Board of Ed. Regular Board Meeting | May 4

001evening it is 502 i would like to welcome everyone to the may new hanover county board of education meeting may the 4th be with you if you are a star wars fan thank you for being here this evening um we will start with an invocation this evening's invocation will be administered by christine rutherford the youth minister from harvard united methodist church in wilmington north carolina if you could all please stand church and one of the pastors at surf church here in wilmington and i have the honor and the privilege of opening us up in a word of prayer today so let's do so jesus we just thank you so much for this day and we thank you for this time to meet lord as we are celebrating our teachers this week and today specifically being

002uh teacher appreciation day lord we just want to commend them for all of their hard work and their efforts that they have put forth especially in the past year and we appreciate these men and women so much their effort goes far beyond the time that they spend in the classroom being a teacher is simply who they are and god we thank you for the gifts and the talents that you have given them and lord we thank you for their willingness to serve our students our families and our community through the work that they do and i pray that you would just continue to encourage them as we continue to navigate uh this world that has been placed upon us and all of the craziness that we have experienced in the last year lord we do

003know that you are in control despite those things we know that you love us we know that you care for us and we know that you will work things out for our good and lord that you will prevail even through the midst of the chaos as we get prepared for tonight's meeting i pray that you would be with each and every one of the board members here lord that you would help them to shed their own desire lord but look out for what is the right thing for whatever decisions that need to be made i pray that you would give each and every one of them the wisdom and the discernment that they need i pray that you lord would just empower them and lord that you would move through this city through this community

004starting with our school system here what a great responsibility that we have in order to empower and lead the children of tomorrow god we know that you do again have all things in control and we give this meeting over to you we love you we thank you for everything that you do we thank you for the love that you show to each and every one of us we thank you for the fact that you desire to have a relationship with each and every one of us despite who we are or what we've done or where we have been you love us lord right where we are at and we thank you for that we pray all of these things in jesus name remain standing for the amen of allegiance to the flag of the united

005states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much you may be seated next item on the agenda is roll call miss bowie stephanie adams nelson bullier here judy justice here stephanie craybill here he mcmanus here stephanie walker here and peter wildeboar president all right thank you very much i would also like to acknowledge that we have three of our county commissioners here this evening or two i believe um uh chair julia bozeman and vice chair deb hayes and uh mr bill rivenbark so we thank you for being with us for the beginning of this meeting to celebrate some of our very special recognitions and we appreciate your partnership as always thank you for being here all right next

006item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda do i hear a motion move to approve thank you mr bullier is our second second thank you mr mr wildeboard all right he's quicker any discussion okay all those in favor say aye aye opposed agenda is approved next item on the agenda is recognitions and achievements and these are the nights that i really look forward to because we get to share some of the incredible successes here in new hanover county schools and the wonderful people that work here and are soon to work here i'm going to pass it over to mr bullier to kick us off for the future teacher scholarship signing ceremony thank you madam chair and thank you members of the community to for your presence here tonight thank you all of our

007scholarship recipients in 2016 the new hanover county board of education established the future teachers scholarship providing four scholarship loans of seven thousand dollars each year to an accredited north carolina community college college or university of the recipient's choice for a total amount of 28 000 per scholarship in return the recipients will teach full-time in new hanover county schools within seven years of receiving their teaching license and teach for at least four years with our district excited to announce 2021 future teachers scholarship recipients catherine giupina autumn matthews keenan stewart and sophia zeldin um the board is delighted to award a 2021 future teacher scholarship to catherine pena a hoggard high school senior catherine plays soccer official scorekeeper for the hoggard girls jv and varsity basketball team a member of the pine valley swim team and has

008provided many community service hours through the hoggard beta club she plans to attend cape fear community college in the fall with the career goal of becoming a special education teacher so i am here to announce our next future teacher scholarship and um her name is autumn matthews autumn could you raise your hand thank you no autumn is not oh am i on you okay okay now you can hear me you come sure you can hear me just fine without it but um so autumn is not only an exemplary student um at ashley high school she's a member of the beta club there she is an athlete playing softball and she also volunteers very close to my heart at a nursing home and each year with special olympics autumns plans to attend unc asheville in the

009fall and she also plans to major in special education [Applause] i'm hugh mcmanus keenan raise your hand she started this board is pleased to award a 2021 future teacher scholarship to keenan stewart elainey high school senior keenan has served as a counselor at camp intervention a member of the national honor society key club and she has participated in the biogen summer enrichment program keenan will attend north carolina state university and majoring in education congratulations okay so where's sophia raise your hand there she is hey the board is thrilled to award the 2021 future teacher scholarship to sophia sophia zeldin elainey high school senior sophie is a avid dancer and is the member of the laney dance team she has been involved with the laney theater troupe since her freshman year and she is very active

010in her synagogue binay israel sophie will attend east carolina university in the fall and plans to major in education now it's time for all our recipients and their guests to please come forward to their designated tables as you're coming forward on behalf of the board we want to thank the parents family members friends educators and others who have so wonderfully inspired catherine autumn kenan and sophie to pursue the field of education thank you all all right i know you can't see us now you're facing out to the public but catherine autumn keenan and sophie and your designated parent or guardian at this time please sign your new hanover county board of education future teachers promissory note which is in the folder i find it rather fitting that you are signing a future teacher i don't

011know like they still haven't i have a feeling they're going to want to cancel the order somebody on i think you need to mute please yes but it's very fitting that you are signing your promissory note on teacher appreciation day so to our future teachers happy future teachers appreciation day congratulations to all of our recipients all right shall i collect awesome all right thank you thank you very much we are excited for the future of our new educators and we thank you for your time um all of our recipients went through a rigorous application and interview process and it was a pleasure getting to know all of you in that time so thank you very much all right our next recognition is a very special recognition and i'm actually going to again pass this over

012to mr bullier to get us started thank you madam chair and thank you to all of the teachers of new hanover county during teacher appreciation week every one of you deserves to be recognized and you are all so appreciated for the work you do to make our district the success that it is but now we would like to recognize one of new hanover county schools local heroes each new hanover county school staff member steps up each day to perform the tasks at hand but sometimes we hear about individuals who go the extra mile and that is exactly what this next recognition is regarding the murray middle school football team recently faced off against trass middle school during that game a murray grandparent fell ill and was in need of immediate cpr without hesitation trask assistant

013principal lloyd brown performed chest compressions for more than 15 minutes keeping the grandparent alive the following people also assisted in that rescue effort shayla harper richard murphy kimberly burkhardt elizabeth copley teresa hyman danica taylor and kaylee aiken emergency medical services arrived shortly after and used a defibrillator to establish a pulse the grandparent was then transported to the hospital to all of those who assisted in this heroic action from all of us here at new hanover county schools thank you for the excellent work you do each day for our students parents and your staff your quick thinking and immediate response saved the life of this grandparent and showed those around you the true definition of a hero your dedication to our community does not go unnoticed and you are all valued here thank you very much

014once again and i am pleased to announce that that grandparent is doing well in the hospital so you guys are absolutely amazing and it is my privilege and honor to award you with a certificate of appreciation and to award assistant principal brown with a plaque so if you would all please come forward yes please right here come here stage madam chair thank you yes sir do you like to present oh do they oh sure [Applause] right next teresa hyman shayla harper [Applause] thank you to our trash heroes every day okay that's a good way to start a meeting so again congratulations to all of our future teachers and thank you to our trust heroes for your actions last week all right that is it for our recognitions and achievements this evening the next item on

015the agenda is a closed session pursuant to north carolina general statutes 143-318-118136 and seven to consider personnel matters and to maintain the confidentiality of personnel records under north carolina general statute 115 c 319-321 to prevent the disclosure of student records rendered confidential under the family educational rights and privacy act 20 usc 1232-g to consult with the board's attorney to preserve attorney-client privilege information including in the case captioned john doe the new hanover county board of education aydah new hanover county superior court case number 19-cbs-270 and to hear reports concerning investigations of alleged criminal misconduct do i hear a motion move for closed session pursuant to the statutes thank you mr bulliers our second thank you mr mcmanus any discussion all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed we are in closed session thank

016you very much [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] do [Music] so [Music] uh [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] do [Music] do [Music] foreign [Music] do [Music] foreign [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] all right go ahead and get started thank you for your patience we apologize we are a couple minutes behind from closed session next item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes as presented do i hear a motion sure moved thank you mr bullier is there a second i mean thank you miss crayville any discussion all right these are the minutes for the march regular board meeting the april regular board meeting in the april work session any discussion all those in

017favor say aye aye all those opposed minutes are approved next item on the agenda is the call to the audience per board policy 2310 each speaker will receive three minutes to present comments however if more than 10 people sign up to speak each speaker will be limited to two minutes the maximum amount of time for public comment will be one hour speakers remaining at the end of the hour period may be recognized at the end of the board's agenda speaking order at regular board meetings speakers commenting on items on the night's agenda will be heard during the first call to the audience speakers commenting on other topics non-agenda items will be heard during the second call to the audience for the board meeting agenda speakers are welcome to offer comments or criticism directed at substantive

018ideas actions or procedures of the board and individual board members in the interest of maintaining civility and decorum however speakers are encouraged to refrain from personal attacks and insults directed at the board individual board members staff or members of the general public the law and policies of north carolina provide that issues or concerns involving individual personnel matters are confidential and therefore not appropriate for public comment settings concerns related to personal issues may be addressed through applicable nhcs personnel the grievance policy or other applicable policies speakers including students may discuss issues and matters of general concern but should refrain from discussing confidential student information concerns related to confidential student matters may be addressed through applicable nhcs personnel the grievance policy or other applicable policies at this time we have one two three four five six seven

019items related to agenda items for the first call to the audience and one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen speakers for non-agenda items as i call your name you may join us at the podium elizabeth kramer ladies and gentlemen in dr faust i am here tonight to express my grave concerns over the teaching of critical race theory in our schools critical race theory teaches children to judge a person on race rather than on character it teaches children that white people are inherently racist and that all systems created by white people are racist i believe the progressive left is using this teaching to indoctrinate our children my background is in education i owned and operated two child care facilities in wilmington for 26 years i averaged 100 children a day

020the children came from all different backgrounds in my experience children do not see color i do not believe racism is a serious problem in our country i think it's a narrative that has been designed on purpose to keep people in the mindset of victimhood i have two children ages 28 and 25 they are friends of all colors backgrounds religions and sexual orientations i find that most young people today are not racist i am tired of this lie being perpetuated it does not mean that racism does not exist to some degree there will always be ignorance in the world but it's certainly not a public health crisis the teaching of social justice issues and critical race theory are taking away from the real learning that should be taking place in our classrooms children should childhood should

