again is to require masks pre-k through 12 in all indoor settings the um and all indoor school settings which would include all of our buildings and um how do you want to present with the with the athletes with the what i'm sorry athletes the athletes and that well that all all visits visitors and that includes athletes from other school systems have to follow the rules that we sit down for um for the people that enter our buildings uh except with the exception of wrestling because that is a safety issue is that something we can enforce so i don't even know i don't know all the current sports that the district has ongoing would you consider making the motion to be masked or required for all sports for which administration determines they can be safely worn

148during athletic participation who's going to determine if they're safely worn administration that's fine with me leave it to them okay all right so let's restate the motion one more time that um mass are mandatory pre-k through 12 in all indoors in all indoor school settings um and sports would be determined by administration so yeah is that a good motion is that your is that your motion miss justice that's my motion okay and is there a second to that motion i will second that okay now is there more discussion so i would like i would like to offer an amendment to and i'll vote against it anyway but i'd like to offer an amendment to require masks in pre-k through 12 in all of our school buildings or all of our buildings with the exception of

149athletic participation when our athletes are actively participating on court or on the field i'd like them to be able to just mean athletes you don't mean the participants in the audience no that's not participation i just mean athletic participation our athletes are student athletes and athletes who are actively participating not sitting on the bench on second date okay so that's the amendment all right so that's what managed did you have a comment to that administration's out of it yeah that just sounded like that happened according to your amen okay all right so let's um let's vote on that amendment the the the amendment is basically taking out the athletes is that what the amendment was yeah okay um so and was there a second mr what about you okay while they're participating while they're on

150the bench they have to wear them correctly this is what yes yes okay yes thank you okay let's do a roll call so we have that miss justice hopefully this comes through really fast i'm talking about the emicron virus because we all want to get back to normal i mean i have kids at home i know how this is this is very painful for all of us but at this point if i remember back and i remember back too clearly that one of the biggest spread factors happened to be happening during athletics in fact they were the highest number and when you look at the counties around us this is where these clusters and strange things were going on so my concern is if the administration sees something that they feel is a safe situation

151i would prefer they do it than just giving a blanket they can leave the mass off i'm very concerned about those those those clusters and spikes that keep happening around athletics i just want to bring that up okay noted all right so ms bowie would you please call the roll this is for the amendment we read the amendment please yes please okay um i didn't write it down um the the amendment is to um um athletes participate actively participating um in their in their sport do not have to wear masks i can just repeat the whole thing i can just repeat the whole thing it is that in our buildings pre-k through 12 masks will be mandated with the exception of act active athletic participation okay so um let's vote on that okay um hold

152on so is that the amendment or is that do we have another one to vote on after that amendment if the amended language is passed we have to vote on the amendment that we have to vote on passing that amendment first then original motion okay the um so the we're voting on the amendment and mr world war ii did that so yeah we're going on the amendment right we only said you know um i'm thinking out loud we only sent the pre-k through 12 students we didn't say anything about employees um employees in the building in the building and just to be clear it means everybody it means um students staff faculty visitors volunteers persons in that building so there's no delineation like we had just before except afterwards okay so that is the motion

153it was seconded miss billy would you call the roll miss adams bullier yes miss justice no mr mcmanus yes miss walker yes mr wildeboard yes and miss craybill yes so that's five to two for the amendment correct athletes do not have to wear masks while proactively participating all right so now that we go back okay so then the first bit so we're going to go back to the original motion is that um masks are required pre-k through 12. um can i add plus employees i mean that well in the buildings in all buildings all school school settings um for indoor events so if they're in if they're there that's the original that's the original motion they're in the buildings or the buses or wherever our property except outside and remember this does apply to school

154buses um because we can't get away from that um the only the only exception to that would be um students that have and any students or employees that have accommodations correct okay so we need to make sure we added that i just i skipped over that in my notes i'm sorry we amended we amended that so now we're voting to adopt the policy we amended hers we're voting to adopt right we're clear it means accommodations right but with also with the amendment about the athletes okay all right everybody clear what we're voting on oh my god i should we should be typing it up there so we can read it okay so miss billy will you call the role ms adams hi mr bullier no miss justice yes mr mcmanus yes miss walker yes mr

155wildeboard no and miss craybill um yes yes so it's the motion passes for masking indoors um with the exception of athletes playing actively playing sports did that capture it with all of the changes and the amendments and those with those with um exemptions i know it did and i'm sorry but that one we had to go over thank you mr mcmanus um miss billy was busy writing motions and couldn't give me a time all right so um i was just gonna suggest that because i need one myself so um let's come back at 8 10. i'll give us five minutes mr mcmanus can we please come back mr mcmanus don't go to duns river falls don't do that thank you appreciate you okay so um next up on our agenda is old business um letter

156d legal services contract so dr would you take the lead please sure at a previous board meeting the board put together a committee to serve with myself in reviewing our fuse for the hiring of legal services the board members who served were myself madam president um and vice president uh craygil and walker um during that committee we went through the rfus and provided information was provided information came back and the committee unanimously recommends that we continue the legal services of barrington smith okay um hearing that recommendation do i hear a motion so move accept the legal contract so moved and do i hear a second second second okay thank you um is there any discussion miss justice uh yes um i know that we've got an awful lot on our plate right now especially when

157it comes to legal services and we had a presentation last month um part of that presentation was there were only two firms that um that gave us their different uh offers and at this point i was i mean i don't know how many of you were also impressed by both firms but um we do need legal representation february the end of this month is going to come pretty darn fast and so um i'm not quite sure how to approach this but you know i would i i this does not mean in essence that after june they are the firm that we're going to contract with correct um our policy states right now that um they we review they give us an annual review at the end of every month and uh at the end of

