Board of Education Workshop Meeting 3/12/25

001Next, please stand. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Motion to approve the agenda. Thank you. All in favor? I budget discussion six. Mr. Box. Thank you, President Dr. Saxs. Tonight is work session number two. It's a follow up to to a previous work session. Right now the numbers are still we're in the middle today I think is actually the midpoint of the legislative session. So there's still 30 days to go and that numbers I kind of where we are today based upon the meetings we've had up to this point. So the first one is the calendar I just want to keep you aware of where we are the process. I'm not

002going to go the whole calendar because you've seen it again but what's important is the last page is April 25th of 2025. uh that is when we expect that the release date for the financial a state any computation for the state. So we're trying to uh schedule a meeting between April 25th and the May 5th board meeting for the final work session you know once we get the final revenue numbers from the state plug it in get you guys a good number on May 5th. So, I just wanted to keep that on your calendar. And then again, the last meeting of May, the board will have a public meeting where we'll approve it and then we'll send it off to the state for the state to improve it. Again, this is one I just like

003to keep you breast. You know, this chart shows our fund balance prior to coing each year when we were spending more than bringing in during CO. we were able to build our reserves back up and then you know co ended September 24 we're projecting the the fun balance to the climate potential to keep that in your foresight the next page is our assessed value again we'll talk about the le proposed levy rates on the March 17th meeting at the statuto meeting but those numbers came in March 3rd for us they were revised this Monday March 10. So the revision is not reflected here because of the time when the numbers came out when this was put together, but it's showing that the assessed values in the county continue to increase. Uh this year it's 9,177,270

004737. So there's still growth in the county. So I just point that out. However, with that being said, this next chart shows the rate at which that growth is increasing. And as you can see in the last two years, the amount that that growth has been growing is actually getting smaller. So for instance, two years of growth go, we grew by 915 million in assessed values. Last year, 626 million in assessed values and this year 464 million. So while we're still growing, we're growing at a much slower rate than what we were prior. So I just wanted to make sure you guys were aware of that, too. When we look around the county, we see growth everywhere. as it reflects into our assessed values in the county, they are growing at a slower rate. Is

005that because of housing falls? I could not explain why. Or I mean, there's there's a multitude of things that are going to go into why the um assessed values could be changing. It could be because there's um not as well first of all part part of the assessed values um are based upon new construction housing housing values um there's a multitude of things but what I want the big part is obviously is that the difference in even though because the assess values are going up. It still grows. So, we're still getting assessed, but but what the change is is that the amount that we're getting um uh as it relates to the change is not as much. Correct. Right. So, we're not seeing it decline. It's just it may actually be leveling off a little

006bit. Oh, I guess you lost me. Leveling off. Well, it's growing at this level now. It's kind of growing. It's still increasing but at a much smaller rate because of the rate of the housing cost or what there maybe the demand is a little bit different because of the inventory. And so what happens is is that maybe because maybe we're getting more inventory so the demand is not causing the inflationary pressures on assessed values where the builders can't keep up with growth or the builders can't keep up with growth. Correct. Now that that growth was there a big jump in just the existing market values in 24 was it increased number of building permits or what? I couldn't tell that's that's a question from the county commission. I'm just curious how I mean we see

007voting everywhere but then the percentage it's still growing. It's grew by 464 million. I mean, it's still a big number, but it's not what plus four. Yeah. And and it does not include all the pilot projects. Yeah. Right. So, next slide. Again, we'll talk more detail at the March meeting, but I just want to summarize where the numbers are for the proposed levy rates coming up with that growth that we just talked about in the previous slides. our regular levy. We're looking for that to grow 532,484 dollars. Again, the state reduces our state aid by 85% and we keep 15% that's about 79,873 of that growth. The excess levy, this would be the first year of our next 5year levy. And with that, we'll bring in three million. Well, the the amount increase there was

0083,333,419 that we do keep all that locally. So when you look at both of those numbers together, our local share increase will be 3,413,291. Uh again, this was prepared on the May March 3rd number, your March 107 list is probably going to come down around $5,000. What we do our March 17 statuto the good news is the bottom of the slide and this really is our general fund with this hotel service fund. I just want to make you guys aware that in May of 25 we're paying off the bond. This is our second year of the new bond. There increase property values and increase that capital to set our actual rates. So for the average home for 100,000 and such valued last year they would have paid $1640 for the 100,000 and next year they'll

009pay $96 for the 100,000. average for $1,000 of your assessed value to withhold, you'll have the reduction in your taxes for the bond. Mr. Buts, I want to thank you for doing that. That that is tremendous. Mr. But I were reviewing this. I said, you know, when we think about explaining to the taxpayer that th the those bond rates of us not having to pay as much means we don't have to collect as much either. Um, that's a tax savings to our our citizens, right? So, I I asked Mr. your best to do that for me. I was kind of worried I wasn't going to have that and you did it. So, I think it's a big I can't let you see everything. I know you guys have a summer surprise, right? Surprise. Um, but

010I think that's an important thing for our homeowners to know is that, you know, last year based upon their tax on a $100,000 home, they would have paid $116.40. This this coming year, it's going to be $96. So, there is a there is a savings. Uh it's not huge, but it's a savings that they're we've been able to, you know, have a reduction for when they um levies paid off the first the when we're going to pay off here shortly. That will reduce the tax bill that that reflects here because we'll make that payment this May. Okay. May of 25 payment. All right. Gotcha. So, this reflects what we have to collect for next year in fiscal year 26 to pay off the uh the only bond that's left is our per and I apologize

011for being late. Um, but I have a question. Did you go over the reason why there is a difference between assessed value that our taxes are versus what the price of the homes are? But the assess are 60% market. Yeah, correct. So, they're not it's the what you sell your house for, you purchase your house for is not the value, correct? Yeah. And that's reflected on their tax statements. That's correct. If they read it, that's I just want people to understand that there's the difference that they're not paying taxes on their purchase price. It's what the assessed price is. Correct. Good point. Thank you. That I just wanted to make sure we we covered that. That's all. This slide here is our general fund and again it's based upon what we've done at this point.

012But what we've done so far is we have met with every school principal. We went through their enrollment numbers and enrollment numbers and dictate what their staffing numbers will be. So the first bullet point there is our fiscal year 26 hours rolled over to the to next year with the step increase step increase to it and also you see there the high pia it's 14% increase and that's globally for PIA it's not necessarily every individual person's increase uh but with that being said they also did a 5% increase in the admin fee that we pay once a year for everybody with That being said, that rolled over just a step increase and no other staffing changes. There was a $5.2 million increase in our expenses for the county. Additionally, this is the year they add

013third grade success for the third grade ECAS, the class remains, and that's projected to be about 57 based upon the number of classes we have for third grade right now. And that's 2,345 5,28. Then we have school staffing changes. again is it where we went through with each principal and we looked at all I'm sorry I I hate to interrupt you but I want to clarify the 57A just for the board because that um Mr. Molax I asked you to give me a number of ECATs if the legislative uh proposal that's out right now would require that all classrooms have an aid not just classrooms that are over 12 uh uh that are over 12. The 20. You said 23, right? Based upon our staffing. Was any of those in third grade? Yes. They should

014have been. Yes. How many do you think were in that third grade number? Not many. Yeah. Not not a whole lot. The only reason I say that is that because we're looking at two 2,345,000 based upon our current staffing plan. And if the legis if the legislature introduces if if that bill passes, we're going to have to increase the number from 57 up. And you know, right 8085 for this 23. Oh, that's Yes, that's right. It would go from 57 to approximately 85 which would be another 900 something,000. So I just want to share that with you and we've shared that with the school board association who's you know providing that to the legislature legislature so they understand the implications of that bill but explain that bill so that those are listening. Absolutely. So so

015currently we have under the third grade success act um if and even in kindergarten for that matter um in kindergarten if you have over 10 students um you have to have an an ecat. So you in a in a in a kindergarten classroom, unless someone only has nine students, you only have to have the kindergarten teacher. Once you go over 10 students, then you have to add the ECAT. In first, second, and third grade, it's 12. And so once you hit, if you have 11 students in a first grade classroom, a second grade classroom, then you don't have to have an ECAP because the class size is so small. If you have 12 or more then you have to add that that that ECAP. So when we go through staffing and we have five you