021be a time of innocence kids should not be burdened with adult concepts what is happening in our schools is a disgrace children are being taught to be ashamed of their skin color as parents wake up to it i think we will see a mass exodus from public schools and more people choosing home school or private school critical race theory is teaching people to be racist it is telling people that skin color matters more than character this is the opposite of the teachings of dr martin luther king jr this narrative that is affecting our schools our corporations and our society is insulting to black people the black families i know are folks who work hard to raise a family they're not victims they're fellow americans i doubt they want to be singled out in this way

022i doubt they want their kids to have to learn this nonsense in school it's hard to believe that we are going backward in schools by teaching kids that they have been marginalized because of the color of their skin and that the world that they live in has been created to work against them this coordinated effort has been underway for quite some time the future of our children our grandchildren is at stake for the first time i can say that i am genuinely afraid for our country it's time we all rise up and put a stop to this i am asking that you the board craft a letter to the north carolina state board of education saying that we do not want critical race theory taught in our schools we do not want federal funds going

023to support this marxist racist ideology and as dr martin luther king jr famously once said our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter and thank you all for all that you do appreciate it miss beverly setz hi i'm back again this month to discuss again critical race theory or the social and just justice theory they're being force-fed this to the students throughout the country it's my understanding that it's not yet being taught in the in the new hanover county school system but it was dinner the other night with with the teacher and she said she had to sit through two hours of video and she has to sit through another two hours on equity diversity and equality so it sounds to me like it's already been rolled out here

024so here's a novel idea rather than critical race theory why not why not having implementing something in the new hanover county school system where you could be trailblazers were students rather than students being force-fed for the end unjustly decades ago unjust decades ago that they had nothing to do with why not create a curriculum for now from the male students on how to become culturally responsible men and fathers there are so many books on this topic and this is this is where the this is where the problem emanates where everyone thinks they're being socially um that there's just uh being socially dis disserviced um and it's not and it's not coming from that how many how many young single moms are bringing up babies because the baby daddies aren't in the picture or grandparents i

025think if if you put together a curriculum to solve that problem i think you'd see a lot better things taking place with how people are being treated and stephanie have a question for you i know you're not allowed to answer and that's okay but i'm putting this out here i understand that i was told that the contract that was i think it was approved last with the cape fear collective data your husband is a part of that okay all right so as as the last speaker said we the citizens and taxpayers of new hanover county are asking that the board right to the north carolina board of education to to ask that they not that we do not want to have critical race theory taught in our [Music] schools rick wilkins good evening thank you

026for your time it's been a heck of a year for you all you all work real hard i work in your school system as a volunteer refereeing and my hat's off to all the special people that put in the hours and the time i'm just wondering why we have two new positions that were brought out last last month's meeting director of enrichment schools director of curriculum and instruction plus we know they're going to have staff we know they have to sit somewhere don't you think it'd be easier to right the ship all the problems we've had i don't see how bringing on new positions new curriculum and instruction to supervise all lead teachers director of enrichment schools to supervise principals the principles i've run into here in the 25 years i've left and coached in

027this system are phenomenal i don't know why they would need more supervision how are you all going to find the time to be doing that when you have so many things that have fallen by the wayside due to no fault other than this pandemic so i would behoove you i'd hope to take your time and prioritize prioritize what needs to be done now to get the ship righted to get all the kids up to the curriculum level not the principles to the curriculum level get all the teachers all the books they need get the i.t department to have all the challenges erased that they faced find out somehow to get wi-fi to these kids at home who will not come back to school for various and assundry good reasons and with that why don't we

028wait a year for new positions and probably a half a million dollars in costs when you're done of staff benefits computer systems and by the way when you bring these people in you're going to take time away from the folks that are already here for another policy for another check for another meeting as we used to say in the sales business meetings are up and sales are down so i thank you for all your efforts here it's a challenging time for all of us i just don't understand why you're trying to make it harder for yourselves thank you lindy ford thank you distinguished board i appreciate the hard work you do for our precious children here in this county my name is lindy ford and i transplanted six years ago from the washington dc baltimore

029area to get away from the cold weather i am a former public school teacher and mother of five my youngest is in the fifth grade up north i taught at a low performing school as well as one of the highest rated schools in our state i am now a registered dietitian clinical nutritionist in private practice here in wilmington i love wilmington and i love what i do i join with our respected lieutenant governor mark robinson a man of color to speak out against a social studies curriculum being proposed by the north carolina department of education that seeks to rewrite our history in favor of pushed narratives these narratives includes the his include the historically inaccurate 1619 project as well as critical race theory which is an offshoot of critical theory a marxist movement critical race

030theory is far from the traditional civil rights movement was shot to provide equal opportunity and dignity without regard for race this destructive narrative is just the opposite of martin luther king's dream of a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character critical race promotes racism this ideology states that all of america and its institutions are deeply racist and is therefore irredeemable and needs to be torn down and dismantled this new curriculum is being sold to us with the seductive buzzwords of equity diversity and inclusion they sound good but they are all part of critical theory equity is not equality equality is giving everyone the same opportunity to succeed equity is much different equity mandates equality of outcome this is a marxist socialist and

031communist ideology truth should always be taught and we have horrible blemishes in our past slavery was and is abominable and evil our founding principles were not evil but as the great american and former slave frederick douglass believed these principles were written with the ability to break these racial hierarchies this has happened critical race theory robs our children of what they need most a sound education while other countries are focusing on outpacing us in math we should be teaching our children how to divide not how to be divided this is not a right or left issue we the concerned citizens of new hanover county are asking you as a board to write a letter to the north carolina board of education stating that we do not want critical race theory equity social justice or whatever the

032newest label is to be taught in our schools if you allow this marxist indoctrination to happen to our children we will have no choice but to link your name and this board with marxism i can assure you that that will not go over well for your re-election efforts no amount of federal funding is worth the damage we will do to our children they deserve better than the racism and division promoted by critical race theory thank you all for having me up here today i'm eric flory i'm a retired new hanover county school educator i taught 14 years at d.c virgo middle school and i finished my career at mcs noble middle school last seven years i spent as a dean of students here and i worked with the wonderful amazing dr judy stubblefield and she

033would have us focus on bullying in the schools and how are we going to eliminate bullying and if you'll just bear with me for one minute here i i want to relate this to the teaching of critical race theory in schools the the nature of students the bullying nature is innate in kids we know they don't have the mental capacity to filter that stuff out so i just want you to use your imagination for a moment and allow me to take you down the road here a year or two after if new hanover county schools approves this we're going to be weaponizing students with a political self-righteousness that their way is the only way and then you're going to see bullying like we have never seen bullying before in the schools the kids are not

034going to know any better because they're going to be taught in the classroom you have to dot your eyes this way and cross your t's this way and anyone who doesn't do that anyone who operates outside of that mindset that's going to be promoted it's going to produce strife division and it's going to produce bullying and i'm talking across the board all the all the any division of students you want to take them and break them down it's it's a dangerous thing in my classroom i always stressed love and respect i had my my record as a teacher and i'm not trying to brag on me but i'm trying to show you how you set the tone i had every year i was one of the teachers who had the least amount of referrals to

035the office for for classroom behavior because i knew who these kids were i knew how to respect them how to respect their their parents their their their home life everything um you know what what dr martin luther king when he talked about love equality and justice and unity um that curriculum that we're talking about uh putting to work here in new hanover county it's going to be the opposite of that and again these kids don't know any better you might say well mr flurry what is your basis of this we'll look at the university systems and the college systems you used to be able to go to college and share different ideas you can't today the political mindset there and the implicit political indoctrination is is um virulent at best and not only that think

036of how adults have behaved in the last five 10 15 years with their political views and you start taking kids who do not have a frontal lobe developed yet and giving them this information and they don't know how to use it they don't know how to work it i i foresee a lot of trouble coming down the pike and i thank you for your time angela kaney i think i missed critical race theory on the agenda but uh i do know that policy 4040 is and it states that all employees of new hanover county school are prohibited from dating courting entering into a romantic relationship or having sexual conduct with any student regardless of the student's age with this policy on the horizon why then did the board chair feel it necessary at last month's

037meeting to offer heartfelt condolences to show support to a teacher accused of having sex with a student without mentioning the alleged victim even once this careless speech seemed to encourage his supporters to bully and intimidate that victim with horrible name calling and vile comments that are too vulgar for me to repeat then they attempted to lure her to meetings and attach photos of guns to scare her her safety's been compromised for simply having the courage to speak out in an effort to protect other young women from the same traumatic experience which was her goal and a goal i wish our board shared while the accused admitted to wrongdoing and even offered a payout for silence he refused to resign from doing a job in close proximity to teenage girls and sadly later made the choice

038to take his own life while it's tragic for anyone to lose their life and we certainly acknowledge the pain of his loved ones and are sympathetic to their grief that does not give anyone permission permission to viciously attack the victim in this way your failure to reinforce that sex with a minor is wrong as a minor cannot consent and by neglecting to even acknowledge the victim you sent a clear message that disregards victims and only puts this woman in a dangerous situation and you've created a safe haven for predators the amount of students with added fear of adults in power being critical and skeptical of their intentions for speaking out against pedophiles will surely be shamed into silence is this your idea of moving forward progressively there are many reasons victims wait years to come

039forward mostly due to fear of public scrutiny being harshly judged retaliated against and re-victimized did you know that the brain actually compartmentalizes traumatic events as a coping mechanism so that sometimes victims struggle to make sense of what has happened to them until they're in therapy to help them recover do you also know how confusing it is for a teenager who's being groomed by an older adult to feel embarrassed and unaware that they can even challenge an authority figure in power and do you have any idea how traumatizing it is for a victim to go through this broken justice system and know that far more times than not we do not even win these cases simply because it's too difficult to prove many years of working with victims have shown that sex crimes against children don't

040cut sex people who commit these crimes don't come with a visible stamp marking them as pedophiles they're attractive personable intelligent well spoken and quite successful it's quite possible for someone to be capable of taking advantage of a child and be well loved and portrayed as a hero simultaneously that wrongdoing still deserves accountability i think you'd want to send a strong message against sexual misconduct and create a safe place for victims [Applause] [Music] [Applause] leslie posey good evening i would like to address staffing issues in the district's quarterly budget and from last month's meeting in the past month six central office positions have been created the four announced at last month's meeting and two by quiet transfer of staff from schools the combined salaries of these new positions are the equivalent of hiring at least 14