158every year in june and um we have the option to renew contracts okay and right now we're not contracting we're months to months if i'm correct okay well i actually then because there's some things that have gone on in the last couple years that have caused a lot of people to question including me this is one of the reasons we had the request to have um pres well other other situations looked at as far as legal services and um i personally think we probably do need to stay month to month and i as i said i was impressed with the other firm and this firm also but there was only two choices and it was almost i'm not sure the exact process to reaching out to other legal services but i would like to continue

159this month to month and continue to possibly have another offer or look out there to see what else there is for us or to go ahead and talk about having a decision between the two firms the notion on the table is to accept farrington smith's um versus the other um the other entities oh okay the motion was just made so that is what we that is what we're discussing the way okay the way it was present presented i was not clear on that okay so the motion that that was made was that we accept dr faust's recommendation to um go with farrington smith that motion was seconded so are there any more comments about accepting the um contract as presented uh well now that that's clarified i understand i i would prefer not to just

160because of the past conflict of interest and it was a conflict of interest there's a lot of discussion about whether it was or not i still have some reservations to the fact the fact that they have uh they're covering legal services for the insurance company and they're also handling that case and i know the public has also so um i would prefer not to from the past situation not to have them have our contract i would i would like to have the discussion well that's just where we have to leave it right now because this is a motion for this particular firm okay but i i i did not do not feel considering our history that this is a wise move are there any other comments to that i just clear okay hearing oh that

161just clarifies still it's told you it's from now until june that's what it says and the contract is post online that we all had the opportunity to read and look um but it was definitely it starts on february the 1st of 2022 and it ends june 30th 2022. so if there's no more comments um miss billy would you call the roll please miss adams aye mr bullier aye ms justice no mr mcmanus yes miss walker yes mr wildeboard yes and miss crayville yes okay so that motion to um accept barrington smith as our legal counsel officially under contract um february 1st through june the 22nd i mean through june of 2022 um is approved um six to one okay moving on to our next item we have um policies for first reading madam chair thank

162you very much before you you see the policies that the board discussed on december 7th at our i'm sorry on december 14th on our policy committee meeting this is for information only there was not a request from a board member to pull one out and discuss it further so absent any discussion now these are for information only they will be available for a month for the public to review and comment on okay thank you mr um bullier moving on to the next item policy 20 21 20 review last month we broadly discussed policy 20 20 21 20 and board members had the opportunity to talk about the successes and shortcomings we have encountered and noticed over the past year recently has been discovered that the integrity of our board has been called into question with

163some action of one of our board members and i feel like and i feel the need to address it quickly and move forward miss justice it has been alleged that you violated the board member code of ethics by sharing confidential personnel information with individuals who were not legally entitled to receive that information therefore i am making the motion to the the board hold a hearing at a special called meeting on a date to be determined to determine whether the board by majority vote wishes to adopt a resolution censoring board member judy justice based on allegations that she shared information protected by the personnel privacy statutes applicable to boards of education in specifically general statute 115c dash 319 and 321 and is therefore violated policy 2120 code of ethics for board members specifically subsection b6 which

164requires board members to respect the confidentiality of information that is privileged under applicable law and to refrain from unauthorized disclosure of matters discussed in closed session do i hear a second i'll say i'll second the motion okay is there any discussion uh miss justice uh obviously since this is directed at me this is a matter of personnel and this is something we should not be discussing in public and that is what you're actually bringing up so i do believe that we shouldn't have discussion we already have and i think we should continue to have discussion um this justice to be clear was not about a personnel issue the the motion that i made was in response to a behavior that you did so that is the motion on the table the motion is connected to

165a personnel issue and it has to be discussed in closed session that is what the law says and i do believe that it successfully can be discussed in closed session and there is no reason that we should have to have violations in public occurring and that's i totally agree with that so that's where i am right now we need to be we're going to have these kinds of discussions we need to be doing it in closed session mr shaw is there anything that i need to um if the board does have the hearing does vote to hold the hearing the scope of the hearing would need to be carefully crafted so that that confidential information was not shared because i have not shared any confidential information here so um are there any more points of

166discussion for the motion and the second all right miss bowie would you please call the roll miss adams aye mr bullier aye ms justice no mr mcmanus miss walker no mr wildeboard aye ms craybill aye so that motion passes five to two um so now what we need to decide that's why i asked you to bring your calendars we need to select a date and the date that i am proposing is friday january the 14th at 11 o'clock how does everyone's calendar look for that the whole day on the 14th i would like to do it during the week of january the 10th um want to give miss justice plenty of time to um prepare for the hearing and and and myself as well could we do the 13th then it's the 13th i'm sorry

167i didn't do that properly but no we can't do this we can't do the 11th through the 13th uh we can do the 11th but it has to be um between um one and four okay dr faust excuse me mrs let me just finish for a minute um the dr faust is only available until the until four o'clock at the latest on the 11th and he's out of town um at a superintendent's conference until the 13th so the 14th would be the earliest if you're required to be there he is not required to be there but i would like for him to be there okay will you say the 10th then the the 10th is a monday is anybody checking on the 10th mr go ahead and check your calendar as well i have something

168to i can change it you can don't miss people looking at their calendars i mean while people are looking at their calendars i would like to ask mr shive a question how is it possible to craft this kind of discussion in public without bringing up content that will identify the people that are involved in this situation between now and the hearing date i imagine that you'll be provided with the format for the hearing and you will have an opportunity to argue to the board why you should not be censured based on the conduct alleged but the content of the issue is relevant so you imagined right i will provide as soon as i get information on how to conduct that meeting i will provide everybody the procedure um so that we know what our roles

169are and um miss justice will have the opportunity to respond to this allegation and to argue why the board should not adopt a resolution to censure her and miss justice if you have um particular things that you'd like to say about the uh about a confidential personnel matter then you can share that with a board in closed session in closed session yes well i have my rights also and i this this you know to be able to come out in public without being able to present information that is very relevant to this situation does not make any sense that's very one-sided and that has to do with my rights also i don't want to have anybody's rights harmed and that's why i said this needs to be in closed session i cannot see how covering