016know five classrooms of first grade for example what we may do is we may not need five ecats may only need four and one of those first grade classrooms may only have 10 students in it where the others may have 22 or 23 and then they have the ECAT. Um, so what this bill that has been introduced would do is it would require it doesn't matter how many students are in that classroom. You have five students in a classroom and you still have to have the teacher in an ECAD. And so, um, that's, uh, that's the bill that's introduced and and so that is something we have to be monitoring is that if that passes, that's essentially an additional unfunded mandate unless they were to reflect that in some way of doing the redoing the

017um the formula uh because we that would increase our expenses for uh, AIDS in the classrooms exponentially, Correct. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure I mention that. And again with all of our staff and meeting with school principles, when we looked at all those transactions made because some of them are switching schools or switching grades, there's about 148 different transactions we identified, but the net of all those will be an increase of 13 professionals and and a reduction of 15 and a half FTEES for service and they were generally the ECATs that we were just talking about based upon the plastering size of the current wall. So again, if that law changes, we'll we'll have to change that number. So with all that being said, when I put this together, we didn't have

018the uh state numbers for the PIA increase when I put this together. So at that time, the state aid was going to increase for us $3.3 million just for those salaries and steps and rollovers. Monday, I got in the PIA. Looks like it's going to be about 2.2 million for the PI portion. So between what we already knew and the the new numbers for Monday, it looks like our increase in our state aid at this point again legislative session is not over is 5,626,667. Can you say the number again? 5,626,667 with that given the expenses that we just only paid that leaves us with that 121 that will carry over for us to then make other decision other operating decisions in the budget. But this is a fair amount of what you know our staffing

019is carry over cost 1.1 for a balanced budget based upon current projections. Correct. Correct. Um, with that being said, now these are the board requests that we received in. I think we got them. Mr. Murphy, Miss Long, and Damon, right? I believe these. So, I put these together the best we could. We had a good time to try to get numbers to each one of these. Of course, the largest one on there is the housing allowance. It's something we the board did last year. That number came out reserves last year. And again, look where we're at today. That would also be a reserve expense if we did it last year. The board did give $1,250. If you maintain that 1 million expense, another request was to add additional ISS staff into the intermediate schools. We

020have six intermediate schools where you had to have them. So, this would give the other four service personnel for the in school suspension. So that would complete all all of our intermediate schools. Okay. Um the rest of them I can go through each one. Again, many of these are are Mr. Murphy's request. We are the people supplements to staff to do a training. We estimate that to be a $10,000 cohort for masters for perm subs. I think um adjustable will work on that because I think we have alternatives for people to get their teaching license. So we didn't put a number on that but yet the writing programs first and second grade I think last year we did a a pilot program for for the writing curriculum. This is for additional staff to go through

021that process in fiscal year 26 and that's about 16,675 that um how much did it cost last year? We put in the budget 665 I don't know how many actually went through that process. Well, when you say writing for do you mean like being a writer when we purchased those kits last year the kids were like 700 something a piece they're a thousand we did 90,000 90,000 we did 90,000 they're $1,000 a kid $1,000 a teacher this year and we did half of we did 90 we did full schools that wanted to to to utilize it this year um and we did we used every all 90 Yes. And it's been very successful. Yes. I was going to say, do we have information on the outcome from that? We do and they're going to present

022to you soon. Very soon coming up. So, I think the question that that I want to make sure of is is that the way that we've captured Mr. U Murphy's request is uh I want to make sure we've captured it correctly and that we've done the budget. So, um, are you were you requesting that the remaining Well, I I was last year I approached it last year by saying, "Let's only do it for half." Mhm. And the people who are hungry for it will take it and it won't sit on the shelf in the rest of the classes. That's right. And I' I'd use the same approach. However many are still avails that have requested it for this school year like when it got started they wanted I ran out of money last year so

023I said you know would you want to do it the next the following school year they they requested it so I can get a number of how many I just said the whole school has to do it has to be a complete buy in because when you buy those kits it also comes with staff development that doesn't cost extra it's built in the cost. So that is staff development that they're going to get throughout the school year. So if we're going to do that, it has to be a it has to be a K2 whole school buy in. I could get this that actual cost for you. Let's do that in the 16675 though, Mr. B. Where where did you think that that what was that reflected? It was based upon our conversation that I

024had with you a quarter of the expense and I I had my notes from last year 700 and something on the kit. Oh, I see. I understand. Yeah. I I I just want it to be used. Yeah. And we had 665 in the budget last year and he said do a quarter of it. So that's what I guess the question I have um were there any sitting on the shelf that nobody knew or No, I can guarantee you that I'll say I I even had the opportunity to go around with the coach from on how to be a with how to be a writer to see how implementation was going. Um, and it was it was very very good. Um, and the feedback that I got from teachers was was very positive. What I would

025suggest maybe we do if it's okay with Mr. Murphy is is allow Mr. Molyax to poll the schools to see who's interested in implementing it next year and then let's get a quote on that. Um, but I agree 100% of school buying has to has to occur. Can we get the schools that have not bought in yet um the information that is going to be presented to the board so that we can get so they can see what how it's impacted so that it helps better inform them. One thing we've done is we've done that during at the instructional meetings. Okay. So what as this has progressed along the the schools that have it have been giving feedback to the schools that don't don't have it. So they've been saying grace is a difference in

026our writing. this is what we're seeing because you want all the principles to be aware of what's going on so they know how to lead their school building. It's okay that one's behind the other. That's okay because we're all going to the same place. But at the same time, they have to be knowledgeable and that's where you get people saying, "I would like to have that next year." When your school's ready for it, which we have schools that are, they they want it. So, I'll pull them to get an exact number what we need. We have we have 16 primary schools, first to second grade, correct? How many schools did you say last year we did? We were able to do six of the school. Six. Yeah. Now, these must have been the larger progress.

027They were. Yeah. Okay. So, that was something else there. I thought we were going to be doing eight or something like that. It's okay. The way we rolled it out, it's been successful. So, we are success. Like I said, they're planning on presenting to you very soon. And I want to clarify it was me and not Mr. butts who got this number down because I wanted to make sure we're not putting money on into things that sell on the shelf and I just that's why I went the same route I did. That's why I asked him if it was Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more like I don't want to see it settle shelf either. That's why it has to be an all or nothing. I did have a question. Um I explain the

028the people supplement that Yes sir. There there's a national competition. I became aware of this from Mrs. Morgan, Bets Morgan, who was the guidance counselor at South Middle, who retired from our county and went to work over in Boonburg. And she told me about this competition. It's very intense um on the national level called We the People. And it's this very it's it's m it's around the Constitution of the United States. It's that's what it's based upon. court cases, everything. It's a good preparation program for future lawyers, which may kill the program, but they do, but it's a very good program that is it's it's organized and it's national. West Virginia does, we do have schools that participate in it. And I wanted to see if we could get two I I don't know. I'd

029let I defer to the administration how it's organized. I think it's on a per school basis, but I I think that it would be it is it's very labor intensive both on the part of students and the the coach. Well, is that high school? High school. Yes. And uh one resource that we would have that would contribute to this is our law library next. And uh but um it's it's it's a it I think it would be a feather in our cap and the problem would be once it caught on with all four high schools or five high schools in the future be clamoring for it being that. But I I think that it would be a big improvement instruction and and in all cander it wouldn't be a lot of students. it may only

030be 20 or 30 students that we'd be seeing it competed in, but I I believe there would be a lot of merit in doing it. Uh the program was on public television that I watched that I'd be willing to go over to Boonboro with the lady that pointed out introducing us to the people that do it over there. I have seen them. I thought we had a couple people here that participated last year and not in this. Okay. But I have seen Can you send me some information? Can you get some information? I'll have to show you where it is in public television. Okay. Mr. Murphy, Miss Morgan, no longer. She's back substituting for us. Yeah, I saw. Well, she would she I need to get her location from your Thank you. Good question. So