041new teachers as someone else was pointing out and i hadn't even thought about their staff their space all of those other funding issues given that at least 100 teachers and staff have retired or resigned in the last nine months how do you justify these new central office positions which is more important micromanaging the schools with more administrative positions or putting more teachers in the classroom additionally there are currently at least three local elementary schools without assistant principals this presents potentially dangerous situations i'm sure you agree there should be an administrator on campus at all times finally like last month i would like to leave you with a simple question alexander hamilton one of the greatest minds of this country's history said if you don't stand for something you will fall for anything are you standing

042for what's right for our students and teachers or are you falling for slick presentations and easy ways to hide the truth thank you all right that concludes our call to the audience for agenda items next item on the agenda are items that fall under consensus items the first one is new hanover county schools curriculum bulletin update dr lashawn smith good evening to the board um the schools division is asking for the approval of three additional courses music appreciation as an elective course in grades 9 through 12. italian 1 2 and 3 and then we are asking that we add an honors level state courses two through four all right you have heard the recommendation is there a motion show moved thank you mr hayden wildeboer is there a second sagat thank you mr bullier any

043discussion all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed is approved and i believe you are staying up here for the next one as well yes next item is the uncw and nhc board of education professional development systems school university partnership yes this is a three-year partnership with the university of north carolina and wilmington and the new hanover county schools district and we are asking the board's approval to renew this partnership for the next three years thank you you have heard the recommendation is there a motion moved thank you mr bullier is there a second this is miss walker and any discussion all right all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed it's approved thank you very much all right next up is the personnel report uh dr allison coker good evening

044madam chair vice chair and board members um tonight i present to you the personnel report for the period of april 1st through april 30th 2021 for your approval all right you have heard the recommendation is there a motion make a motion thank you miss walker is there a second okay thank you thank you mr wildebore gotta get in there ms crabble faster is there any discussion all right all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed personnel report is accepted madam chair i have um three of the principal recommendations that are here tonight dr anita brown would you stand up and mr justin fischetti and miss saber wright congratulations [Applause] your schools are very lucky to have all of you thank you very much for being here with us this evening all right and

045i believe next item is administrative contract renewals yes for your perm tonight for i present for your approval the administrator contract renewals for the 2021 school year all right you've heard the recommendation is there a motion mr mcmanus thank you is there a second second thank you ms crayville any discussion all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed administrative contractor rules have been approved thank you thank you very much dr coker next item on the consensus items uh quarterly budget summary for the period ending march 31st mary hazel small thank you for your information i present the quarterly report for the period ended march 31st with expenditures and encumbrances totaling 74.54 great are there any questions or discussion regarding the quarterly budget summary all right thank you very much next item on the

046agenda are the policies for second reading uh policies 3445 actually i'll pass this to you if you'd like to introduce that sorry that's fine uh this evening i'm asking the board to approve policies adopted during the april 13 2021 board meeting the versions posted in assembly and adopted by the board at the april 13th meeting were not the correct final versions the correct final versions are posted herein and are for adoption by the board of education as just a small hiccup on our part you have seen the correct versions but they were not posted correctly into assembly so i just asked for a motion to approve the policies for second reading and we will be bringing you forward more policies in june all right you have heard the recommendation is there a motion thank you

047ms crabill is there a second okay thank you mr wildebore any discussion all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed policies for second reading have been approved thank you next item on the agenda old business county budget request for 2021 22 we welcome back up this is mary hazel small for the last several board meetings we've been discussing the budget and tonight i present the proposed request for our operating capital and pre-k budget the just to summarize the the chart shown there um the total request is 98 million 582 170 um 80 about 87.5 million of that would be for operating requests for for our school system which is a 13.6 increase that is based on the county's proposal to increase our teacher supplement to the highest or near the highest in the

048state with an average of 9 000 per teacher and also reappropriating the money that was received mid-year for bonuses for all employees towards that same goal with this proposal and then um the associated increase in per pupil for charter and lab schools so the inc the the new per-pupil rate that we're requesting is three thousand four hundred and twenty-three dollars per student from the county um the capital request we have been through um in previous meetings but it's also attached the detailed capital plan um and then the for pre-k grant a request for three additional classrooms to double the um county support of our pre-k so i'll be glad to answer any questions you have all right open it up to the board for any questions miss justice yes i'm glad that teacher supplements are

049in their fact i'm very pleased i hope everything goes well with that but i brought it up during our previous discussions on over the years is there so there is nothing in there about increasing our our classified employees there there is but not in the county request our plan is and i should have kept going a little bit further down below the chart for the for the request but i'm so glad you asked is um we are looking to sort of re-prioritize some of the funding of local positions with the state increase and the federal increase that we're receiving to free up local money for to support the increase for the non-certified staff um with the proposals we've just the salary proposals we've discussed in the past quite a bit of their increase will hopefully

050be state funded because most of our classified employees are state funded but we won't know that for sure until we receive the state budget so our plan is to sort of streamline moving more certified positions to state classified positions to local but also picking up part of that increase you know with with state funds and um we will bring a sort of a detailed plan back to the board in um before you approve the whole budget in july with exactly which positions will be um paid out of which funds and by then we'll have the approves we hope we'll have their approved state budget and we'll know how much of that they're going to pay for because the goal is a living wage and i mentioned before 15 an hour um and that was what

051i had requested two years ago we discussed it again i think a month ago right uh would that be possible under what you're proposing to state so we we had a a three year plan to get there but of course last year you know there was no state budget so this this is the second year of that to get us to 14 for most employees 15 for bus drivers if this there is some discussion the state might want to get to 15 you know but but that's a statewide it's a really big lift just because of the number of employees that are below 15 statewide so i know it's it is a state and a local goal to get there but our the salary schedules we were proposing were to get to 14. but they

052did have significant increases not just at the base but but throughout but when you increase the base um to 15 it ends up costing quite a bit more throughout the salary scale so we were trying to phase that in over you know a three-year plan okay so that is something that we can discuss further with the final budget approval yeah as soon as we know the state budget i will bring back to you exactly the cost and i think with with any available resources our priority would be to put it towards that so we would go as far as our funding would allow your discussion with the county as far as assisting with this because you're saying right now you're shifting things around i know teacher supplements are wonderful in fact i want those but

053also every one of our employees have been going way above and beyond the last year just like everyone and uh you know waiting another year is something that to me they deserve better but that's my opinion has there been any discussion with the county about helping this the situation alan you know bring it at the 15 this year as opposed to waiting in the year after next when when the question was asked the the county's focus this year was going to be on teacher supplements and they they that was there okay so that's their preference okay for the funding increase so but we didn't we didn't push that we allowed the supplement the funding increase for the supplements main focus then well certainly okay supportive thank you all right any other questions or discussion points

054madam chair i just had a question about pre-k i know the county commissioners are trying to up the the number of what are they calling it seats or i'm not sure what the terminology is i'm sorry but um is there you know i we did some training recently i know he was on it too and they were talking about leandro and the fact that it ties to the state funding too on you know pre-k and getting and then i think nelson you said there was like 670 on the wait list i think that's pretty consistent well i know in a couple a few years back it was about that number two i mean i don't know if dr faust has any plans or we as a county to kind of expand the pre-k and how

055the funding will work out for that um statewide and county wise and local yeah i'm not sure if this answered your question but i'll try i do expect quite a bit of of federal federal funds in in the grants that um how do i say this some of the the federal funding that goes directly to state agencies that are supporting pre-k that will then a lot more money to us i think we'll get more pre-k funding we just haven't seen those numbers yet so we expect in addition to the county increase for pre-k we expect other state and federal funds to increase for pre-k we just haven't seen those because they all of those agencies will also receive increased federal funding but we haven't seen um recommended increased levels yet so this was just to

056continue an increasing county support that that they had in their priority budget and we we were going to request it two years ago um but we were right in with redistricting and so we were waiting to see where the space was and so we we um requested it this year and then increased it to three i don't know if that's your question i think was about class room so yes um is it see wreck i think it's c right where we're going to have see reckons where we were going to locate it moving the kindergarten for um bellamy back to bellamy after redistricting and that frees up the space at sea wreck but we we also hope that there will be additional slots provided across the county both in our public and private sites but

057we don't know yet okay maybe that i'm hoping that will be a good expanded discussion when we talk about strategic plans and things like that when we look i guess ahead and just see you know i know i know the desire for the county is there i've talked to a couple of the commissioners about it and i think the need is there and i think the state obviously wants us to do it but we have to find the room and we have to find we just have to have a plan so i i was just kind of you mentioned the pre-k funding so i guess i i wanted to know whether the state was going to help us out and i guess logistically we'll have to plan for where we put them physically too so

058thank you mr bollier thank you madam chair i've had conversations with every commissioner over the past several weeks and i want to quote you know in a pg way former president biden this is a big fun deal it is a big fun deal and it couldn't happen a quest like this couldn't happen without the partnerships that we've all worked so hard to develop with our county funding partners our teachers i think are the best in the state of north carolina i think this district is going to be the best district in the state of north carolina and i think this budget reflects that and yeah i'm just so excited to see that type of work rewarded our budget for the county is about 400 million dollars i think wake county is about a billion dollars

059and to put forward a budget uh that competes with their teachers supplement um that is a big fun deal and i just want to thank the work of staff uh and i really want to thank our accounting f our county funding partners uh it means the world to me and i know it'll mean a lot to our educators i i would like to echo that too um i'd like to you know thank the finance department dr faust and and your teams to for the conversations that have gone on there's been so much work that's gone into this budget to be able to get top tier funding for our teachers especially post pandemic recruiting and retention of staff is going to be so paramount and to be able to be competitive in a state that everyone

060is moving to we want to bring the best to new hanover county so our children have access to the best and we want to be able to continue to train up those that we have so i just thank you for your efforts on this budget and i look forward to it moving forward hopefully as we move through with the county and present on the 17th any other discussion or questions all right so the recommendation is to approve the budget as listed is there a motion so moved thank you mr bullier is there a second thank you miss walker any other discussion i think we've covered that all right all those in favor of approving the county budget request for uh school year 2021-22 say aye aye all those opposed county budget request passes seven zero

061thank you very much very much appreciate it next up new business designer selections for river lights blind valley and williams elementary new construction welcome mr anderson hey this is excuse me talk about it yes madam chair members of the board i'm really excited to be here and recommend designer selection for river lights pine valley and williams elementary school thank you to your support and the support of the county commissioners we did advertise a project announcement in accordance with the general statutes and your board policy 13 firms responded to our project announcement and pre-selection committee evaluated all of those it was quite challenging we had 13 really good responses but we were able to narrow that down to five firms we brought those five firms in for interview and then using the pre-selection criteria from your