170the rights of both parties and you are representing the board remember that the rights of both parties to be protect point of order please speak respectfully um respectful so um it miss justice we have we have taken our vote and we will have the hearing we need to just have a date and um the procedures will be outlined and the person who um whose personnel privacy was violated may or may not um want that discussed and that will be part of the procedure so um can we get back to the question on picking a date um mr willerboard to your point um the the 10th at 4 p.m is the county commissioner's meeting that um dr faust needs to be at and um i would like to be at because that's where we're going to

171be talking about you know some budgeting issues and so i would like to be there so that four o'clock would not be okay at nine a.m does anybody mind doing in the morning is this on the 10th i can't make it out of town the 14th was a good day that's i mean the um miss adams what is your availability on the 14th none we're that day starts at here a.m can we do first thing in the morning no i can't okay can we do um what what is your last we can always move it to the 17th i would rather not have this this um hearing as part of our um regularly scheduled interim meeting that's i'm sorry the holiday can't do it i can do it at three can anybody do three o'clock

172on friday the 14th that'll work for me yeah it'll be fine three o'clock friday the 14th my apologies board members for my literally that's like the only day that week that's insane for me so okay so 3 p.m and it'll it will be here and it will be you know if that's an open meeting it will be open to the public yes yeah um because we will be do and and to um and colin minister schneid maybe you can let us know that whenever we're talking and confirm if i am understanding this correctly when we are talking about behavior and actions of a board member that has to be in open session that's right and that's why we're doing this open meetings law specifically states that it's impermissible for the board to discuss the performance

173of a a board member in closed session okay so so that that is why we're handling it um in this manner all right okay so um are we at ten minutes miss billy okay so then we are ready to move on well excuse me we are ready to move on you were done you were you went over you are over time miss justice i am running the meeting and is my prerogative we are over time so you don't want to specify no i don't want to discuss anymore we're going to have a hearing to discuss all of that specify so we're just going to move on okay so now we are on to um information one to one miss brinson would you come up and talk to us please good evening so come again to

174give you an update um where we are with the one to one oh i'm doing it aren't they [Laughter] okay so i want to share the implementation schedule i believe there's been some some questions but i want to make sure everybody understands how we're going to implement so this year 21 22 we're choosing new hanover high school in laney high school for the 22-23 school year it'll be all the remaining high schools including the early colleges mosley rowe and central office 23 24 will be all middle schools 24 25 will be grades three through five and 25 26 will be grades k2 that is the fifth year so that would also be the first recycling of the first year as well so you'll be doing k2 as well as then the new hanover and laney

175okay so i just want to talk to you about devices so in with the one-to-one we will be issuing laptops to students grades k through 12 and ipads for grades i'm sorry laptops for grades 3 through 12 and ipads for k2 we will also be installing a new line interactive board in every classroom similar to the boards that we have at blair and college park okay so those will be installed in every classroom as part of this process our existing devices that we have so when we enter we distribute the new devices at new hannover and laney we will take the existing laptops and the existing ipads from those two schools repurpose them at other schools that are going to be in the implementation in future years that will allow us to have increased devices

176in the whole district it'll allow teachers to then as we even do the second year of the high school and increase more devices going out it allow other grades to start planning better for one-to-one because there'll be more devices in those schools so it'll help now with testing and assessments as well as help you know with the planning for future one-to-one rollout we also have ordered additionally a thousand ipads which have come in and 700 laptops that we will be distributing this year to the other schools that are not getting the one to one this year as just additional devices in the district which will stay in the district you know until we roll out the one-to-one so we're just trying to increase the number of devices because of the assessments and we're hearing the

177need as well as making sure that we are repurposing devices that are still working so we get all the life out of them okay and that is that's my update there any questions thank you this is going to be an awesome project over the next couple years i'm looking forward to it i think they won't all be obsolete by the time we and start going again but thank you thank you thank you mrs prince thank you okay um next on our agenda is the esser budget summary is that mary hazel it is hello hello um i am going to rely on um mrs billy to pull up the presentation for me if you would thank you so tonight i'm going to provide a brief update on the federal recovery funds that we have received today

178and what we spent and our next steps regarding updating um updating changes to to the plan going forward next slide please so um we have had we talk a lot about esser because most of the funding is esser but we have had several different sources of coveted relief and um this chart shows they all together total 99 million and um since the beginning of the pandemic so the first two items the covid 19 supplemental funds and the coronavirus relief fund which was federal cares act funding have been spent the governor's emergency relief fund has been um have a look at my notes here we've spent 43 of that but we expect to finish that by by september of this year that was specifically um geared towards additional mental health and classroom support the next three

179large allotments were an esser for three different federal grants esther one two and three and that is making up most of the 99 million and that is what we'll be discussing in more detail tonight so next slide um you can see here this just representing you know the blue part of that previous slide um there are um three different um federal acts that that created the esser funding and why that's why we have sr one two and three so they they kind of have all most of the guidelines are very similar um there was one special provision in sr3 that we can talk about um related to um to one aspect of how how the money had to be spent but the money came kind of in waves um with the the first wave expiring

180um in september of 22 the second and 23 and sr 3 and 24. so the plan is to spend kind of first in first out so the funding will last through the 23-24 school year with a couple months to just make sure all the bills are paid so um the i want to make sure i don't miss telling you anything about this so the um there are 16 grants in this 92 million 92.7 million that you see here 16 grants but three of them um make up most of the money and and that's where the board has the most flexibility the other grants are directed by dpi in the legislature as to how we we use those funds so we still submit a budget and have a plan but they kind of tell us how

181we have to spend it so that works just a little bit different um the we still expected to receive some more of those directed grants one will be used to pay the bonuses in january we don't know the exact amount because every every county is figuring out what the state directed as our bonuses what the total cost will be and then we'll receive an allotment to cover that and that will be paid this month next slide please so narrowing it down to the the three esser programs um and and the program numbers are listed there just to kind of help me keep it straight but this is the the ninety percent of the total um ester funding that was allotted to school systems um and that is showing us you know how much was allotted