031the next item is a request for a 200 day math coordinator. That is with benefits. It's a high-end estimate. Obviously, until the job's posted, people will apply. You don't know what year degree of service that they'll get. So that includes somebody taking insurance and and the whole whole package. and and I don't know I I went through a lot of material in preparation for this all the surveys the handover report on demographical aesthetic uh just the best school district in the BIS school we we were in 2020 ranked 27th we're now 41st Our math scores are the lowest of the two, reading and stuff. And we only have one person I think, Miss Laski. Mhm. And I just think that in all this reorganization, we may not need this position. We may have coll, you

032know, I I don't know how you're doing this, but uh I wanted to make sure that we're trying to get more help from Miss Laski and more focus on the shortcomings of our system in this area. Thank you. The next item on the list is testing the water for PASS, which is plastics in the water. We only have one school that's well, and that's Back Creek. We do test them on a monthly basis. I did ask Mr. Tyson to verify if they're including the plastics or not. I do not know that at this point, but I put it in there. Research I could find about $600 per per test. And and I looked at I looked at this. We we should only test three or four schools on different systems and if there's a problem

033there, then we re-evaluate. But we wouldn't need the full amount. So do a a sample. Yes. We check school and county city and then the well. I thought we all tested our water all the time. We do have plastics. I never heard back from Ty, Mr. Tyson, and what we're actually testing on a weekly basis and we should not make an assumption that somebody else is doing it. No, we did it ourselves. The next item we'll list is background checks for substitutes. I believe I talked to the doctor school either about $78 a test or background. I think currently the substitute pay themselves. I think the request is once the substitute works for us so many days get that back. So So background check is done. I don't want anybody online to pay for it

034themselves. I I agree. I just want make to make sure everybody is hearing it online because they're going to see that and they're going to go, "Holy crap, no one's doing background checks on for substitutes." Substitutes are required to have a background check. They have to provide that background check to us so that they can they can become a substitute within our county. Correct. Correct. Yes. Okay. Just making sure everybody is aware that they get background checks. That's code and we code. We want to do that. I agree. But I know that there are some folks out there that like to take one little snippet and run with it and post all over social media. Throw it up. Thanks for the clarification. But this came out in the substitute survey. Yes. The next request is

035for an art supply allocation. We do an art supply now a dollar per student. Uh the request is to give an additional dollar per student on grades 3 through 12 and that's roughly $14,000. and get art supplies as one of those items that or you stuck in the master place. Do they currently get any allocation? They get a dollar now per student. Every school gets a dollar per student. Okay. Apologize if you said that. I missed it. Yeah. This request for bathroom modification or additional bathroom queen. Uh, I don't have a number on that yet, but it's for our internal staff to to do the work is a request and wait for Mr. Tyson to get us a number for that. And it may not be necessary subject to what Dr. Sax is planning future

036use. when I I come when we get to some of the things that I'm hoping to to think about and to consider. Um the 401 Queen Street bathroom request may be moot. Um so but it gives us options to consider as we think about moving forward in the in the budget. So the next request was for field trips. had a number here so I don't really know how many schools were talking about how often what the details but the request was to fund field trips to Dylan Farms the Rainer Center HBCU Harvest Fairy Captain so I just want to put them as a placeholder until we get some more information on what the actual request is to put a dollar there. Well, and I understand actually I I know the request Mr. Wright and Mr.

037Murphy and I we've had the conversation. Um I just need to make sure that um I'm going to be asking Dr. Alfonso to uh research the um costs and those sort of things so we have a number that we can go on from the for the budget. Well, don't we do that now? Some of the things we do some of the things we require uh we ask the the students to pay for this for the school and this is something that So what you're saying is the board will pay that's the that's the request. That's fine. Yeah. Capture that. All right, gentlemen. Okay. Then lastly, communities and schools. Um we we're aware that next year they'll be reduced funding in order to keep the program if they would like the county to fund it to

038keep the current staff uh doing the services. You said there 70,000. There's reduced funding you said. And that's my understanding. So we used to get like um it was like $65,000 a school. um it is now reduced to like $17,000 a school. And so, but in order to have a community in schools, you have to have a coordinator, a site coordinator. Um which obviously during the first couple years that $65,000 almost paid for the entire person. Um so what they what they're doing is they're sort of weaning the the state funding off and then the counties have to decide how they're going to to to utilize it. I have had conversations with our state superintendent on the communities and schools initiative which obviously was just to for some context that was a governor justice um

039and first lady justice at the time that was their initiative about eight years ago and so they put it in the governor's budget request and the legislature approved it. Um, you know, I think it's yet to be seen as to whether or not communities and schools will receive another round of funding under the new administration. But with that being said, um, I have talked with the state superintendent and there is the possibility to have a site coordinator between more than one school. So, they could share that responsibility if that was if that was a desire. But currently, we have these individuals at I think it's uh, actually Dr. Dr. Alfonso came in the perfect time. How many Yeah. How many different communities and school uh site coordinators do we have? We have seven. Seven. Um

040so there might be the possibility to look at um having shared coordinators between sites in order to conserve a little bit of money. But um but I also understand the value that they bring and community schools has been a tremendous program um across the state of West Virginia and I know in Berkeley County. So, it's something that it's a it's a worthy request for sure. Right. So, I'm just kind of curious about the cut. That's it's curious that you start a program. It goes well and then you and then hey, it's like it's like you're paying for it's like you're providing heat to a house. You know what? I don't think you need that anymore. You can pay for it. It's like the rest like quite often. Yeah. I'm sure it happens a lot. It's

041very interesting how that happens. You know how many years especially from my department then how many things that they started that worked well and then the next year the next year it's not doing that anymore then 25 years later it crops up and everybody thinks oh this is such a great idea that we did 25 years ago we don't want to do that want to do it now. So with all those items, uh it's $4.9 million that we need to address. It's $4.9 million request of those that we need to we need to consider. Correct. The next slide is there's really dollars attached to more that Mr. I think can explain better than I would. We have in in talking to teachers, they they're so focused on trying to improve the scores and everything. Sometimes

042their enthusiasm gets rounder and and we have schools that take breaks, not breaks from teaching or anything, but they let the teachers pick a subject area and and just run within within limits. Um, and I I I just thought, well, budget is as much policy as as it is money. And although this wouldn't cost anything, I don't believe I think that u we should in our instructional looking at things, we ought to put out pe times to allow teachers to just teach things that would they're enthusiasts and according to their students. And uh I I'm not I'm not suggesting any number of hours or days or anything, but I just think we ought to be cognizant of the fact that um we should give them some flexibility and uh I know at Musman Middle they

043the kids signed up and they uh and one or two days I don't know it was a month or a week they did it and it just seemed to uh permeate the whole school. And so sometimes I think you need to you don't need to take a mental break. You just need to give the teachers a break from the grindstone and the students and learn feel like they're doing something of motivation to themselves. I think um elementary does that quite a bit. But it, as you said, it would be nice to feel like that that they're not under the gun, that they can't they have to teach totally what their what their curriculum is, that they can't filter in anything else. And but important schools are use that um they were filtering things in and

044the kids seem to need that. They have Yeah. And it may help with attendance. It may help with behavior. uh you could use as a reward system. I I I saw schools in my past experiences use it as a reward system. Uh this thing the next one I want to define the rules get outside the box. I asked one of the coordinators one time which is better a certified teacher teaching not knowing what she's teaching or he or a person who knows her field but doesn't know how to teach. I'd like and uh I'd like to try the ladder approach there. And uh we have we I just heard on the radio we have 1,500 teachers uncertified teachers in this state. Burke County has 200 of the five 1500. I'd like to take one of

045those positions, just one of those 200 positions, and chop that position up at a school. Let because a lot of retired people don't want to come back teaching a full day, but you might be able to recruit some people who know what they're teaching one hour a day and they don't have to be certified teachers. And heaven knows with all of this turmoil going on at in the national level, there are going to be a lot of degraded people that for a while are going to be searching for temporary employment. And I'm trying to get look for local people who've retired to this area from NASA, from government, from the private the public sector or the private sector and see if we could recruit three or four people for just one vacancy and divide a