062board policy we're making the following recommendations we made these recommendations to the superintendent and he agreed to carry these forward to the board for approval river lights elementary school the pre-selection committee and the superintendent recommend little diversified architectural consultants pond valley elementary school replacement sawyer sherwood and associates pc and mary c williams elementary renovations bmh architects okay and the timeline for this is that this would the designs would be brought forth to the board in october i believe is what document around then all right that's correct we would uh that would be the schematic designs as you know we're using we're utilizing some savings from our 2014 bond projects to carry these projects through the schematic design phase so at that time we'll bring you those uh those plans as well as probably a recommendation

063for a construction manager an estimated budget once you approve those we'll then carry that forward to the county commissioners requesting funding funding to carry these projects through to completion okay great can you repeat again when you thought you were having the schematics um designs to us i must have spaced out it's at the end it's uh the end of this leave that year for all three at the board meeting that it was going to be brought forth okay i believe all right yeah i don't have that exact date i know in this in the schedule we were looking at the initial bond carrying us through from july 2021 through july 2022 we'll be able to bring those back to you around the end of this year time frame so we we want to we want

064to finish the schematic design have our contract estimates in place so that at the beginning of the budget cycle which will typically start around january for the school board in the county that's great so we're actually ahead of schedule is what i'm hearing you say we're we're on schedule okay great all right you've heard the recommendation uh to approve the uh the three firms that have been selected for river lights elementary school pine valley elementary school and mary c williams elementary is there a so moved thank you mr bullier is there a second thank you mr mcmanus any other discussion all right all those in favor say aye aye aye all those opposed thank you accepted thank you very much next item the one-year waiver of board policy 3420 high school credit recovery dr lashon

065smith welcome back thank you good evening again um the school's office would ask the board to waive policy 3420 for one year specifically within the policy we're asking for the waiver of the attendance requirement of this policy this would allow our students who did not meet this attendance requirement to be eligible for credit recovery this summer all right is there any discussion all right if there's no discussion you've heard the recommendation yes yes sir is there an attendance expectation for the summer session so there is we expect students for the periods that they're enrolled to be in attendance 95 of the time but as you know with credit recovery those courses are specifically designed based on what students okay need right you've heard the recommendation do i hear a motion thank you mr bullier is

066there a second second that was like three of you okay who wants it we'll give it that we'll give that one to miss justice as the second police is there any discussion all right all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed thank you approved and actually are you staying up here waiver policy 2410 oh that is i'm sorry okay all right so the waiver policy 2410 um there have been some discussions uh regarding this policy specifically outlines how policy is addressed and the idea is do we want to waive our policy of 2410 to bypass the policy committee to permit discussion and a possible possible revision of policy 2330 which is regarding the placement of call to the audience with on our agenda um so i would like to open this conversation up

067um to if there is an interest in the waiver of policy 2410 well there is an interest okay would you like to start us off miss justice i guess i go ahead and move that we waive it for this particular discussion there's been an awful lot well okay is there a second to waive the policy of 2410 specifically for policy 2330. okay miss walker is the second uh is there any discussion uh well obviously we've been hearing a lot from people after the last board meeting where it was very long meeting and it ended up that we probably had oh my gosh over half the people that had signed up for the non-agenda items had to leave literally i can't even remember what the time was but they sit out here for hours and hours

068and uh that just seemed very unfair to our public that wanted to give input this was the first time we had done this in years it was a suggestion that i think in my opinion we probably implemented without giving it the proper consideration and so that's why i wanted to waive this particular policy at the moment so we can go ahead and look at it closer because as i said more than anything else what we saw during the last meeting and the public input from many people about how big a burden it was on their having a opportunity to speak to us as their role in public yes i just wanted to add to that discussion i know when it was brought up initially i you know i probably didn't do it proper procedurally properly

069procedurally because i just didn't understand robert jewells as well but i did object only on the basis of that if we have time we should fill the hour and i felt like making people wait to the end knowing our meetings are very long and hopefully we can fix that i know we're going to have a discussion next about it but i did we did get a lot of feedback and did notice a lot of people waited and left because they just have families and things to do and you know waiting making people wait when we have the rest of the hour i just think i just think that we shouldn't have to make people wait that's that's that's really my my thoughts on that so um you know i i agree i think that we

070should especially we have the hour you know we should use up the whole hour i agree 100 this specific moment right i know but that that was my second that's where it's getting to but you know i don't know if we want to start trying to wave policies and then you know every time we turn around we could wave a policy i mean i don't know why we can't bring this back to the policy committee and then you know to discuss it for next you know next month we're talking about one more month so that's where i was going on that sorry yeah yes yeah i i agree with mr wildebore i think we should not get i don't think we should get in the habit of waiving our policies every time there's something that

071you know seems pressing it's it's one more month we have a policy committee meeting on the 13th of this month and i'm sorry the 11th of this month on tuesday at 9 a.m and i feel like we can discuss it at that point that's great i just want to echo what mr willerboard and mr boyer said is that's why we have a policy committee is um to look at these kinds of things and if we start bypassing it for you know special interests or that kind of thing then i think that we're you know setting ourselves up for a long road to host so i am not in favor of waiving policy um to do that yes mr mcmanus justice i am in favor of doing the very best we possibly can within reasonable time

072limits to let everyone speak at the beginning so they don't have to wait to the end okay but this is this to have motion discussion no but i think we should do the illusion well i don't think we waive policy uh this policy i i've been here two and a half years we've really done it and this is a very unusual situation that's the only reason that i brought it up is because it was so evident what occurred last time that we can wait another month and this walker was correct we are going to be looking at restructuring our meetings which i think will definitely change the way things have gone but in the meantime i don't want us also to be afraid of waiving policy when needs are definitely there because that's that is

073one more roadblock to having us do an effective and efficient job when the public and it's so obvious that things need to be changed under these circumstances i don't think it's going to be hugely detrimental if we didn't wave the policy but i don't want it to make a practice of saying we shouldn't waive the policy ever because that's a policy we need to be very aware that we have that ability for a reason because we are the ones up here ultimately making decisions what's best for the public and sometimes that's going to have to happen and after last week's meeting a couple weeks late ago i thought about so but being that i am part of what's going on with our new meeting process which i'll be presented in a few minutes i'm sort

074of on the events here about waiting it but i think under normal circumstances if that wasn't coming up we definitely should we should complete it because i just wanted to add that to you not sure if i might suggest the compromise policy 2330 would not be placed on the agenda for first reading it would be placed on for revision if it is the will of the policy committee to bring that forward with that addendum um i would propose just putting that first right before call to the audience and passing the revision and moving forward uh with the adopt i mean you can do it at the same speed by going through the policy committee okay so there's a motion to wave policy 2410 there's a second we have had discussion um uh let's all those

075in favor of waving the policy say i and i think we're going to have to go down the line for this so let's start with mr wildebore miss walker yes mr mcfullier no no for me oh yes okay motion uh motion fails five to two all right but we appreciate that that will be brought forth at the policy committee to be discussed as we move forward because again yes we want to be able to have efficient and effective meetings for the public and we need to make sure that we're doing that the best way possible all right head start mr bullier well chair i want to speak from the diocese this evening as there are no action items our enrollment remains the same next month you will see our head start expenditure report filled out

076as that will be the last month of our fiscal year and i just want to go through a few highlights and updates um we had a parent engagement event it was sponsored by nourish nc with the collaboration of the children's museum the broccoli brothers diaper bank cape fear museum and that was on april 22nd 2021. uh family specialists are having scribbles enrollment in person sessions to help parents register for a second year in pre-k kindergarten there's a huge difference between third and four three and four-year-olds the early childhood education staff is meeting with families who have completed applications for an interview and educational screening and there are approximately 800 applicants to date for the 2021-2022 pre-k school year so a lot of good things are happening with our youngest learners very good thank you very

077much can i ask a quick question please we have this big long waiting list um what do we do with those kids i mean do we move them in automatically if somebody doesn't show or um how do we accommodate that ms miles are you on the call yes sir all right welcome uh director smiles great great questions so um we do maintain a waiting list and currently we do not have a waiting list we're at the very beginning of our year and coming off of covid so with our wait list as students transfer to a different district or drop out um our are no shows then we pull from that waiting list i think it's very important for the community and board members to understand that preschool is an eligibility program it is not a

078first come first serve so we have to go through multiple factors in order to get our children on the wait list and follow those state and federal regulations which we do a great job of very excited about the expansion with our community partners and the support from our senior leaders so we we we do the best that we can we are limited with sloths but feel that um we we do an excellent job in this county that's your question okay all right thank you very much thank you miss miles for jumping in there and thank you mr bullier for this month's report for head start thank you very much next item up on the agenda for information district one to one technology plan uh don brinsen assistant superintendent for technology and digital learning will be

079presenting today welcome and and um board members if i can just ask a favor this is a fairly extensive presentation and so if we could wait till the end to ask questions rather than interject as ms brinson is presenting that would be helpful so just write down your questions as we go thank you good evening madam chair dr faust members of the board i first like to introduce part of my team that are here with me i have russell rivenbark the director of technology and digital learning brian lance he's our director of network security lindsay evans and she just got married she's one of our digital teaching and learning specialists and james blackburn our project manager they are here to answer questions later when you have questions one of the things one thing the pandemic

080has taught us is that this district needs to be one to one but that in itself is not innovative it's what the teachers and students will do with the devices that will be innovative my staff and i have created a plan that you should have received a copy of that will get us one to one in five years the plan includes devices development support personnel communication plan and a sustainability plan for smooth rollout to give students flexibility in the way they demonstrate mastery of the curriculum a high quality device will be provided to students and staff allowing for innovation and creativity kindergarten through 12th or kindergarten through second grade will receive ipads third grade through 12th grade laptops and a mounted display device would be put in every classroom this will help students with who

081are visual learners and the student engagement and student presentations as we roll out one-to-one and we re install new devices at schools we will be collecting the devices that the school has existing and repurposing them at other schools or surplusing them depending on the age okay we have a five year deployment plan year one would be hanover and laney year two ashley hoggard isaac bear wex c-tech mosley central office year three all middle schools year four grades three through five and year five grades k through two now it's a four year replacement cycle so in year five besides doing the kindergarten through second grade we will also be doing the first year of replacement devices for new hanover and laning and then the display devices being put in the classrooms would be a seven year