182and how much we spent so we spent 58 spent or encumbered 58 percent of extra one 61 percent of us are two and three percent of our sr3 and and i've um that three percent seems really low but i didn't want that to alarm you because that is the intent most of that will be spent in the the second and the third years so um so now we're going to dig a little bit deeper into how we are spending that funding next time um you've seen this before um from when we originally um brought our proposals to you these are the the um categories of allowable uses for esser funds um when our on the previous side we were talking about the federal acts you know one of the acts was the arp the american

183recovery act that funded sr3 and you know counties and cities are receiving those funds and their arp funds are different than ours ours come to us through this elementary and secondary schools emergency reserve so so this we have to spend it in these ways so there are a lot of options on how we can spend it um clearly addressing you know learning loss facility repairs and improvements to minimize virus transmission improving air quality addressing needs of special populations improving preparedness and response education technology mental health services summer learning and then other esser eligible activities i think what i really um what that another way to say that is those other activities are all the things that would normally be allowable in title funding that we receive from the federal government so anything that's allowable in

184idea cte esea any of those programs would most likely be allowable in essa funding there has been some discussion about you know raises and those kinds of things being able to paid out out of this certainly you can pay employees out of this funding you just can't supplement a salary that's paid out of another funding source but you you can do bonuses as was discussed and your plan did include bonuses that were paid in december as well as the state's plan for esser funds directs use of you know those direct grants of additional bonuses to be paid this month so um specifically we go to the next slide the um these were the the category these were the initiatives that went with those categories so um the board standardized curriculum we we moved 25 elementary

185literacy coaches and added seven new middle school instructional coaches and i don't know what's up literacy they're all instructional coaches um to lead the implementation of the standardized curriculum and and just helping the students recover from from the learning loss also added three instructional coaches speech language pathologists and and three occupational specialists all serving students with disabilities added additional programs one related to a data dashboard to help you know principals and and school leaders analyze student data and a program to encourage college for every student additional positions in terms of the needs of special populations um in terms of additional social workers and counselors for students in need mental health support for physicians and contracted services and then additional nurses to make sure that we have nurses in every building to improve preparedness the next

186slide covers um educational technology expansion that uh ms brinson just gave you an update on um the the plan to to use esther funds while those funds are available to get that initiative started and then hopefully move this cost to the endowment after that um the um other s elsewhere eligible activities that we um looked at included the um the funding the esser bonus that was paid in december some after school contractor after school programming for for students in need and then um federal grants administrative the cost of ministering the grant indirect costs all fall under that and so far we have budgeted um facility improvements that included some child nutrition freezers and hvac improvements and then some ppe and disinfecting supplies but we expect which i'll talk about in the next slide to bring

187back some more um facility related improvements um if fun funding is is allowable excuse me i can't even talk if funding is available that's the word i was looking for um and also summer learning we we were required by the state legislature to have a um summer learning initiative this year um and then next year it'll be optional for us but dr faust explained earlier um tonight that that will be in our plan you know to we did budget for that to have that next summer as well um and finally the next steps um we are still in the process of monitoring analyzing our expenditures looking at the cost estimates and um one of the things that we were waiting on was the state budget so we knew we were estimating salaries for three years

188but now we have at least an idea of what what salaries are for this year and next year and once we finalize those costs and we know if there are positions that we move to federal that maybe we can move back to state and local if we can afford them this year then then we will and then that that will allow us to go a little bit further down you know our list of facility projects to to improve you know health and safety in the buildings um and then there's some other items that were submitted by um that are under consideration by senior staff um we hope to bring a an amendment to you at your inner meeting to budget some additional dollars i don't have the exact dollar amount tonight but hopefully you'll have

189it within about a week and um we do expect to include in that the um you recall from well i guess it was a couple months ago now but we deferred um three capital projects in order to fund the repairs at to fully fund the repairs at um for new hanovers brogdon hall and so the projects were put on hold one uh could you go back about five sentences and say it again because you started crackling i think it's a zoom issue but you started really going all right so i'm going to i don't know how far back i think i'm going to start when i started talking now yeah but you're doing it again um is there anything we can do anita no okay go ahead and try again it resolved itself last time

190she just started talking about you hangover [Music] is this something that you can sort of i would have to i'm not sure where she is okay did you leave me again mary hazel we're going to let eddie pick up on a little bit of what you've just been talking about if you don't mind because we can't hear you i mean we can't understand you the budget transfer that we brought to you a few months ago and it was to fully fund the brogden hall gym floor structural repairs part of the plan to fund that we had recommending had recommended at the time deferring three capital projects current capital projects laney band room hvac george west roof replacement those two projects what mary hazel is saying is they are they are eligible for esser funding and

191would be included in the recommendation coming forward and then the coddington site repair project um that it should say actually connington site improvements instead of repair but that project will be carrying forward to you and the county commissioners uh a budget transfer here shortly that will reallocate some savings in our local capital to cover that did i get it all you did can you hear me okay great thank you for stepping in appreciate it um is that all the slide number eight okay um that's the last slide um i just wanted to to mention on that last slide that there's a link to additional resource code related resources on dpi's website and we'll bring more information next month or later this month great thank you so much um hang tight from it um board members

192do we have any questions so um miss miss walker i mean i'm sorry looking right in judy uh miss justice well i have a couple questions but i'll start off with the one that you just covered um or eddie did he said that the money that was had been put on hold because of new hanover was now being covered by the extra funds how much money was that so he probably has the numbers in front of him i don't i believe um delaney band room was 85 000 and the georgia west roof oh i'm not going to remember that that was more right george west yeah the george west roof replacement was 545 000 uh laney band room uh hvac is 85 000. so what's the total of all of that those three i think