046job up and we need it in math. I know one high school had and this is your work break. We had one high school with with five uncertified teachers. Oh, and math. I don't want to name the school, but but out of a staff, maybe 12 or 14 math teachers. They they had five uncertified. I'd like to see what would happen if we uh took and did that. It's not a monetary item. You just divide. We do it now with 17th pay with people. So, we just take 17th pay and uh offer some people see if we could recruit people for a position. I know. Are you talking about our staff now or you're talking about retirees? I'm talking about Yeah, I I go toward retirees, not retired educators, just retirees with this engineering background

047or something. I think I thought we did something similar to that. I mean it's in a code that you can do. Well, you can take and what's in code is that for alternative certification if you have enough degree hours then you can go through an alert program but most retirees agent probably going to want to do that. What I would say I I think it's a I think it's um a unique idea and I I am excited that we're thinking outside the box to to to solve this problem. Um I know that Miss Cler and I have also been working on on another um something similar, but it's how do we have a for all these for for any position that requires obviously a certified math, English, science, social a teacher that we can't fill

048for whatever reason. um is to be able to fill fill it with the sub that is not you know obviously to have a a facilitator of learning in the classroom but to have certified instruction um that would be virtual. So what that what we would do is in a classroom we have you know these boards uh here in every classroom is is that we would have a certified math teacher on a schedule every single day that would remote in to help provide instruction to the students around math and the skills around math. And then the substitute is there as a facilitator of learning, making sure students are are on task if there's a question needs to be asked, but they'll be able to communicate. Um, and there's some products out there that um even in

049West Virginia they've been doing for areas that they don't have uh the certified teaching staff in. Uh, one of the products I'm I'm actually thinking about I think we're using for homebound instruction. Is that correct? That's correct. Some of our homebound instruction. Um and so uh we've been exploring how could we do that in some of these especially math, English, science, social studies are core, um where it's hard to get a certified person and we want to make sure our students are getting the very best instruction possible. And so, uh, I think that your suggestion coupled with our investigation of this other other, uh, possible solution, um, we can come up with something that's going to be very beneficial. And it also helps with your plan. It gives our retirees a connection to the school

050system to see what it is that we're doing that's good. So, I really like that. Well, and like the top youth program, it there's another section of the code that I I'll have to go home and find. I didn't read it. I forgot to bring that with me tonight. But it allows you to hire adjun instructors. It's just a little phrase in the code there, but it allows you to hire adjun folks and higher education their assist, right? And um I I think that our students would benefit. I I like the idea of the screen and the person in the room, but but I also would rather see a real human being in the room who can go over and walk and look at what that student is doing on the paper. Whereas the monitor

051in the room may not understand what the student's doing and not be able to answer the question. I know you can hold paper up for but that human connection in the classroom would be something I'd urge you to consider. Absolutely. The only downside to it I would see is that that it be hard to get somebody to come in for a period. I think well you might you might get two periods out but a lot of people don't want to make long commitments once they're retired. I've been a few thinking outside the box on both of these things. That brings us to the superintendent's request and some of this I think we've talked about before but we put some numbers to them. Uh summer school in the past few years we've run that out of

052co funding this year would have to put under general funding and whether or not we charge student Dr. Sax's request. We estimate summer school costs to be about 587,000 for the summer. And just to clarify this line item, so this is not just credit recovery. This is uh you know for middle school, high school uh programs. This is a in large part um a K to3 summer enrichment um or remediation for students that are not on grade level. So it's to give them additional instructional time. And this is not on a computer program or anything like that, but they would they may still use I Ready for some supplemental throughout the day, but this is to have our teachers teaching students uh in in um is it kindergarten also or is it just first first,

053second, third, four, I'm sorry, for the summer reading for the summer summer school reading kindergarten. Yeah. So K1, two and three uh would have an opportunity. We would we would send an invitation to families saying, "Hey, look, you know, based upon our benchmark diagnostics, your your child is still below level." And of course, this is one of the things that the third grade success act requires that students be offered. And that uh next summer um that if a student is not proficient by third grade, they have to attend this this program um in order to to be promoted. Um, and it's not just about attending, it's attending and being able to show proficiency. For example, like on I Ready, whatever our diagnostic is that that we would be using or the example like the GSA.

054Um, the other uh items that this summer school number entails, um, I don't know if it entails this one, but I just got back actually this as late as I think yesterday. Um, I'm really excited about this that we would like to be able to offer some um fourth and fifth grade enrichment camps. Um, and if Lewis, do you do you do you know those off the top of your head? If you don't, I can pull it up. I just want to make sure that Oh, yeah. We're we're planning one to like put horses for arts. Um, but they'd be out there. So, they'd be an also like there's an academic piece to that. We're actually looking at some, you know, writing an additional brand. There's also one down through Apollo Theater. It's a great

055way to give back to our community. Put kids out in our community so they can be exposed to things that we have right here in the local area. You know, you think about being able to ride a horse or being next to the horses if you're not used to that. Being be able to perform in the theater to get to see a little bit about what that's like. It's a way of giving back to our community and putting our kids right next to that. And then we have another one that we're teaming up with Shephard and and doing some um STEM activities. So, there's three going on that'll be moving throughout the county, but they'll be going on for three weeks. And each location will have each one of those opportunities. And but do you

056know what the different STEM opportunities were? There's like three different Yeah, there's things going on off the top of my head. I do not know that. Um, but they're they're around science, technology, engineering, there's a coding camp that's part of this, but they'll be led by their faculty and then we'll have our staff members there to help facilitate with with the students as well. Um, and so these again are enrichment camps that are we would want to be able to offer to our families over the summer months to help prevent summer slide, summer learning slide, um, and help keep those those students connected in what are fund activities, but that are also academically enriching. Um, so um, that's pretty exciting. the the the number that is also not here because it we would be able

057to pay for it strictly out of federal funds is our summer CTE camp. Um and so Ken Pac and Holly Clutner have been working on that. Um the the summer CTE camp would be housed for the first year at two different high schools. Uh we're looking at um I think it's Muscleman at Edgesville. So students would be able to select which campus they would want to go to based upon what's offered. So that means students from Spring Mills, Martinsburg would also have an opportunity to select the CTE summer camp that they they like, but they it would be housed at those two campuses. So things like agriculture, um uh uh we're looking at culinary, um uh mechanics, um graphic design, there's a whole litany of different programs that students could ch could select for a

058full day camp where they would get be exposed to two different career technical education programs. Um, and this would be for middle school students uh in either sixth grade or eighth grade would get this opportunity. So, um, again, that's going to be federally funded. And, um, so anyway, I just wanted to share that that's sort of the vision for summer school that I wanted to share with you all. I'll let you keep on going down the list then. Okay. Question question on your first one there. Yeah. Uh do you have any numbers from the two or three years that we had CO funding for summer school the attendance rate because I used to pass buses and and they looked empty to me and uh I don't know if I was at the front end of

059the bus route or the tail end of it but I was just wondering we're spending all this money for children who are having problems academic problems in school but if they don't attend the summer school. Um, how do how do you uh do you cut it off or do I I'll be honest with you, I have not specifically looked at uh Berkeley's attendance with previous summer schools. Um, what I would say is that I've in my previous roles, I've had very high success rates of students participating. um with some with some of our especially enrichment camps capping out very quickly to where you go on weight list like we just can't accommodate all the requests. I think we're talking about like the remediation camps and things like that. I think it's also about how do

060you market it so that parents see the value of sending their child. I have had conversations with Mr. Key about the importance of of providing the bus transportation. I think that sometimes one of the limiting factors is that we we can't go to every household to pick up students in the summer, but we do create those hubs where it makes it easier for families to get their students to that hub so they can catch the bus. Um, and in my conversations with him, um, I think that a majority of the routes are usually, um, there's there's a good level of participation. So um and I think that that's going to be something that we could also assess is that once it gets started based upon how we post it we may need to evolve if