082implementation cycle the estimated roll out or the estimated amount of funds for this rollout for the initial five years including infrastructure and support personnel is 56 million now understand i said estimated we haven't determined what device we're going to use yet or put things out to bit so that will change one of the most difficult barriers to solve is students home internet access over the past year the district has worked with the county day cares and private business to provide opportunities for students to have access outside of the school through hot spots wi-fi zones at county and city buildings and wi-fi zones outside of schools this we've also increased bandwidth at some day care centers during coven moving forward we will continue to seek out solutions to student access at home the county does have

083some promising programs coming out soon with the increased number of devices additional support staff will be needed seven additional area technical coordinators are included in this plan to reduce the response time for repairs on devices a student help desk will also be created at each of the four comprehensive high schools to provide assistance to students on their devices this help desk will be created in conjunction with cte okay as i said earlier innovation will come from what students and teachers do with these devices so additional digital teaching and learning specialists are needed to provide training to teachers students and administrators so this plan calls for an additional 15 digital teaching learning specialists four each year the first three years and then three the fourth year as well as one lead media coordinator to provide training

084and support to our media specialist the initial training for teachers will be on device management digital citizenship and how to effectively use the learning management systems that we have what's more exciting is the advanced training and things that teachers will be doing blended learning problem project based learning student students as content creators instead of just consumers of information and students using voice and choice and how they demonstrate mastery of the curriculum an example of problem-based learning we had some students at ashley high school they had heard through the yearbook that typically the yearbook they have a senior quote section and there was an opportunity or chance that that wasn't going to be there so these students tried to figure out how could they digitally do a senior quote so they created a google form that

085seniors were able to submit their quotes to that actually checked against another list of email addresses for the senior students to make sure it's only seniors submitting and then had a teacher who's kind of reviewing the quotes to make sure they're appropriate before they're all posted on a website so these are students that just solve a problem found a solution the school's division has created a plan to standardize the curriculum across the district and that plan will take advantage of one-to-one the digital teaching and learning specialist will work with the lead teachers in the schools divisions to help integrate technology into the standardized curriculum communicating to both internal and external stakeholders is critical we will be working with ms fiskus and her team to implement the communications plan making sure that administrators staff students families

086and community and the community are kept informed as we implement one to one the format for the plan is based on the digital learning progress rubric the department of public instruction requires leas to complete this rubric every two years to gauge their progress towards moving towards digital learning it's based on five indicators leadership technology infrastructure and devices professional learning content and curriculum and data and assessment there's also a school version of this progress rubric that we're going to ask each school to complete before they have their devices rolled out and then again at the end of each year as one measurement of their growth i will now answer any questions that you have all right thank you very much miss brinson i will open the floor madam chair mr builder start us off first off

087i want to thank you very much for putting this together this looks like a great plan i did have one question though and i'm going to get some stickler for it but why laptops instead of chromebooks chromebooks are a lot less expensive it would take a lot less time to get to the third and fourth levels if we went with chromebooks instead of a laptop are you talking about the operating system chrome are you talking about the device itself a chromebook a chromebook is a lot less expensive than a laptop well the chrome operating system doesn't allow for students to be as innovative and creative they they don't have the opportunity to do all the creation that we are wanting our students to do and doing programming and other things and that doesn't allow it

088as easily as doing it on the laptop [Music] okay mr bill here yeah i just had a quick question why um why were the schools selected in the years in which they were selected what was the criteria for that decision we were wanting to do high schools first you know because it was important that the high schools get the devices and use devices so in looking at the schools that we were looking at we felt like new hanover was a good school to start with it's not the biggest school and then we felt like starting with laney because the what they've done already with technology they'd be another school to complement so choosing one of the biggest schools and the smallest high school together first the early colleges are already one to one we kind

089of went back and forth with do do we go ahead and do them in the first year or do them in the second year trying to limit how much we are doing the first year gives us an opportunity to make sure all of our rollout procedures are very well and we can refine them before we do too many schools at one time thank you very much mr president yeah so when we say that they get these computers are these ones that they leave at school every night or are they allowed to take them back and forth the plan is that grades um 3 through 12 will have the opportunity to take them home every day they will be strongly encouraged to take them home that will ultimately will be the parents decision um but grades

090k2 the thought is they would actually stay in the classroom but there's a long time before we'd roll out k2 so that could change okay and then um nevermind i forgot i wrote it down but it doesn't make sense anymore [Laughter] mr mcmahon yeah i'm admitting that publicly mr mcmanus you have any questions just justice what what brand laptops are we using we have not decided yet we are we're doing testing on both windows devices and apple devices so we are still in the testing phase um it's important that we make sure that one is a high quality device that's going to hold up to the wear and tear of the student use the battery is very critical kids taking it back and forth we're going to make sure the battery lasts for them not

091just the initial year but all four years that they have it so those are some things that we're looking at also being able to support it as far as on our infrastructure and being able to quickly get it rolled out to students are some of the things that we're looking at when we're evaluating the devices and to clarify sort of backing up on this crayola's question and maybe i missed something during the presentation but i i didn't maybe hadn't read it properly but that that means middle school and high school students will have access take it home great three through twelve well the definitely the plan is that they take them home but ultimately it's the parents choice but are you going to strongly encourage grades 3 through 12 to take them home madam chair

092mr mcmanus mr will deborah you have a question you may not have the answer now how many students still do not have internet i do not have that answer right now we don't it's not data we collect because it's it's hard to collect that data because that's how you ask the question because you could ask the question do you have internet at home and some may say yes they have it because their parents phone turns into a hot spot but if their parents not home with them then the kid doesn't have access to it or they might just have it on a phone versus having to be able to attach a computer to it so there is um there is an added fields in powerschool that we are going to start trying to collect that

093information and try and kind of quantify it as to what we're looking at for high speed internet really is what we're looking at but that's data we're going to start collecting and putting power school does that warrant hesitations to some of the homes to make sure um no i think it's just how you word the questions and the conversations that we have with the students to make sure that they're understanding the question and why we're asking it because that's very important thank you all right mr wildebord and this is an actual question but just want to thank you i've talked to a good handful of lead or media specialists and i see you have a position here for a full-time lead person in that role and they're sorely needed from what i understand so thank

094you thank you and i i just have a few questions okay i'm sorry i just have to um you talked about the equipment and you talked about the positions which i didn't hear you say anything about bandwidth can the bandwidth in our district handle the one-to-one move yes we um we have access point in every classroom right now we have access points in the media centers in the cafeterias um we have a um you can probably kill me if i stay around we have one gig connection to every school um and then the state who provides our internet pipe out they base it on how we use it so if we hit a certain threshold then they'll bump it up we have a new threshold they'll bump it up and and the other thing this

095is more of a comment i love the student help desk option from i'm a workforce development fan and so to be able to pull in cte students as you're having those conversations is there that an opportunity for students actually to be paid that is possibility they are able to do that um we we work with them now you know at least we have up to before covered we've had some students at each of the high schools that are able to to get paid for that work so that is a possibility we're in conversations with miss shoeford fantastic well well done thank you very much for this presentation all right so okay um so one of them was your question you knew um is the um is this a possibility for internships like you know at

096sea tech and some of the others like like we do here at um ford new hampshire county schools tv so that that's wonderful second thing was i thought i heard you say that we were working in partnership or trying to work in partnership with businesses um and the county commissioners to increase you know internet access you said could you talk a little bit about what that might look like during during covid it was um conversations that i had with the county and actually with with some private businesses um it was live oak bank was one who kind of helped to reach out and shore up the internet at some of our daycare facilities across the county that where kids were every day when they were doing completely remote so they kind of helped in that

097and so they've also both the county and the city has added some buildings too they have actually added some wi-fi zones outside so the map that this links to and we have on our website is one that's provided by the county that kind of shows wi-fi areas where they've opened up to public access to have increased you know areas where they could get ultimately we really want the access to be in students homes and not where they'd have to go to some other location i do know that they have a program coming out i don't have all the details so i don't really want to go into that but they do have something coming out and then we're going to continue looking for other solutions because that's where we need to have the accesses in

098their homes yeah because i had heard some of the things that might be coming out so i was just corroborating you know collaborating the story all right thank you very much ms brunson and thank you very much to the whole team for coming out this evening we appreciate you being here at the meeting and thank you for all the work that you've been doing we know that covid has been a challenge for technology so we appreciate everything all right i have been asked to take a five-minute break if that's okay um so let's take a break at 7 43 let's come back in at 7 48. so take a break we'll be right back i'm trying charles all right welcome back thank you very much i just need to remind everyone here in attendance it

099is um please put your masks on your face while you are indoors they need to be covering your nose in your mouth in the indoor process please thank you very much all right next item on the agenda is the superintendent's report dr faust i turn it over to you thank you today is teacher appreciation day so i want to start by thanking each and every one of our rising above thank you each and every one for rising above the challenges this year and remaining dedicated to educating our students whether it's online in person or both i truly appreciate your flexibility to adapt along the way and always putting our students first may 7th is student lunch hero day i spent time at one of our elementary schools during the lunch hour recently and spoke with

100students i also got a chance to personally thank some of our child nutrition staff for the hard work that they are doing each day since august of 2020 child nutrition has served more than 790 000 lunches graduation ceremonies will be held across the district during the week of may 22nd i've been working with our senior staff and school administrators to prepare summer learning summer ignite 2021 will offer six additional weeks of in-person instruction for qualifying students all eligible families should have been contacted last week with an invite from their principal families are encouraged to contact their child's school for further information and we'll have a deeper discussion next board meeting on ignite is also mental health awareness month and during the past year we have seen how important it is to focus on the emotional

101and mental health and well-being of our students and staff the first week of may focuses on mental health of early child and seeks to raise awareness around how a positive mental health experience is essential to their development i want to commend our student services division for their proactive approach to emotional health and their willingness to respond in any situation recently i had the opportunity to speak with the rotary club about long-term goals for the district and key ways to help to tackle some of our challenges i look forward to connecting with more community groups and businesses discuss their part in student success and how new hanover county schools can build future partnerships with our community stakeholders thank you thank you very much all right next item on the agenda is the board chairpersons report i

102would like to echo dr faust sediment for teacher appreciation week thank you so much to all of our teachers and the amazing work that they have done this year on behalf of the board if you have a child in school if you are part of the community i encourage you to reach out to the schools within your community and see what you can do i know personally my son is in third grade and we're trying to do a lot of things for our teachers this year to let them know just how special they are and i encourage our community to do the same you have worked so hard this year in covid and we just appreciate all that you're doing and glad that we have this week to celebrate you in addition i just wanted

103to update the community a bit about some of the training that the board has been doing um you know this group has been together for about four months and we're working really hard to come together and gel as a group and i'd like to commend all of our board members for the passion and efforts that they have put into the training that we have been attending we have been working with the representative from dpi to work on our norms and processes to be able to streamline and bring you more efficient and effective meetings we are working with the north carolina school boards association we are actually working towards becoming a master board excuse me master board we're going through master board training so we're about halfway through that to learn a lot of different aspects