193the south three projects how much is that of the actual funds well it was roughly 600 development okay thank you we were the the the increase to the brogden hall budget was about 1.4 million to cover that there was project savings of about 250 000 and deferring projects listed below codington george west and laney at 1.2 million okay so i just heard i believe from dr faust he said that all together that was six hundred thousand from esser well george west in laney band room uh six hundred thousand okay and but now and the coddington also coddington is uh we're going to be bringing forward a budget transfer using uh local capital savings not yes sir okay so the six six hundred thousand dollars out of the answer right [Music] foreign funds to cover okay

194thank you thank you i appreciate that also i had a couple questions can we have the next person um go before the you ask more questions mr mcmanus i guess it's directed whoever will answer it uh for my own personal the question everybody wants to hear i think we cannot use escrow funds for salary supplemental is that correct you can pay salary you can pay a position in esser like you could move a position to esser and and pay for the salary and and the raise if there was one but you can't suffer to supplement funds unless you make it a vote okay you can't pay part of somebody's salary out of us or just the raised part because then when esther is gone you won't have a way to fund the position because there

195seems to be a perception amongst all of us from our constituents that other counties states et cetera are using those and so they're using it for positions and they're using it for both okay but i think the rumor is they're using it to increase their salary so that's because you answered that question i think my second question let her did you want to comment on that mary hazel that was just not that's not my understanding that that's allowable you certainly can research it with the state but that is not my understanding that so so it may just be how it's being explained but i will get clarification on that so thank you for the second half of that question so we can use escrow funds for bonus money yes and half so if i heard

196earlier to make sure i think it was misstated not intentionally 4 million to get to 17 but i think it was four million per dollar which would be eight is that correct did i understand million per dollar increase to get to 17 but i think it meant per dollar to get 17 which would be 8 million from 14. no can i can i speak to that it's four million dollars for one but to do all to fix the compressions 10 million okay of reoccurring dollars are we looking mr mcmanus can we let miss walker i mean miss um adams go and then circle back around miss adams what's up mary hazel i just want um some clarification on this because i know that again going back to what mr mcmanus was saying about the positions

197positions have been added under s or funding but i think what the public needs to understand essentially those positions have an expiration date right now they are grant funded positions that at the end of three years that funding will not be available the expectation is that there will be attrition in those positions and so those positions will be able to be retained within the district but that conversation of creating positions is has an expiration date unless there is attrition and unless we can find another place to move those positions to at another point correct correct okay or or other funding okay so those that have been hired in that position have that understanding and we're we're hired with that conversation okay and i do have a second question but i'll come back around all right

198so um miss justice did you have another question oh i'm sorry i didn't see you nelson yeah uh madam chair i just wanted to briefly i think it's you know i know somebody said tonight that they didn't feel heard and i did want to i love these questions because they are important i think people need to understand we hear everybody when it comes to salaries 86 percent of what we spend in this district goes to salaries and benefits we know that the people who are in these buildings are here for our kids and you know it's budget season for us it's begging season for the seven of us it is begging season we put on the beggar's pants we take the beggar's cup and we go to our state we go to our county we

199say please please please and you know i'm publicly committed to to doing that as long as it takes but this funding is for an emergency that is affecting second graders who can't write us yet and first graders who can't read what those second graders can't write it is to mind a very serious gap in learning loss and and that would be the oh except for those bonuses that we've discussed and i hope we can do some more of those at some point but that's really what i want to focus so that's what i want this money to be for okay i'm sorry um so now miss walker you haven't gone yet okay yeah i saw the memo from the secretary of education dated december 16th that talked about strategies for hiring retaining qualified and edu

200effective educators and one of them strategies is increasing educator and staff compensation and i know this is coming straight from the top so i i don't really know i know there's a set of rules and i've got a copy of this somewhere i actually have it right here but at the same time this memo that i mean it's dated pretty recently that talks about strategies we should be using to retain employees and bonuses is a way to do it but there's also other ways and it gives plenty of examples it's about 16 pages here of strategies for that so i i don't know i know what people are being told from certain levels but this comes right from the top so i think we really need to think about that because i personally think it

201is an emergency i really think that you know we've been hearing it time and time again and it's not i mean i've noticed the fact that we can't you know we have to have a competitive market when it comes to these jobs and appreciate the people that are there doing them and if they can go somewhere else and get a job for less stress they may do that and i don't want us to be in a position where we have to scramble to cover classes and we already have a shortage okay miss justice my questions are connected so if you're going to split them up it's going to be hard for me to get claire answered okay thank you um so in essence and there's this is a couple part questions in essence you have

20210 million dollars this week and this is what i was trying to clarify earlier 10 million dollars a year to do the 17 and also the compression and this is across the board for our employees correct is that what the figure was because we've been asking for that figure so it's 10 million dollars a year in order to have it and right now let's just take over out how big that amount's going to get to because there's a lot of creative ways and bonuses correct that that's ten thousand dollars to correct a salary you can't use extra money to correct the salary you have to move a person into the into the actual brand in order to fix it but you can't use it to supplement a salary i just heard what ms walker said

203and i also know what that means is that you can go out for learning laws and that's what it is so i understand it but what you also have to understand is that our commissioners gave our instructors a huge pay increase and so a lot of those districts and we don't know what all districts across the country are doing what i want us to understand is that we do have students that can't read we do have students that are falling behind we're going to do data next next at your next board meeting you're going to see the the vocs from this first semester you're going to see projections from this cert first semester i get it and i know that everyone wants to be increased and paid but we also have to understand that we

204have students who are failing i understand we have to put a curriculum together that provides successful curriculum i understand it all but what i am going to say is this we have not sat here at one board meeting and put together or talked about what's best for students yes we are we are right now excuse me we have not what we do is we do talk about the adults but what we have to understand is that our goal is to increase the learning laws for students not increase but decrease the learning laws for those students and what you will see next month is the gap that we have created because of cognitive and that learning law so i get it i understand but yes everyone wants a bonus we get it we want you to