061if we're not getting that many students then is there a way we can be more efficient in the pickup of those students. The other thing I want to say is that you know when this cost of of of these camps this is in staff salaries 100%. So when we think about making sure that that you know we I I look at this as as a way that we also provide a additional employment opportunity for some of our dedicated staff so they can supplement their income during those off months. And so I I see a lot of value in not only for what we do for the kids but providing those opportunities to our staff that want to continue to work and provide get an income because these are correct if I'm wrong these are all

062going to be their daily rate type pays for summer school. Correct. Is it a full day just they're half days? Oh, well some of them are half days. Yes, I know the the CTE summer camp's a full day. So, so the elementary is half day. Yes. 90%. It's been 90% of their time in the summer. Okay. I just wanted to reiterate that when we see that number, those that number is not going to really programming or anything like that's going into salaries for our staff that we currently already employ. So, I just want to know sometimes with the the half day programs. Um, it's harder for families. Well, the kids get there, they eat breakfast, um, and you know, they like do a little something and they have they'll go out to recess and then

063they eat lunch before they go home. And there's not a lot of instructional time that takes place. So if we could ensure that more of that is going on. Yeah. Well, one thing that's that's one thing we're going to re bring it back this year. Um and I I want to just point out something. We sent out our invites because this year it's by invite only. It's kids that are not meeting the target that we that the state has set. So we've sent out the invitations. We are getting a huge response back and it is how we're communicating back and forth to the parents. We heard today, I think this will really help you a little bit because we heard, well, my kids are doing fine grade-wise. Well, I said, let's take a look at

064the diagnostic. Let's take a look at the your kids reading below grade level. We're going to provide an opportunity for your child. We're not saying, you know, all the all summer long, you know, all this academic instruction. We're take a piece of that day. You could spend helping your kid get back at grade level. So that's our intentions is to help your child not have a slide and maybe get them to proficiency by the time they go back. So it's our goal and we don't do we don't spend the time testing. We use the last diagnostic for whenever they leave at the end of the school year and we use the we we look for no slide. That's what we're looking for. So then we use that diagnostic when they go back to school. We

065we're going to test them right in the very beginning. So the tests are in school. in the middle is where we're going to do all the academic work and they're going to use I ready and the I already um toolkits. So when the teachers are working small group, it's going to be on skills that they're deficient in pulling them in this group. So and we're going to want to collect data that shows of the cohort of students that are participating compared to the cohort that didn't. Yes. How how much how what was the difference in that summer slide? So I think we'll be able to collect some really valuable data there as well. Yes. But look what I don't what I don't like about the summer programs and I've talked um and what Jackie said

066it's true that by the time you got there you fed them you you gave them the restroom break in your two small bathrooms and everything else you you uh you don't have much time of instruction and what we're telling the child is you can sit there during a 36 weeks of school and not perform, but you come to school in six weeks and you're going to pick up what you failed to do in 36 weeks. And I I I'm willing to go along with this for for the summer and because we're going to look at the results and I feel and probably the best deal for these children is a lot of them are probably going to get a meal that they wouldn't have gotten none other. That's some reason why a lot of them

067come to school, which is good, but I don't want us to be misleading the public or the parents or the ch and their children especially. You do not if you're going to sit there for 36 weeks and not work and then you're going to get passed because you came for six weeks. It's the wrong message to be sent. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I want to make sure that that that I believe you are absolutely right, but I think it's mostly applied to the middle school and high school students that that when you're talking about the 36 weeks because in our elementary classrooms, especially K1 and two, we don't necessarily have, you know, I mean, if there is any student refusing to sit there and do to to to participate, it is such a Um I

068don't want to say 100% of students participate every single day. I I don't want to say that. But I will tell you that in in our primary grades, there is a high level of act active engagement of our students because uh of the support mechanisms we currently have, the uh positive behavior support systems we have in place in our primary school, our principles, our school staff, they have the school learning culture down very very well. I think where I see the problem that aligns with what you're talking about is in our middle school and high school programs where the credit recovery program at the in the summer is is that you failed this class, you take this course, you're going to get all the skills back in a in in four weeks and now you

069pass. That's the that's the bad message that I think we're sending. I don't know that it really applies as much to actually I don't think it applies at all to the K through three programming um because I just don't see the I don't see that the mentality of our students in in that way um but because I have heard um for a long time not just here in Berkeley the concern when it comes to the credit recovery programs that are especially now more computer-based um that and I I actually I was talking with a teacher just the other day about u in her high school class that she has students that have pretty much decided they don't want to work anymore and they're okay with the failure to go and take credit recovery because they'll

070just get the credit at that point and that is absolutely the wrong message. That is not um that is not communicating high expectations. That is not creating a culture of of quality learning. And I think that it is something that we have somewhat enabled in order to make sure that no student falls through the cracks that can't graduate so that they haven't lost hope. But in in but in that pendulum swing, we've sacrificed one thing for another. And um I do think that one of the things that will help this year is that our credit recovery program for middle schools and high schools um we will charge. So a student saying, "Oh, I can just, you know, fail this." Then I think that's going to be one thing that that is helpful. I do think

071we need to in looking at how can we improve our credit recovery strategy that there has to be more accountability to to what's going on in the classroom to start with. So, um, uh, I don't know that I can answer that right now, but I do I do want to say that I do think that the, um, exactly what you're talking about is a problem, but I think it's more isolated middle schools and high schools, and we have a responsibility to try to address it. Well, to what Mr. Murphy and I were talking about, the time limit that they're there, they have to eat breakfast. Yes. Go to the restroom. They'll go to class and work a little bit. Then they go to recess and then they work a little bit more and then it's

072time and they eat lunch on it's time to go home. So that's the concern I have. How much instruction are they getting? I'll say this. I think we'll protect that instruction time for you and when we come up with a schedule I I'll bring that schedule for you so you know and I'm with you that maybe maybe a brain break but recess is not necessary during that time. They have lots of other time. I it's not something that we should be having there. So, but I'll get the times for lunch and whatever else and what we're doing and the activities we'll be doing during that time so that you have a clear picture of what goes on after if I could see that they got two and a half hours instruction. Yeah, I do too.

073Our bill. Okay. Yeah, I can read that. I'll read that for you. I apologize. Y um any other questions about summer school? The just the the request there. Um the next one is boardroom modifications at 1453. So, um, I I've been working with Tai Tyson, um, and and of course, you know, in our our senior staff talking about, you know, just logistics, um, and the, you know, obviously one of the things we like to be able to do is we we like the community coming to our board meetings. Um, I think it's one of those things that we welcome. Obviously, we have remote options and sometimes the remote options have some hiccups unfortunately and we've been talking about how can we improve uh our delivery of electronic delivery during work, you know, for the for

074those that can't join us in person and how we can improve that and some costs associated with updating both this site as well as um 401 um Queen Street. And in thinking about 401 Queen Street and some of the logistical issues that we sometimes have is obviously it's a a smaller smaller boardroom size. Uh there's not really any area if we have large crowds uh for recognitions or public comment or what have you for um areas where people can either observe the the board meeting or sort of be in holding without having to be outside of the building itself in the in the in the elements. And so when thinking about you know this site where we are able to have some board meetings this site also has had some limitations um but it also

075has a lot of other opportunities where we have some extra areas for uh people to to either sit and watch the board meetings uh as they're on deck to be recognized or presented an award or to speak. Um so I think that this site here has a lot more opportunity for public participation in board meetings. Um and so Mr. Mr. Tyson and I have been talking about, well, how can we create the the most ideal opportunity for community participation and recognition of of our students and our staff where people want to come support them and so on and so forth. Um and I so so what he and I've talked about is at this site here taking this boardroom and u there if you if you look behind this wall there are two offices that

076are un well there's three offices two of them are unused and what we would could do is remove two of those offices and just move this wall back which will create this to be a longer room. The deis at 401 could then be implemented so it's a permanent structure here. It could even be elevated up like a foot to the for, you know, when there are um photos or what have you. And then the investment of technology for improvement. We could have more permanent technology so that we're not having the portable owls, for example. Um, and we could even turn the third office back here possibly um into the the technology area so that everything is housed and it's not out in the middle of the room where people when we have other meetings can

077you know accidentally hit into it or what have you. And so Mr. Tyson and I have been talking about that and we think that we can accomplish this renovation um which would be taking out this back wall um the carpet that's here. we would expand this uh LBT flooring back um and build the the stage um in-house. We think we can do it all in house for around $40,000. Um and that would also potentially mitigate the need for us to to renovate the restrooms for more public use at 401 by being able to expand this. Now, um uh so that's that's the initial request. I think one of the things that we might also want to think about is possibly um you know the public when we have more public meetings here. Obviously these are

078all business offices. One of the things we could also think about is more of a an area where the public could come in but not have access to the different office spaces at different times. But that's something we have not explored yet. But that was actually something that um came up in a discussion that we could consider. we could also look into. But that is the crux of this boardroom modification that I wanted to to highlight for you. And it would allow us to have one centralized board meeting room, not having to split between two different sites. Um, what are the what as you were talking I actually was anticipating you saying something completely different in my because in my brain I'm sitting there thinking, what about the conference room? What about the large one?