104of this role to make us a better functioning governance team for you and your children and most recently six out of our seven board members also took a title ix appeals training course and so there's a lot of work being done here at the dyess you see us at our monthly meetings but there's a lot more that's going on behind the scenes and we are here to work for you and we are doing the best that we can to best educate ourselves to make us as an impactful group as we can be for our community and our school system so thank you to the board members that have been putting in so much effort and time to get yourselves trained up as we all work to be the best governance team we can all right

105that is all i have for board chairpersons report next item that we have under items brought forward by board members is robert's rules of order for parliamentary procedures training and i will yield the floor to board member ms stephanie walker thank you ms adams i know since i've been on the board i think this is the one one training that we have not done yet i know we talked about it early on the staggering gave us like a brief overview of robert trolls and i did have acquired a book and i also got one a few of us got a book in brief but i still don't feel like that a lot of us understand it as well as we could not you know i mean some of us know it better than others but

106i think we'd be a much more effective board if we knew we had training and we knew how to do you know motions etc and things like that and i feel like um it would also help with time decorum all the things that you know we kind of are at a disadvantage at right now so really i would i was i hope i did some research i found that we have one in wilmington that is like she's naturally recognized at least she's president of the state um parliamentarian um uh uh association north carolina association parliamentarians and she um we happen to have her here and i just feel like you know it would be a benefit to this board if we all could go through some training and i know you guys are tired of

107training but you know we're gonna be a master board we're gonna do this right here i think will just help us a lot and um i i don't know um i would hope that maybe the chair could contact her and maybe set up something or the two of you could um could uh set up training for us to be able to learn to be better board members so um i would like to make a motion that we if i'm doing it right i would like to make a motion that the chair please contact miss um nelson here and see if we can get some training on for the board awesome all right we've got a person a second is there anything mistaken that needs to be i don't know if this is a legal question

108as far as training goes for the board no i mean the board can certainly um vote to to do whatever training that you feel it might be helpful i i do think that you might want to and i haven't looked at um i didn't pull up your purchasing or service contracting policies i don't know if you want to look to see what other options are available in the board if you're doing master board training maybe the school board association has something available so i my recommendation would be to look at the options that you have for the training and then have you know have that brought back to to just make that decision about who who will do the training would that be amenable to you miss walker yeah i think i did i did

109do a little research and i didn't see that they had a parliamentarian trainer like this of this quality especially and that's why i specifically made it you know for this particular person because i mean i don't know i don't met her i know there's some people here that probably do know her better than i do um but that's why i made a specific motion i i would just say that best practice is typically to have um you know it doesn't have to go through formal bidding or anything like that but to look to see what the best available training is for the best price for the district to to do that um research before just deciding on on one person that that would be my recommendation because it finds three including ms nelson as one

110of our i would say if i if i had to just give input on that i would like to say that they have to be up to her standard because i think it's rare to have somebody this close that we can we can take advantage of madam chair yes do we um do we need a vote or can we just give make a request of the chair to do this well certainly i think that normally that you know the superintendent or the chair would bring forward a training to meet the standards that the board requested so i don't know that you you know that you have to vote on the particular individual who's going to do it with it's within the budgetary amounts that superintendent has authority for in my experience you know other boards

111that would say to the superintendent we'd like to do this training the superintendent or his staff would come back and say you know this is the option that i found to to perform this training and then it would be provided to the board we're in a really unique situation here um i've never knew nelson i don't know that well personally i've just met her a couple times but i mean she literally goes back to the 90s and probably even the 80s with her reputation nationwide with her parliamentarian skills and also she was i believe like national ptsa pta they've changed the name a couple times pta president during the 90s so she is an amazing um gift to our community and i believe she has expressed that she's you know she'd like to help us

112i'm not sure if there's any financial thing situation and uh since you're talking about the superintendent maybe making a recommendation on the board chair i guess we're speaking to them right now about doing that i mean we're really blessed to have caliber people in our communities with these skills and she has given many training so you know that would be my input on this matter is that we do follow up with this definitely and find out what the particulars are because we can definitely benefit from it we all know this so so what i'm hearing is we don't necessarily need a motion this could just be a request that we're going to get some more information and find options and it doesn't require a vote is that correct well there's been a motion i think

113in a second so well that's what do we need should do we need to pull that back based on this conversation i it's really the pleasure of the board if you want to move forward on this motion that's pending i think you can do that if not if you want to just um you know have consensus to instruct the you know the board chair or the superintendent to come back with some options that's also a possibility could you respect your motion please like i know what i'm voting on okay well i'd make a motion to for us as a board to get parliamentary computer training with either with pianists is what i would like because she is the top of the line we have her here but at least somebody of this caliber that's what

114i'm just requesting in my motion i think you just seconded it okay absolutely all right so the motion on the table is to get um the parliamentary training for the board by either miss nelson or someone up her caliber we have a motion in a second we've had discussion um let's go go ahead and we can vote on this um all those in favor say aye all those opposed motion passes you're welcome all right next item on the agenda committee reports i am going to yield the door to miss justice to share information about the board meeting schedule and agenda ad hoc committee all right well thank you um do we have a handout to look at is um thank you okay this is a recommendations from our ad hoc committee on board meetings in

115the agenda and let me take this off because unfortunately it blocks me speaking um and and i'm also an over a month vaccinated on six people um now this is a proposal for the new meeting schedule and agenda for the new hanover county school board and all the following meetings are open to the public except the course for the closed session and um the first record well i'll just go through them two meetings a month which weekdays of the month to be determined as a separate agenda item that will be later on right now the work session and all these we talked about this during our last meeting we took it back and had an i'll put it in the meeting for last 10 ad hoc committee meeting and get the suggestions from the board

116members who at the last discussion of this had put some very good points in and had uh wanted to give feedback and so we have now discussed it in a committee and added these changes okay so two meetings a month work session from 5 pm to 6 pm now these work sessions are less formal opportunities for the school board to discuss issues receive reports provide guidance to the superintendent and staff and a good example was what mr brenson just brought forward to us with the with the one-on-one technology grant coming in and we could have been discussing that during that work session and then come in and voted on it and the public would have been invited to it but that would have taken place earlier in the day and you know just this way

117more people if that if they got off work and come into later hours so that would be taking place between five and six pm then we'd have our regular closed session from 6 pm to 7 pm and then the formal meeting will take place at 7 00 pm all right that's the change there now here's a sample of the proposed agenda structure under um the work session there will be a call to order a roll call approval of the agenda and this we did not discuss during the ad hoc but this was taken from actually miss adams suggestion when i had looked earlier about the approval agenda i also have added approval of the minutes because this way during the work session we can take things that just need to be done as a work

118and get them separated from the formal work that we do okay so approval of the minutes head start information that's the budget new programs facilities etc committee reports and correspondence then we'd have the closed session and here's the agenda for the open session i mean the regular session it's all open except for the close for the regulars for more formal session call to order invocation pledge of allegiance national anthem and posting of the colors and hopefully next year when we get back to more normal setting we will have these kinds of things taking place right this under covered we've had to leave out a lot uh recognition of achievement call to the audience can set items old business those would be action items new business uh superintendents report board chairman's report announcements and then adjournment

119and so this is what the ad hoc committee with all of your suggestions finalized so there's uh i guess i know i move to have this work of the ad hoc committee uh you know accepted yes and i asked uh were you saying like for june we start this process i guess we can discuss that after we discuss whether or not we're gonna you know and we can do that during the discussion just a minute so if you want to discuss yeah so we have a motion um to and i just just to clarify does this need to go through policy so in the motion the motion would be to say we want it to go to the policy committee that's right for approval to then come to the board for final approval thank you

120for that clarification and that policy committee meeting should be on the 10th or 11th okay so we could bring it back for finalizing so there'll be june anyway all right so we have a motion on the table to send it to policy for approval okay all right second any other discussion yes um i think that you know if we want to get this agenda adopted for june i would go ahead and recommend that this be placed on the interim meeting once again this is a revision it does not have to go for a first reading great fantastic anyone else questions comments do we make our comments now or do we wait to the policy committee meeting to make them i mean i would just wait for the policy committee meeting because i know there's a

121couple changes that i wanted to make as well but i think we can wait for the policy committee meeting okay and so um i would encourage then board other board members who were interested to listen in on the policy committee meeting because that's i have several other comments that um that were not quite addressed in in the ad hoc committee meeting i wanted to to clarify that right i would i would like to thank the committee this is this is great i'm excited you know to see some of the streamlining happening and i think with two meetings i think this will move a lot quicker so thank you very much for the work that you guys have done uh and i know i know that ms crabill was uh she had quite a few extensive

122recommendations which were good but part of what we want to and when you go to the policy committee please remember this is barebones what we need to do and if we start getting off on adding and do it this way and do it that way that's not really what what the i guess you could say the spirit of what it is that a just a regular meeting schedule and agenda is i mean those are other details can happen during meetings themselves okay all right we have a motion and a second we have had discussion um all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed recommendations are accepted to move to policy thank you very much all right next item on the agenda is correspondence uh does any board member have any correspondence they would

123like to share yes ms craybill are we allowed to add something a committee forward or do we have to ask you to do that first um we if you would like to go back into committee reports we can give you the only report that um a report from title ix committee that i just wanted to request that we would be on the interim agenda because title ix committee has a survey that we need to bring forward for the board to look at so yeah i would that's i have a lot more to say but that's all i'll say tonight okay i just would like to add the parks and rec committee shared with us to meet the legion stadium committee we have the contract comes up due a year from june so we need to

124start working on and keep an eye on that because they're going to enlarge legion stadium they hope to and add a whole bunch of new things but uh anyway just want to let you know that all right something to look forward to great yeah all right anything else just for clarification so how do we how do we normally do that without butting in just send me an email let me know if you'd like to do a committee report thank you sorry that's okay all right any correspondence from board members to share nope all right that brings us to our second call to the audience and let me grab my list please all right first up we have peter rawich tonight i will speak about school suspensions imagine a board of education policy where pre-k through

125second grade children are not suspended for hitting a teacher but instead meet weekly in a small group with a school counselor to work on anger management skills imagine a superintendent who provides summer workshops and follow-up training to educators on restorative justice practices that focus on harm acknowledgement and relationship repair instead of broken rules and zero tolerance punishment imagine a principal who reviews his discipline data and supports teachers who are building in time during the school day for students to model and practice positive behaviors even if it means a little less time for reading or math imagine a counselor who asks two six-year-olds why they were fighting at recess listens to their concerns and then helps them make a plan for the next day imagine a teacher who holds morning meetings in her second grade classroom

126where students take turns talking about their feelings and listening to the feelings of others imagine a kindergartner helping a friend take five deep breaths to calm themselves down when someone broke their favorite crayon and they feel like throwing it well you can stop imagining this school culture is already in practice it has been in the dallas texas elementary schools since 2017 five years ago they instituted a policy prohibiting out-of-school suspensions for pre-k through second grade students except in exceptionally limited or extremely limited circumstances such as a child bringing a gun or drugs to school the texas legislature followed their lead by making this the law in texas that same year school suspensions are prohibited for four five six and seven-year-old children we must do the same here thank you [Applause] veronica mclaren brown good evening

127there are moments when elected officials have the opportunity to act boldly courageously and justly to change the culture and trajectory of the institutions that they represent now is your moment to address student abuse that arises from the excessive oppressive and unkind use of suspensions in our school system especially the suspensions of four five six and seven-year-old children the ones that we still pick up and carry and sit in our laps and the ones that believe in fairy tales across our nation state governments and boards of education have acted boldly courageously and justly to reform their disciplined policies and eliminate suspensions the pittsburgh public school board on september the 1st 2018 prohibited honors school suspensions for nonviolent minor disciplinary actions the philadelphia school district ended our school suspension from k second grade on june 21st 2018.