205be paid can i finish whatever it's just not doable at the rates other people got different and we have repairs if we didn't have to do the one-to-one so we can take off do we not do the educational plan excuse me i was talking i was working i was asking questions you were asking a question okay excuse me every adult that works with a child is how these children are going to improve and that's what i'm talking about when i talk about adults i'm talking about improving our children so do not say that this is not what it's about it's always about the kids now i was trying and it's hard to keep focused on the questions uh as far as the data goes we all know across the country across the world kids have

206taken a hit so when we look at that we have to be realistic about what we're looking at so let's get back to the questions i'm trying to get answers to please ask it 10 million stick to this topic please 10 million dollars is what it would take and i'm not talking about the form of that i'm asking specifically that's how much it would take a year in order to get the salaries at 17 and to compress the rest of ones that's all i ask is that true that's true thank you very much okay um and i was asking with the esser funds i wanted to ask mary hazel i know she's still there maybe you can tell me this okay how much money does this mean she gave thanks that was small anyway when

207she gave the figures on how much we have spent how much do we have left that's what i said a budget plan for almost all of it we do we um i'm what we're looking at now is you know based now that we had some salary estimates in our original cost estimates for the three years we're reviewing that now and any money that is available that isn't obligated through um to a salary or part of the one to one any of the programs that we've implemented we we're going to identify that funding and bring back a proposal to you but i can't tell you the dollar amount right now okay well just looking at the chart you gave us which is how much has been spent how much has not been spent um well if

208you go back to slide let's see um go back to slide four oh that chart works well okay however you want to do it whether the detail chart showed all the different programs but many of those programs we don't even have like the ability to apply for them yet that's just how much we're going to get but for the ones with the star which is the the 181 the 171 and 163 which is those larger grants for our esser um that is what the board has planned for and we've made and you have made commitments for in terms of positions that we've moved there and the one-to-one initiative those types of things um that's where i'm hoping to bring back some savings to you um i just can't tell you i think at a minimum

209it'll be two million it might be more we're still looking to see how far how much we think that we might have available so i will i'll know more in about a week because we're we're just looking at all that now right but i can't tell you the exact amount of money but because it's it you know we budgeted the first year but we committed for three years when we created those positions so um to say that because we haven't spent it it's not obligated it really is obligated for positions that we filled okay um so we tend to have for three years could we get those figures then you said you can get them together could you possibly get them by the next meeting i i'm the inter meeting i just need to see

210okay so um miss justice all of the numbers are right here um on the handout that is part of that so um i'd like to move on to the next question we are already 20 minutes over our time budget um do does anybody want to continue to ask questions yes the all right so we i'm going to extend it for five more minutes um try and get um so mr mcmanus go ahead so if i understood one of your last statements was do you believe there'll be a 10 million dollar window of opportunity for lack of a better description no i said two let's start with two million dollars i know that i think there's two million dollars there but there's probably going to be more i don't know the exact amount i'm still looking

211to see how much we have available and that could be we know that we have to to cover to deal with those deferred capital projects that we just talked about um but we're still looking to see how much other money might be available so i really will know more about your next meeting i just didn't get that finished but also before we forecast um we have to understand that the state held us harmless and gave us more this year so they funded us at 26 000 and we don't have that so next year will be a sure up where they will give us exactly what so there may be curriculum items that we've had in place that the state was funding but they won't be funding those so we've got to figure this out so

212i don't want us to start to commit money without seeing an actual a true budget of what the state and where our number is and we'll be able to give you projections and then we can give some uh real um action items where you will know what the state what the the county how much but you have to remember um there will be a budget shortfall because we were funded at a higher number and so that will you'll see that you'll definitely see that okay miss walker thank you for the clarification ms walker i would just say i was reading under the various budget things we were given over this past year um and i it seems to me that there are budget priorities that are that are kind of set out every year and

213i would like to make this what this discussion is a budget party when we look at the figures next year i understand there'll be a shortfall potentially but at the same time you know there's always a chance and i hope that the federal government is going to understand the shortages that we have and so i would at least like to make that a priority for our budget year coming up to kind of after we get the salary survey done in there i want you to take that to the feds wherever you want to be i'm good okay mr mcmanus one last question then we're wrapping up just a quick statement i would like for the board i think the board collectively agrees that we at least let our non-certified staff teacher assistants who've come forward

214numerous rumors times we've heard them we've heard them i've heard them i know you've heard them that we're listening now how that plays out but they need to know that we're listening to them they are key elements in the success of our school system okay thank you mr mcmanus okay so um let's i'm sorry that we we ran that over by 20 minutes so um i apologize for that the um next on our agenda is um item 13c seclusion overview ms farnam would you come back to the podium for us hi again i want you to grab my glasses this time so in the overview i just wanted to provide you with information on requirements and reporting as it relates to specifically seclusion first i want to highlight that our staff experience all staff experience

215training regarding seclusion restraint but also specifically verbal de-escalation so annually all staff are provided with that annually our staff that are involved in the use of seclusion or restraint are trained in the full modules and the modules are crisis prevention institute which is a worldwide leader in evidence-based de-escalation and crisis prevention and that's used for school settings but also for other medical and mental health care settings cpi again crisis prevention institute is an international training organization that specializes in safe management of crisis behaviors so specifically the cpi values and philosophy focus on care welfare safety and security and mainly that's providing staff with an understanding of the integrated experience meaning the behaviors of the student and then the behaviors and response or also the prevention of the staff being an integrated experience that they are

216very much connected and providing staff with an understanding to recognize underlying causes for a student's behavior and being able to manage crisis with their own response we also focus seriously on factors that lead to crisis situations including sometimes the way we communicate the way we respond to identifying anxiety increasing in a student specifically we focus on the escalation of behavior and at the point we see risk behavior the safety interventions piece is the training again risk behavior is behavior that can pose a risk of harm to the person in distress so for us that would be the student or to staff or others and the purpose of the risk intervention is to minimize harm and to increase safety mainly that training provides a series of approaches to de-escalating crisis situations but also in providing prevention