079The large conference room. Why couldn't we utilize that one? because it's right off the entrance. People could gather in that entrance way an easy in. That was just just, you know, thought of curiosity. I think the concern that I had was just Yeah, it was just an um we use that a lot. They use that too. I'm just high question. I'm not scoring. I'm just saying they use that sometimes. But but and I mean we could explore anything, but I think maybe part of it is just curious is um trying to be able to have a more permanent uh location for our board board meetings that is more um conducive for public participation is is really what I was going after. Okay. So, okay. Would we would we have them maybe coming in from this

080from this side door instead of through this other door? I'll be honest with you, I haven't thought that far ahead. Um I think that there's a couple different opportun possibilities, but I do know that maybe one of the concerns might be is the access to the office spaces here. Um I think anything else that we would do other than the two entrances and having these areas locked or monitored obviously would increase the cost that we would need to think about. And um I think what we might want to think about doing is if the board was willing to entertain this modification in the in the uh FY26 budget that um we could do some additional investigation for the board to consider. Um and we would try to keep it within the budget that we've established

081in the budget, but it would be something that we could at least have a conversation around. Maybe it's something we do in phases even. So um food for thought. The next item um is our CTE program. So um is expanding middle school CTE programs. Um this is specifically for two agriculture education programs. Um and we've been doing a lot of investigation, a lot of work around making sure that there is space and there's room. Uh but this would be to pay for the salaries. Um so adding expanding middle school agriculture education programs to one will be at South Middle School and the other would be at Mountain Ridge um middle school. Um there are some other programs that we're looking at expanding that um for CTE programs at other other sites. I know for example

082um the Hedgesville we're we're talking about a future leaders program which is very similar to JOTC. Um and then of course you know the obviously we want to make sure that we have CTE programming in all of our middle schools and this is just an effort to continue to move in that direction. Um counselors at elementary schools. So this um I I want to give credit where credit is due. I've met with our principal association and this was a specific request from our principal association, but I'll be honest with you, had I not had a conversation with the principal's association, I would have been recommending this anyway. um simply because I think it's important that all of our elementary schools do have a full-time counselor. Uh just because of of um just because of the

083needs that our students have um and making sure that that we're able to fill those requirements. So that that is a specific request. Just quickly, I think I know why, but on the agricultural positions, you had 220 day contracts. Is that just because of Thank you. the nature of growing things or what? The nature of the agriculture education position. Um you know, first of all, the the position requires um activities with students in the summer with the the county fair. Um there's also students have what they call supervised agricultural experience programs that um need to be monitored. And sometimes that's that that's actually going to the students homes um to make sure that the the enterprise that they're working with that they have some coaching around. Um so and then of course we also have

084over the summer um state FFA convention because an agriculture teacher is also an FFA adviser. It's actually in the job description and um taking students for five days to the summer summer summer conference uh I'm sorry the summer state yeah the state conference and participating in those activities that's why there's a an extended contract number there when I when I talked to Dr. sex. This was one of my um asks, my only ask. I think um any other questions on the counselors? One of the things is I think in order for us to do the counselors, I think we really only needed three in order to do it. The problem is is that when we when we do that, there are some title one schools that um are actually helping pay for their counselors out

085of their title one dollars. So when we start paying it for for the non-titles, we can't they can't supple supplant that with title$1. And so that's why it's actually five. Um and the reason for FTE mean are they going to be at one site or they share? That would be a a counselor dedicated all day at each site as opposed to being split time. That's good. Good. Split time can be very very hard. And that's and that's the problem they're having now. They have split time. It's not working at least the way we would want to. The the next one is our school resource officers. Um this would be to add three I'm sorry it says SRO's. It's school safety officers. Uh this would be to add school safety officers much like what we've done

086at our middle schools. This would be to add three um for intermediate schools and they would they would actually split their time between campuses. U so they they would work on a schedule that would not be necessarily advertised uh for John Q public but they would be at they would be assigned two different schools and they would be splitting their time between those two schools as a as a school safety officer. Obviously, in an ideal situation, we would expand it even more, but I think that my attempt here is that each year ask for a few more. That allows us to one be able to hire quality people um in a very um uh what I would say a strategic um way where we're not impacting the budget greatly immediately and we can we can

087each year add add a few more. Um so that's that's uh for three school safety officers. The next item is um this is probably the one of the other the biggest asks and that is is um this is a request from the principles association. Last year I know that the board funded I believe it was eight or nine student facilitator positions for schools that did not have an assistant principal. Um this the principles association has requested all schools have a student facilitator and um based upon that request that would be 19 additional uh student facilitators. Our high schools already have them and then there are the eight that are at the uh primary level. Um and some of those that are in the at the primary level um not and I'm not diminishing the work

088of our student facilitators. I don't want anybody to take it that way, but they have a much lower student student special ed numbers than maybe some others that do have a facilitator also. So, uh, based upon their request, if we were to have 19 full-time facilitators, that would take care of everybody. Middle schools as well. I'm sorry, the middle schools have requested these as well, but this would take care of all element primary, intermediate, and middle schools will be 19, which would be a cost of 1.2 uh1,250,000 per year. um taking a look at with my staff and some of the suggestions that the the association and I talked about was that um that some of the schools that had lower special ed numbers possibly could split a facilitator. Um, and so if you take

089a look at that at at it from that perspective, so some of our our schools are smaller or that don't have high special ed populations could split a facilitator. We could get by with eight facilitator additional facilitators. That would be one for each high school, one for each I'm sorry, each high school already has one. One for each middle school that don't currently have a facilitator. uh one for each intermediate school which are our largest our largest elementary schools and then we would have they would split them at our primary school level. Um did I get that right? No. Did I get that did I get that right? I think middle schools were splitting oh middle schools were splitting two. I'm sorry. So middle schools would split because middle schools all have at least two

090assistant principles but but our intermediate schools would have full-time based upon this number of eight. So that would be a total cost of $526,000 per year based upon um that ask. Would they um yeah half day at at the each location or would they go do they have I think that that would be something we'd want to we would want to talk with the schools that would be impacted by the half by by the split position as to what they would like to see. Um I think that there's several different ways we can do that. There can be every other day. It could be half days. I think based upon some of the conversations we've had with people, they would prefer because we've already had some of these conversations. I think they would prefer that

091they have full days. Um, and that way it's it's established so that when they're when they schedule IEP meetings or 504s or SAP meetings that they always know that Monday, Monday I'm at this site, Tuesday I'm at this site. Um, so that they can keep that consistency. So that's probably how it would how it would look, but um we still want to be able to flesh that out depending upon what is able to to possibly make it into the budget. So my question so facilitators that have taken the positions now they were some of them were from teachers that went on to become these facilitators. We're probably going to anticipate these positions will probably be the same thing. That the case I would think that would be a fair assessment. Yes. Well, I guess the