128in 2017 the dallas texas school board prohibited the use of honor school suspensions in pre-k through second grade except for extremely limited conditions this year the dallas texas school board decided on a very aggressive timeline of six months to train and prepare educators for a policy that ends suspensions in third through 12th grade starting in 2021 2022 school year what did you do you shuffled a couple of words around and added the phrase as a last resort to the discipline policy your wording your vote were not bold not courageous not just not transformative and most importantly not student-centered you have identified and acknowledged the harmful and desperate effects of suspensions on children you have a fiduciary responsibility to act swiftly and judicious to stop the harm just like you work to stop sexual abuse in

129our school system out of school suspicion suspensions are like a knee on the neck of our children suffocating them killing their hopes and dreams and opportunities this is your moment to act boldly this is your moment to act courageously this is your moment to act justly for all of our children thank you sandy isles good evening this morning the hogwarts high school rock was defaced with transphobic racists racist and discriminatory language threatening the safety of our students and staff are you as angry as i am that our children are not safe in our schools if so why have you quickly passed discriminatory policies such as those on behavior suspension and seclusion and restraint these policies perpetuate the same hate that was painted on that rug our superintendent even acknowledged at a policy committee meeting that

130our seclusion restraint policy is and i quote more for students with disabilities or behavior problems all parents of children with disabilities need to understand this policy is targeted towards your children our numbers confirm this i understand we have some students with significant behavior needs and all students must all students and staff must be safe however the use of seclusion restraint simply is not safe for anyone the us department of education states there continues to be no evidence that using restraint or seclusion is effective in reducing the occurrence of problem behaviors that frequently precipitate the use of such techniques so why did our district repeatedly seclude 59 children 38 of them black 486 times in 2017 and continue to do so when there's no evidence that it reduces problems behavior for teacher appreciation week i'm asking

131our board to adopt an effective evidence-based program to address student behavior so that our teachers can safely teach all children i'm asking you to empower our teachers with better tools when our children are safe they learn and literacy rates improve kids do not learn when they are removed from the classroom locked in a room or sent home kids do not learn when school is a source of trauma yet i hear you say to me that i just don't understand these kids five six seven-year-olds they're so dangerous we must suspend restrain and lock them in rooms except we don't have to do any of that we choose to do it we choose to hire central st central office positions versus hiring staff who work directly with our children why aren't we investing in resources that improve

132student behavior as brene brown said when you see something that i think is blatant dehumanization what story do you have to tell yourself to be okay with that what story are you making up one story new hanover county schools tells us that seclusion and restraint is therapeutic okay then at open house i expect every family to receive a tour of their school seclusion room and watch a demonstration on restraint if this is a therapeutic practice celebrate the service for all students and be proud of it or deep down you already know this is not humane because we have safer evidence-based options or do you believe our disabled children mostly black deserve this inhumane treatment so tell us what story are you making up to release yourself of any ownership so that you can defend the

133continuation of discrimination and traumatization of our children thank you [Music] [Applause] jennifer g harnett good evening i come here today in the spirit of gratitude thank you board members for your service to our community as educators we may disagree about the process to achieve our goals but we all have the same desire to serve our community we all want to see the lives of our students improved and we want equal opportunities for all our hearts are filled with joy as we watch young minds blossom with self-confidence and believing in themselves it is in this same spirit of gratitude in which i am here today i am here to bear witness to the heroic efforts of our sro officers in our schools i have watched them day in and day out work hard to build relationships

134with our students relationships in which they mentor encourage and advise our youth i have had many of my students ask specifically if they could go to the resource officer when they had a personal concern to discuss or to seek advice i want to express gratitude for the de-escalation tactics that the sros use i have seen them so often use these to calm students which present prevents them from being violent not towards the resource officers but towards each other i learned this the hard way when i tried to protect a more vulnerable student from another older student who decided to pick up their umbrella and beat the other one over the head i got hit because i was just standing near the student when their attacks started the student did not mean to hit me they

135were just in a violent rage and our sro officers often put themselves in harm's way in order to protect our students from injuring each other this is so important because in order to achieve our educational goals we need classrooms which are free from violence so that our students can learn the sros are a great resource to our schools i am grateful for them and their efforts toward protecting the learning environment in school and which works for the good of our entire community and gratitude [Music] bandori and jay kramarti all right good evening so today i'm just going to give a quick report at freeman and at rachel freeman school of engineering today the pta is over 100 parents and teachers strong for teacher appreciation week this week jimmy john's downtown location papa john's oleander location

136sweet dees on 17th street and publix have all donated this week for the teachers to have a free lunch this week as well as the democratic the new hanover county democratic women have given a generous donation to help facilitate a parenting seminar at freeman the the garden is growing strong with a variety of fruits and vegetables and let's see and thank you for the nomination for the principal this week as well and we have a new teacher miss anderson who's doing a wonderful job other matters i'd like to speak on real quick is that i do ask that you change the date and time in which the school board meets because it falls on the same day as the city council meeting and i can't be in two places at once neither can many other

137people in the county two i ask that you end k through third suspension as well i also ask that you get rid of sro officers in the school at least at the elementary level and if there is anybody teaching in a school or in a school who is afraid of students who feel like they need a sro officer to intervene obviously they should not be teaching i personally have never been in altercation where i felt like i was afraid of elementary school child nor anyone else who is a child and i've worked with kids for many years i also ask that you all as well as other people in the county who work in the schools volunteers teachers janitors nurses anyone that if they do see any type of racist supremacist anything that can lead

138to sexual assault sexual harassment that you all ask them right now tonight to lead the school system because they have no place here if anyone here has a problem with that i think it's safe to say that you might be part of the problem thank you and have a good night [Applause] elizabeth marie aletti are you saying that correctly good evening my name is elizabeth olletti and i'm currently a senior at laney high school i'm also dual enrolled through cape fear community college i'm here today to talk about an ongoing situation that started about two months ago this is sorry the situation being um my counselor ended up giving me the wrong information and telling me i did not have to take an english 4 class at my high school during my senior year in

139order to graduate due to the english classes i took at cape fear like i said i'm dual enrolled well with this information being incorrect my counselor ended up calling me towards the end of march stating that she had made a mistake and that i may not be able to graduate this year due to her mistake keep in mind i graduate may 27th now my principal and vice principal tried resolving the situation telling me i could take the class online through ingenuity and cutting out a lot of the course load leaving me with only two modules to do we agreed upon this they even notified my mother of the course load i had to complete for this new class well they misled me with that information as well seeing as how when i signed up for

140graduation my school called my mother saying how i couldn't graduate if i did not complete the class while i'm under the impression that i have completed what was asked of me and what i agreed upon this was not groupon when i sat down with them i had a total of 17 more quizzes as well as two tests totaling to around nine more hours of work this on top of the four classes i already have as well as the obstacles life has thrown at me recently frankly i do not have the time to pay for the mistake of someone else during the entirety of the situation nobody has taken responsibility not my principal not my vice principal not my counselor my principal has even gone out of her way to email my mother making it out

141to seem as though i'm failing to complete my work intentionally and emailing her about my ethics 360 report saying that we had agreed on the quizzes and tests in the first place when we had not yet i completed the work that was asked of me when we sat down that day this concerns me because not only has this happened to me this has happened to several of my peers they have even reached out to me saying that a similar situation has happened but they are too afraid to speak up about it how can women in charge of a school who are supposed to act as role models let multiple students suffer with their education due to their mistakes or incapability of doing their jobs properly i'm disappointed in my school and i'm disappointed in my

142role models amanda white good evening board members and dr faust today has been a very difficult day i know that you have heard what has happened at hoggard and frankly right now i'm very emotional so i do apologize for any breaks last month i did talk to you about the sros i'm actually friends with the sro my last school i talked to him i asked was the actions that were taken possibly warranted justified because i was trying to make sense and he said well he wasn't there and he hasn't seen the video it it just seems wrong something seems wrong there and um i know that when i um had the interactions with them i myself broke up a fight or i guess handled a fight within my own classroom he was not there because

143he was not asked because the assistant or the principals and the assistant principals handled it as they should for the protection of the students i actually saw him de-escalate a situation not putting his hands on a kid because he understood that they as sros have an obligation to ensure that these kids graduate and that they are able to play sports and that they are able to thrive thrive within their school um and so this leads to the learning loss that these kids occur incur whenever they're suspended because an sro feels as though they have to put their hands on a kid they have to handcuff even though they are not physically interacting with any individual and so i do want to link in today as an educator i had to three times calm down a

144student de-escalated a student that was very frustrated by the actions the hate speech in which they described that occurred on the rock when all they were doing was trying to uplift their black uh classmates their lgbtq classmates and their asian american classmates and today one of my asian american students who i ran into in the hallway said thank you for being there at the rock when all i was doing was going to bring one of my students to my class because she was there and i know she needed to be in class but why is the student thanking me for being there for her when that is my job because for some reason this is a freedom of speech issue that the school cannot handle because their hands are tied and i just want to