217our legal and policy compliance is met through general statute and through policy 4302 r which is in our policy manual specifically seclusion is listed in there and i want to bring attention to the policy in that seclusion of a student by school may be used in several circumstances one being when reasonably needed to respond to a person with a weapon or dangerous object another to maintain order or break up a fight another for self-defense the fourth one is the one i want to focus on as reasonably needed when a student's behavior poses a threat of imminent physical harm to self or others and then it goes on to say imminent substantial destruction of school or property however in our training that we provide to staff we focus specifically on the last resort for imminent harm

218to self or others so we don't in the training encourage the full exercise of the policy which is which is outlined from general statute we don't focus on that we don't encourage physical restraint or seclusion for trying to gain access to a weapon for self-defense for property damage that isn't what we do we we draw it in much tighter again in that policy compliance there are reporting measures the reporting measures are that we notify families we notify parents as quickly as possible but no later than 30 days and again that's written in general statute our expectations to our staff in our training involves notification on the same day and no later than 24 hours so again our practices are much more restrictive in how we quickly we notify staff and how we utilize seclusion next

219investigations any time and this matches policy but also in our training anytime there is a concern of misuse of seclusion or restraint but focusing on seclusion then those are reported and those are investigated and we do maintain a an investigation process that is done by one of our cpi trainers so cpi the crisis prevention institute allows us to train our own staff with our internal trainers who maintain their current certifications so one of our trainers who does the training for staff but who doesn't necessarily in order to have an accountability process doesn't necessarily complete any of that paperwork monitors the paperwork and those documentation and monitors investigations and then next i want to bring your attention to the efforts to research less restrictive solutions we have we constantly are utilizing our internal behavior specialists but

220also department of public instruction behavior specialists to support us with identifying less restrictive solutions to maintain our students in school but in a safe and productive way in addition we are asking for the division of dpi that's now integrated academic and behavior supports to help us with identifying positive practices that are out in the state that we aren't aware of but we are seeking any type of evidence base that we can find in researching those so i didn't know if you had any questions regarding that interview are there any questions uh miss walker the um you recently went on a tour with miss um miss farnam is there anything that you jumped out at you as um that struck you as um positive about what we're doing or um anything like that well i want

221to be careful because i am definitely not as knowledgeable as miss justice or maybe some of the other board members on special education or you see education in these rooms i really don't know a lot about it i did get the opportunity to tour one and talk to a teacher in that room i apologize i don't remember her name but she was very nice miss robinson yes and you know i i it helps me to understand a little bit more about how these rooms are used i don't know um to what extent they are full force used but i know the teacher explained to me that a lot of the time they have been using them for like timeout rooms and things like that to help students um maybe calm down or you have a

222moment to themselves but the door is never shut but i mean i didn't you know i i don't have extensive knowledge on it but i did get the opportunity to go look at the room and and talk and i'm glad i did because it is helpful to see kind of why what they use them for action but i mean if anybody else here that has more experience than i do wants to you know talk about it or has questions thank you miss walker um miss justice yes how many seclusion rooms do we have in our district the number i have that on a chart i might have to count that it's not in all 45 schools and some schools while they physically have a space do not use it for that purpose um because it

223really all depends on the students i just i just want the answer about how many seclusion rooms i would need to count for you thank you madam chair oh yes i'm sorry mr royer thank you miss farm i just have a couple of questions because i feel like a lot of times there's a lot of assertions made about these rooms some misunderstandings given about these rooms a child who misbehaves routinely talks in class throws a pencil and is put into the restraint room would that be an appropriate use of a restraint room or a solution can she finish mike i'm sorry if a child were to continue continuously continuously misbehave speak out of turn throw a pencil cause a disruption and that child were restrained and secluded would that be an appropriate use of our

224rooms i would not call that an appropriate use and would that person more than likely after a subsequent investigation be disciplined that would certainly be it would be investigated and it would be handed off to human resources to handle that as a personnel matter as they see fit and just to clarify principals teachers resource officers in school if they're not trained in seclusion and restraint they cannot put hands on a child that's an interesting question because general statute and our policy allows for uh staff to um be involved in physical restraint in order to quell a disturbance however in our training we expect that the only individuals that are involved in seclusion restraint are those who are specifically trained and certified okay thank you point of order uh she didn't finish answering my question before

225she did she said she was gonna get you the number she was counting right then and i was waiting for her answer she was flipping through it she's there's 45 schools and go like that real fast i i don't have i don't have the log of rooms i can count that and provide that because i do have no money can i get an estimate of how many you think there are then um my estimate would be in the 20s 20s out of 45 school possibly right but again that's an estimate and i would like to give you an accurate and accurate answer and i was having a follow-up question he did three questions yes thank you again miss uh barnum for all your hard work um quick question with the restraints to me with their

226seclusion rooms that that's not necessarily for general it's like in a student's iep that that would be used it wouldn't just be something that the principal says i'm going to bring you down to their you know the seclusion room correct right um it's not a requirement that it be included in an iep or a 504 to be utilized however that is most often how that is utilized because it's it's really not an unexpected or kind of random thing um so you you would not typically have students in the in the general setting um it's usually those students that have a behavior intervention plan or a crisis plan specifically that involves that thank you and i do have a fault later on miss justice take a turn okay um [Music] the whole reason that this i

227guess discussion is going on is because of the report that was released that of the whole state we have almost half of those seclusions that are being used in restraints uh on in this county in our school district is that correct i cannot verify the data from other districts i have reached out to dpi to inquire that's what that's where the data is taken from is dpi so i have reached out to dpi because i know how we diligently report i cannot verify how other districts report no i'm talking about dpi according to dpi statistics our school district i don't have the exact numbers here do you have that miss walker but it's it's close to half of the this is from dpi i'm not talking about other districts our district has reported almost half