092concern I have, I think I mentioned this to you, but um those people that we already have in place would stay in their positions. Um they they may have they would probably have to want to transfer and apply because it would be sort of reorganizing those positions based upon the need. I would say that, you know, um based upon the fact that we're going to have more, they're going to be able to apply for the positions in the schools that they're hoping to be able to to uh work with, but um yes, those would probably have to go on transfer in order to accommodate the um the request that eight facilitators as opposed to nine. If if we were able to find a way to do it at 19, then no, they would not go

093on they would they would not be impacted at all. So, so the U facilitators that are already in our schools full time, would they be then if they went on transfer u and a half someplace or half day every day or however would they be um impacted by the half day positions? Um I'm going to answer that and I'm going to ask Mr. Dr. Skoolie to make sure that what I've said is accurate. It would depend upon how the position was posted and what they applied for. So, as an example, we would potent I would imagine the way that would be posted is as if for full-time for full day everyday positions at a school, it would be posted as saying, for example, PTOIC Intermediate. Um, if it's split, let's say between Jared'stown and um

094Back Creek, Back Creek, then it would be posted to say split between those two. So they would know what they're bidding on and you know Well well yeah I I know because that's way we've always done half day positions but what we always tried to do was get away from half day positions but I I can see that we're not well it wouldn't be half day to be split between be full day but potentially full day those split positions position I was going to say the reason I asked that is because if you're already short certified staff more than likely it's going to be served by staff that would probably apply for these provisions. So that they put us in a bind in other ways. Yeah, sure. I guess my my and pardon me if

095I'm maybe misunderstanding, mis misremembering. I thought the facilitators were specifically meant to go into schools that did not have assistant principles and be there to help support the principal for things like IEPs and those types of things. Why would we need to have facilitator facilitators in other schools that have assistant principles who are there to support the principal? Uh I think that the request is being made from the context that we have we we have so many um students with special needs that have to have IEP meetings convene at SAT referrals that it is uh the bandwidth of our principles and our MPs to be able to focus on those things as opposed to being able to be in classrooms helping support instruction uh those sort of things as being uh monopolized. And so they

096see the student facilitator as someone who is the primary person that is helping facilit that's that's where the request is coming in the why. So you're not wrong that that's the that I believe that was the intent behind the facilitators last year. Yeah. they've seen some positive impacts of those facilitators and I think our schools that perhaps have not been able to have that dedicated person that all they do is the 504 the the uh special education support um feel like it could be beneficial so they could focus their efforts with their other APs in a a different manner specifically toward instruction and I'm going to echo what what Mr. Right. I think maybe, and you correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm hearing you correctly, um, we're going to have certified staff applying for

097that. That means certified staff are now coming out of the classroom. That means we might not be able to fill a staff position with a certified individual. So now we could be down. How many facilitators did we do last year? Eight. Eight. Eight or nine. Eight or nine. So we're we're talking potentially double at least. Crazy. I look at it like when we post aids or sats positions usually special position. So I liking it. I thought they're very similar. Sorry Pat. I'm I'm going to come at this from a different angle, but I but I'm in agreement with what I'm hearing. Yeah. So, from from several members in we are reacting to a very wellorganized group who got organized last year and and that's commendable. We expanded their contracts when they were told by somebody

098they wanted to give so many days. This board gave them I think 250 days. We also did the facilitators and everything else. I don't want as a board member to be granting things because we have one group of people who've gotten their act together and they're and they're bringing it in and we responded to the requests last year. what we're doing here. And I and I have on my wish list one more administrator, but I'm seeing here we're increasing non-instructional people. We're inflating the top and increasing administrative positions because it's making the the job. Now, maybe they can come back and say, "Well, we here are arguments, but I don't want to be responding to a wellorganized group because they're well organized. I want to be respond responding to where the greatest needs are." And

099and and I'm not certain. I'm hearing this is the greatest need. It'd be different if we were talking that we had certified teachers in every single classroom and we had the ability to hire the those who were certified to replace them. My concern is we don't have enough certified teachers in the classroom now. That's only going to make us more deficient by nine more staff members. Maybe they should present their uh Well, let me let me just say that I I think that um if if you permit me, I I understand um what you're saying, Mr. Murphy. And I I also understand that there was um you know a significant amount of effort put to making sure that the board was informed of what our principles association was asking for. But I I do I

100would be remiss if I didn't say that I asked the association to bring me things that they felt would be impactful for their schools. um what could help alleviate some of their administrative pressures uh as well as to improve learning in our schools. And so I I want to make sure that that um that I take some ownership and and that I've invited the principles association to give me feedback and that's why I wanted to be able to put it on here. I would be I would say that you would be failing your job if you didn't ask for them for their feedback. So thank you for and and a part of it is also the expectation that they're getting into classrooms more. So, um I I hear you all and I am not saying

101that uh this amount of money is something that is is is feasible, but if there is a way I listen, I'd love to be able to fund every single request that that the the board has that my wish list and everybody, you know, uh and all the all of our our administrators, our teachers. Obviously there's just not there there's limited funds and if you know as an example you know thinking about the counselors that that to me is is important also. So I think there's things that and I don't think anybody's coming with a request to say you know um if you don't do this we're going to be furious. I think it's these are requests to say I think that these are things that could help and if the money is there if there

102is the prioritization that that comes together then great. uh because our our administrators work so hard and I I recognize that there are other challenges like taking certified teachers out of the classroom to fill these positions just as much as when I think about create needing to create let's say a position at the administrative level for whatever reason is that going to pull a great principal out of the school. Um so those are really we have to we have to talk about those things we have to consider them in the the big picture. So I appreciate the perspective. Okay. And is there an alternative a a like an in between? Is there is there a school or two or three or four, whatever that number is, um that has an increased number of special education

103um individuals with the the IEPs and the and and 504s um that having an additional facilitator would be be beneficial, but it's not necessarily needed at all sites. Is there something is there something where we can kind of kiss in the middle a little bit or maybe for lack of a better phrase um yeah I think that's a reasonable I think that's a reasonable ask continue to investigate and what I think we could do is I could get with Mr. Dilly and his staff um as well as Mr. M aximus butner to say hey let's obviously we've structured this eight to be in you know from this from this perspective maybe there's another way we can look at it based upon strictly student numbers that we could also use sort of as a as a

104framework to to think about that may not necessarily get us eight but we might be able to do it with four you know I don't know but we'll investigate it and we'll report back that would be great the concern I had well is this the facilitators were put in place mainly to um help with the IEPs uh set in on the IEPs. Um and I I I think that's a a great thing because it takes a designated employee out of the classroom and it takes the principal or assistant whoever away from their position. And when you're looking at that's that that is all that is in the school and there's no one else who um be an an administrator. So I mean and you're talking many many many many IEPs. It's not like it's a

105it's a just a half-time job. It it's constant. So, I I get where they're coming from, but I also get the fact that we could be losing certified people to these positions. That's why I'm trying to figure out a way if we can meet them. Ideally, we would have all of our classes covered by certified teachers and we'd be able to fill these positions to help support them. That's our ideal. I'd love that, but let us let us do a little bit more work and let's let's give you some other things to consider that um you know that we can have some conversation around and we can do that and um we'll be prepared to come up with some other other ideas that at least we can have some conversations around. So we have 13%

106of all the uncertified classrooms in Berkeley County. And that's a and that's way too high. And we're and if our focus is on the classroom, we're losing that focus when we exasperate the problem. Yeah. Well, we have exasperated problems that we could u exasperate that problem, but we also have exasperated problems when you're taking those other people out of their classroom to work on IEPs for days and days and days. So, it's a vicious cycle. I I just think, as you said, we need to investigate it more and see how we can come up with a plan. Well, I'll I'll be prepared to kind of present some additional information for sure. Um, the next item is flooring upgrades. This was something that I think we've talked about a little bit in the past. Um this

107is to slowly begin from a capital improvement standpoint start to um transition some of our schools that have not had any you know or I would say some of our schools that require some upgrades um they have currently all of our schools most of our schools have BCT tile which are the traditional white square tiles that you're used to that require waxing stripping and waxing every summer. Um, what you're standing on right here is LBT. This does not require hardly any maintenance other than like a a wet scrubber from time to time. And this is the type of material we're putting in all of our new facilities. Uh, but there again, it does not require stripping or waxing um on an annual or or or twice a year or anything like that. And so what