145know why this is the situation that it is where our kids are feeling as though their social and emotional needs are not met because they are bound by these policies in which administrators are not able to handle the way that they should and so i just want to bring you to this attention because we hopefully we can have this conversation to meet the actual social and emotional needs of our students thank you [Applause] mark whitehead i if you mr whitehead if you can do me a favor we can't have signs that are are impeding the the visuals so if you want to put it in front of you can put it in front of the no no in front of the in front of the microphone yeah just on the floor is fine hopefully with

146a little humor dr faust members of the board representatives of central office parents students thank you for granting me this audience dr faust i'd like to thank you for petitioning our thoughts on morale and teacher retention this year my my words will hopefully shed some light on these issues my name is mark whitehead i've been a teacher in new hanover county for 22 years before that i taught in the dying country of czechoslovakia with my czech relatives as communism was ushered out my mom's cousin was a political gulag prisoner survivor from the prague spring in 68 and after that i taught in japan for two and a half years today i'll present you with the three reasons why such an alarming number of students have failed this year first and foremost the students weren't doing

147any work now some students had circumstances we understand that but just go and ask the high school teachers how many students were able to get two weeks worth of done over a weekend when their parents jumped on their back okay this is linked to the second reason why students aren't uh we're failing this year and that's a troubling decline in the standards that we've had for our students that i've seen over the last two decades well every teacher i've asked has stated they worked more this year than ever before less and less has been expected from our students this is a big reason why you're not getting anyone to sign up for summer school okay we are left wondering why we should even work and try if the kids just get passed and again this

148predates cobit i can i'm a history teacher i can give you a lot more information and a lot more detail and a lot more substantial uh information and statistics on this if you would like it another time um having taught honors freshmen since expectations for our students have plummeted to comical levels we as teachers don't need failed ideological doctrine rebranded in new terms given to us in the guise of professional development the horrible practice of jumping on the societal and educational bandwagon of failed ideas have left us with students unprepared for high school unprepared for college and unprepared for life we are done with professional development that is as shallow emotionally as it is stunted intellectually without factual basis to back it up it's as useless as it is insulting i implore the board and

149central office to restate bigger and disciplined in our schools my brother-in-law teaches or sells bonds for schools the most disciplined schools do the best lastly there was nothing for us when we got to school at the beginning of the year in august we had there was no preparation we were walking around literally for days saying what are we supposed to do how are we supposed to teach where's the guideline where's the road map it wasn't there we're also asking what were they doing in central office for the last three months in closing i'd like to thank you for your generous attention and i'm willing to discuss this further in greater detail and implore you go and ask other teachers don't don't take my word for it thank you gina dashbach i hope i'm saying that

150correctly okay it's not mine when i filled the form to call for the call to audience there was a area to enter what topic i wanted to speak on and i wrote equity and sophic solutions i knew that these were not agenda items and that i would be here all night i answered honestly i didn't try to cheat the system and i just sat through an entire meeting and i know now for a fact that critical race theory was not on the agenda so why were three or four or five people allowed to speak on a topic for the first part of the meeting so i'm having a lot of feelings about that when i walked in tonight an audience member greeted me the first time i've been to one of these meetings except for

151on my kitchen table and she asked me what team i was on and i answered team kid what team are you on i would like to congratulate the board and dr faust and the equity and diversity committee for moving forward with suffolk solutions the whole of new hanover county will benefit from the unbiased equity report that will result from the survey so that we can move forward and move ahead with good work of equity inclusion and school safety we are not makers of history we are made by history that's dr martin luther king jr i'm learning a lot of people like to quote him so i thought i would share one of his quotes when i hear school equity work being compared to marxism and socialism i'm trump i'm dumbstruck this is an excerpt from

152an email that you all received this morning and i believe hearing it is different than reading it so i'd like to read you parts of this email from denise yanone she is a community member and a fierce champion of our children she is also on team kid quote it seems as soon as we honestly try to give students what they truly need in new hampshire hanover county the big loud pivot to distraction begins and some folks deflect and they start calling everything calling it everything but what it is the new trigger word is socialism telling the truth when we teach history to our children is now socialism talking honestly about our issues and differences is and calling out discrimination is now socialism working toward equity seems to particularly set off some folks equity for our

153marginalized students and especially our lgbtq plus students is yet again called the s word that s words is not socialism its suppression suppression of the truth suppression of hopes and dreams of underserved children who deserve our love and support another term being used tonight and also in conservative news today is critical race theory this is a decades-old scholarly theory that recognizes that race intersects with other identities including sexual sexuality gender identity and others it recognizes that racism is not a bygone relic of the past and instead it not it acknowledges that the legacy of slavery and segregation and the imposition of second-class citizenships on black americans and other people of color continue to permeate [Applause] michael fox thank you guys i'll get right to it it's my first time here my daughter received an award

154in this room for super achievement she was notif she was noticed for 15 under 15 in new hanover county she's a two-time north carolina pageant winner in the ability for speaking ability poise and composition so i believe i'm doing a great job on raising an excellent community member i came up here like i said it's my first time i came up here to talk about how stupid the masks are because everybody know they are all right i don't even want to get into that now after sitting here and hearing these people talk about how their fourth to fifth and sixth graders are having trouble in school and have disciplinary actions and the cross are are manhandling these kids and they're being suspended i cannot sit there and listen to that and then sit around here

155and listen to somebody preach about bringing critical race theory curriculum to this to this county into these schools we can tell we have a problem here it begins at home and it begins in the community it begins with their social media and their electronic activities and then we want to bring in some radical ideology that's going to teach your kids to come home one day and look you in the eye and go i hate you how's that going to feel when they come in here and say that to your face about being taught in school those ways i've never been ashamed of what i heard tonight and i'm actually saddened and i just can't believe this is going on in our community my daughter's getting ready to go into ninth grade i've never had a

156problem in the school system i loved every teacher i respect them and and i just want to know what is going on here you guys are educators and we put our trust in you and to hear these issues being brought up after all this bull crap we went through this last year it's very disheartening this is my first time here it's not going to be my last we expect some changes we expect to hear something if we have to bring 100 people back next time we will and we're for being a thousand people the next time we're going to do that i respect you guys and enough of this silly silliness does everybody get it i heard you commending your kids man about great jobs they were doing and you're gonna turn around and teach

157them to hate each other dance it's the stupidest i ever heard excuse me i'm sorry i'm gonna have to shut you down we can't use profanity [Applause] morris jackson from permiter my name is morris jackson pimentor marcy and i want to thank you for this opportunity to speak to you tonight as a former educator in new hanover county i'm very concerned about the decisions that are going to be made to a curriculum that might seriously impact our children's lives forever i started teaching in 1965 and i've given 46 years of my life to education of children in this county and through the years i have witnessed the erosion of morals and values in this country i've seen the breakdown of the family union and how liberalism has crept into every aspect of academia from preschool

158to college talk about culture change let me remind us all that culture does change but core values should never change one thing i've learned about teaching children is that when you want to try to change their attitudes and their behavior you first first have to get to their heart that's where the change takes place i read a book one time called shepherd in a child's heart and i recommend that read for every parent every teacher let me go back to a moment in time i was there when bible reading was taken out of public schools and kindergarteners were no longer allowed to recite a simple blessing because it contained the word god i was there when the posting of the ten commandments were being taken down from the walls in other words i was there

159when god was expelled from the public school do you know what happened when that when god was expelled from the public school the devil walked in and he took a seat in the front row things really began to change after that much of what we have talked about tonight has to do with morality and you can't legislate morality so let me tell you what happened after 36 years i retired from public school and i went into christian education helped start myrtle grove christian school and coastal christian high school i over the years have seen how children have been desensitized to the things of god also many have lost their love and respect for family and country that's why it's so important that we teach patriotism in every classroom in america we need to talk about

160good things that have made america the humanitarian nation it is today we need to recognize great people in the past for the contributions that they have made to create our country's rich heritage our country was founded on judeo principle christian principles and that is an important historical fact never to be denied it's all too true that our coveted bill of rights which is now being threatened was patterned after the ten commandments i have a lot to say and not much time left to say it in but what i would like to say to the board is may i finish that one sentence is that i i think this board has a good conscience and that you all bring much wisdom to the table thank you mr thank you mr permanent please do the right thing

161at the right time for the right reason for the children jody francis oh okay all right uh next uh final call to the audience this evening is pat bradford good evening i'd like to talk to you about two things first of all transparency in these meetings i'm sitting on the front row i can't see that board i can't read what's on it so whatever you're putting up it's great but i can't read it so i can't participate i can't understand what you're saying because you have a muffle basket on your face or i could share where you say you all have microphones if you could speak into them stephanie crable is the only person tonight i could clearly understand what they were saying so i've missed a lot of what was said and i'm sitting

162here taking notes i'm a visual learner i can't see your mouth moving so i have no idea what you're saying most of the time so if you could work on that and your policies and procedures it'd be lovely all right transparency i'm concerned about the fast tracking of the critical race theory in our schools and in our nation the principles proclaimed in our declaration of independence defended by those who died in the civil war and codified into law within the with the fourth 14th and 15th amendments the civil rights act of 1964 the voting rights act of 1965. all of these are explicitly rejected by critical race theory so i ask you do you support public schools separating first graders into groups of oppressors and oppressed do they mandatory do you do you support mandatory

163critical teaching that all white people play a part in perpetrating system systematic racism do you support public schools instructing white parents to become white traders an advocate for white appalachia abolition we should be talking about the three r's reading writing and arithmetic aiming at excellence in our schools aiming for excellence in our students a common standard that challenges people of all backgrounds all everything to achieve their potential i urge you to support excellence in our school and not this junk that you're considering thank you [Applause] all right the next item on the agenda are the announcements the board will participate in a work session on wednesday may 5th at 9 00 a.m at the nhcs administration building in practice with social distance and guidance attendance will be limited to no more than six audience members

164at the administration building the only agenda items will be superintendents evaluation training and board masters training the policy committee meeting will meet on may 10th at 9pm at 9pm is that incorrect it's may 11th 11th it's may 11th at 9 00 am or pm am am okay so policy committee will meet on may 11th at 9 00 a.m the general public will have the option to view remotely on nhcs tv youtube the title 9 committee will meet on may 17 2021 at 3 p.m in the boe center the general public will have the option to view remotely on nhcs tv youtube the may interim board meeting will be held on may 18th at 5 30 pm in the boe center in practice with social distancing guidelines attendance will be limited to no more than 50

165audience members at the board of education center the general public will have the option to view remotely via live streaming on the nhcs tv youtube page the family communications committee will meet on may 20th at 5 pm in the boe center the general public will have the option to view remotely on nhcs tv youtube last item for the evening adjournment is there a motion move to adjourn thank you mr bullier is there a second second thank you miss walker any discussion all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed we are george you