228of the statewide use of restraint and seclusion is attributed to this district is and that is a fact i i wish i had it with me because it's been out there and it's been even in the news so i think they even did a story on it so is that crack so i know i know what you're referring to which is information on dpi's website but the the data that is reported on that website is self-reported by district dpi did not record that for us we self-reported and my question to dpi is whether we can verify that districts are accurately self-reporting and i do not have an answer to that yet okay now this has been a month i think since this was first indicated they have not contacted you back about that information when

229you requested it i do not have a response to that question have you followed up on it miss justice is it necessary to interrogate no i'm just trying to find out the figures this is very this is very concerning if this you know what is going on with our district uh as far as restraint and um and seclusion i i've worked in other districts i i've never 20 rooms in different schools i've never seen anything like it i'll be honest with you as miss walker said i do have some experience in this area and i've even gone through the training that you brought up in fact i think we presented it here last year and i'm a big enthusiastic supporter of it but this training is very small part as far as when a child

230is well it's not a small part it's a huge part but when it comes to seclusion and restraint that that really is not that connected with this topic it really isn't we're trying to prevent this from happening but why are these kids ending up in restraint and seclusion in these numbers in this district that's what my concern is thank you so um miss barnum just to kind of be clear and as we wrap up this conversation are we in compliance with federal state ncsba and local policy yes we are in compliance we are not out of compliance with any effort in fact we are diligently reporting and in compliance with local policy and general statute and will you just um whenever you get the available data from dpi um can we schedule you back to

231give us another update absolutely okay thank you all right um one last question one last question we are over um so you know if the iep behavior plan does have seclusion as a possibility for a student the parent would or the guardian whichever would be would be a part of that team so they would know about it wouldn't be a big surprise to them that that was a part of so they're not gonna be blindsided is what i'm saying again right so um and and again as a part of our training we focus with our staff on um providing that information to parents helping them understand what the prevention methods would be but also what the what the crisis intervention because that's going to be what we do to intervene and try to interrupt that

232behavior they would be involved in that decision making process in addition they are notified that same day and receive documentation within 24 hours thank you that's outstanding thank you thank you all right thank you ms barnum i appreciate your time thank you the um so next on our agenda is the board chairs report um since we are over our time i will cut my remarks short i just wanted to um you know thank you all again for um your vote of confidence in having me um serve as your board chair this year um some of the things that i really want to focus on is i want to work with dr faust and get the strategic plan done and um so that we can align our meetings and our topics and our conversations around what

233our strategic plan that we will approve um suggests so that we can really make sure that we are doing what's best for students coming up shortly i will be talking with this with each member of the the board to find out what committees that they um want to be on if they want to change if they want to remain um with that and looking at the chairs of those committees to see you know where we're working and there are some committees that we no longer have so we're going to be tightening up on that and i just really want us if we're on committees to be active on our committees and be actively reporting what we're doing because there's nothing worse than just sitting on a committee you know spinning wheels and we don't do

234anything so um that's kind of where i am um and again you know i'm back in work i would like to work closely with our superintendent to make sure that um when we get our budget together that we we sell it to the county commissioners um a lot of inner moving parts and i think that we're all committed you know to being a part of that team so um i'm ready to roll in 2022 and i hope that um all of my board members my fellow board members are as well um so moving right into the committees um i didn't hear anybody say they had a committee report okay um i would like to go ahead briefly and make a committee report it's actually the um the ec advisory council okay um just briefly they've

235been meeting uh they weren't meeting for a while but they have recently last couple months been meeting and as you saw there was a presentation that they are creating a and this is the first one in the state a um pta for uc uh parents and i think it's it needs to be really recognized and supported because one of the things it's been a very rough year for everybody so they didn't meet frequently last year because of the problems with that coveted brought along but now that they have been getting back formed as a group as an advisory committee uh it's they're even going further in trying to get more parents across the district involved in something that they can i guess you could say more involved and then with the advising committee itself because

236that's that's a different kind of uh setup for the parents so this is great that uh that they have done this they did this the members have done this on their own and it's been successful not not in this state because it never really hasn't been done before but it's been in other states it's been very successful so i wanted to bring up that they have done that and and recognize that those parents are are jumping back in now that covet is is less of a challenge because we understand so much more and they're able to start planning and moving forward ms justice who is the um subject matter expert for um the ec advisory committee for new hanover county schools i guess you would well it used to be julie barnum but at this

237point it would be dr jones is that who you're referring to i don't know the last meeting you attended who who ran it oh now are you talking about sean lammer you're talking you're just getting a report for the ec advisory committee and i'm interested i'm updating our forms and i would like to know who's leading that committee so i can contact well sean lamb that's the parent the uh the new hanover county school subject matter that's why i said doctor jones an ec she's the head of doctor of the ec department okay all right that's what i need um yes and so the um and just to clarify the ec pta is working closely with bernice johnson for the new hanover county council ptas um to be a unit um under umbrella okay um

238so correspondence does the that anybody have any correspondence okay good um call the audience we skipped that second one announcements so um the the new hanover county announces its january meetings the policy committee will meet on tuesday january 11th 2022 at nine o'clock um at the board of education center but that really is a remote meeting the general public will have the option to re to view remotely on the new hanover county schools tv youtube channel um the board of education will hold a january interim meeting on tuesday the eight oh and you know what let me add this one in so that we're in the right order um on january 10th women wrong never mind january 14th is when we will have a special called meeting at 3 p.m um here at the board

239of education center public will have the opportunity to view that on new hanover county schools tv the january interim meeting will be on tuesday january 18th um five o'clock in the board of education center again the public will have the opportunity to view this meeting on tv mass will be required at that meeting the family communications committee will meet on thursday january the 20th 2022 at 5 pm remotely for a round table discussion topic to be determined the general public will have the option to um view remotely and participate as requested the title ix committee will meet on monday january 31st 2022 at 3 p.m at the board of education center the general public will have the option to review mo to view remotely on new hanover county schools tv youtube channel um so we

240are not having a second closed session um so do i hear a motion for a german move do it journey second okay um all in favor post okay we're done say again you