108I would like to be able to propose is that in our uh basically we set aside some money that each year we're able to convert one two it'd be ideal to have three schools that are converted to LBT so that over the next 10 10 12 years to schools that are not going to have any significant renovations or or new we're able to transition over to a more um efficient cost-effective flooring solution that's not again requiring additional staff hours to go in and have to to clean. It also helps when you think about summer activities. When we think about our summer planning with trainings or summer school activities, the limiting factor is always we've got to be able to move all the furniture out of the classrooms so they can be stripped and waxed. And

109then once you do that, then they they focus on hallways and so on and so forth. So it will really, I think, cut down on some of the the maintenance effort that we have to do. $350,000 based upon our estimates um would probably do about one and a half schools uh in order to get the the right material. And this is for a school for example like I'll give you an example. Tomahawk just had the their additions uh that are added. But in order to complete Tomahawk with LVT it's it's around um $300,000. So, um, again, I would like to be able to just set aside some money in the budget so we can start this, uh, maintenance type activity that will in the in the long run save, I think, save some save some

110money. The final is the Skills U. I think that you all may be familiar with Skills U. It's our um, Berkeley County professional development that has been offered in the summer in the past couple years. it's been paid for by um SERF dollars. Um and I think it's been very successful in the past. Um you know, my goal here is to be able to take some of our best practitioners that are teaching in the school district and to be able to to have them uh provide some of the training based upon what they seek, what they're what's what they're seeing success in in our classrooms. I think also making sure that we're, you know, a lot of money can be spent sending people to conferences is that we find um a speaker or two that

111can come in to be able to again be as part of what our priority is our our laser focus on instruction and with students to be able to help support educators. And again, this this money here is in in in paying people um to come and invest in them for their professional growth. And I want to say that one of the things that we've consistently heard in feedback from the handover uh survey from our our teachers and from um what you're going to also what we're hearing from our curriculum audits is that the p the quality of professional learning um and the relevance of professional learning for some of our staff needs some improvement. And so, uh, in thinking about how we can implement skills you to be the most effective it can be, it

112needs to be offered, what we need to be able to offer is what our teachers and our cohorts are asking for. Uh, making sure that if you're a um a 10th grade ELA teacher, that we have offerings that relate to 10th grade ELA instruction. if you're a seventh grade math teacher that you're getting content that is based upon what a seventh grade math teacher needs um to to best do their job. And so this um this uh request is in order to again invest professional development dollars into our staff. Some of these items like summer school um and like uh our skills you for example, those could be dollars that we're able to pick up in some of our other grant projects that um that we have not gone through the process yet on budgeting.

113We're going to we obviously have staffing that is still going to be occurring that um will impact some of those budgets that you know where we pay for staff or we don't pay for staff. So, this this request is to make you aware of what I would like to be able to do. There may be the need for us to to supplement or to do the whole thing from our general budget if if the uh request is approved, but there are opportunities possibly for us to find ways that it's not in our general budget. And of course, I'm going to turn over every stone we can in order to not have to take it out of the general budget, but I also wanted to make sure that we're transparent what I'm trying to be able

114to offer. Again, this will be a two-day training. This will be a two-day professional development opportunity for our our our teaching staff here in Berkeley County. Um, any any questions on those proposals or feedback? I will I just just a comment. I do really uh it's exciting to the enrichment camps and the STEM camps and the CTE um summer camps. So, it's a pleasant addition. So, I want to go back to the boardroom modifications real quick. Um would would the expansion of this room also provide um another meeting space for folks? Because I know when we come to the board office, there's lots of meetings of various folks. Would that provide an additional space? And if so, what are the benefits of that? I don't know that it would pro provide another space. It would

115just provide a bigger space. I'm sorry. Go ahead. That's the main room. This room and the law library are my most requested. People are requesting for trainings or whatever. And I'll have people come in. Lewis, you guys, when principles are coming, it's too tight. It's a group that's just five or so, too large to be in either of them. And I've had Betty reach out from the States here and it's up to like 20 people. Too large for these spaces. And we just don't have that training space here or at 401 or anywhere unless So having Yeah. So having this space, this additional space would actually provide you that option. Yes. Yes. I just didn't mean I I just want to say it's not going to provide another room, but it'll definitely give No, it

116would give you more capacity here. I'm I'm I wanted to have Well, you know, I remember um a couple years ago when Mr. Murphy and I were in here for we participated in the uh uh what was it? I think it was the model schools. Now when it was the other um spoke something out there that you all do just like me when model schools it was when when the uh um I know we sat over there. Yeah, we were right in here. Yes. What we were doing and um Oh, shoot. I know what you're talking about. Anyway, oh, I know what you're talking about. Can't think of it, though. I'm sorry. This is giving us false hope over there. What's your point, J? We were crammed in here like sardines and it was all

117the way around the room and there were two lines of tables on each side. I mean, so there's no room in here. There's no room. Okay. Um just two points. Um first um the uh I don't see it and I don't know if it's going to cost anything Dr. Sex, but when we negotiated your contract in your second year, you were going to have a leadership uh thing. Are are you still planning on doing Oh, yeah. Well, we we're actually we've already started we we're doing it with our aspiring leaders um that is already meeting and we're looking at how we can expand that for next year. Yeah. So, we we already have something in place. Um it's just making it more robust and um being able to expand those opportunities. I just remember you

118were going to come in and kind of get get your get your feet wet and then second year. Yep. Okay. The other thing is and you touched upon it. led uh with the uh skills university uh and you refer to the handover report and the big dissatisfaction in the uh process. Do do you need something? No, I'm just reacting to to some news that happened earlier this evening prior to me joining. It actually was preventing Damon and I from getting here. So, apologies. Okay. Well, hey about that. Well, go ahead. No, you don't. No, it's not news. We have days in our calendar that the employees and I I hope we look at all of that professional development because that dissatisfaction is not just over what's in the summer. But that's exactly right. We have

119to we have to really invest in quality professional development for every single staff member and staff category. And that's service personnel. If you're a custodian, if you're a cook, if you're a an aid or an ECAT, a teacher, a principal, assistant principal, um a district a district uh support staff member here. Um and that's really what you all approve from our reorganization in some of these positions is to have more um a more streamlined aligned process to make sure that that happens. Um, so absolutely. This is just this is just one of many different things that we would want to be able to do in the summer. Um, that I wanted to make sure was still on the radar. So the programs we have and Okay. What's it ready? Ready. Okay. That's what it was.

120That's Yes. The already you're right. My last slide. Thank you. Um so we also had in addition to you know meeting with the school principles and their staff we also get staff requests for this this kind of a year. Um what I handed out to you guys is a summary of it. We have the administration has not vetted any of these these are not recommendations but this book summarized just so you see what we're going to have to look at those requests right now about $3.2 million. So when you look at the new revenue from our taxes of 3.4 four and slide nine, we're going to have about 1.1 from 4.5 and new revenue coming in and these requests on the last several slides total $100 million. So our mission then is to provide a

121balanced budget, but obviously everything we discussed tonight cannot be in there and be balanced. So that the discussion will be at some point if some of these are desiring one what your comfort level reserved and with that there's another sheet of paper that's on top of that that shows where we currently before you do that let me just make one more statement I apologize Mr. But one of the things that's not factored in here is um the staff realignment costs um or savings. Um and that will obviously have an impact on this as well. Um and so as soon as that is done and you all have looked at um the staffing realignments phase, obviously we've already done phase we've already you've already approved the transfers for phase one. Uh but when you look at

122the transfers and the the proposal for phase two, I'll be able to share with you exactly what that would be in the way of a the delta of is it saving money, is it going to cost more money based upon these things. And of course, my goal is to help save money while streamlining processes in order to make sure that we're efficient, effective, and making sure that we're providing the best education for our students. So, there could be some additional change there that is not listed in here. one of our trucks. So, I have a couple questions to that slide. Read to that slide. Go to that slide. Well, I wanted to finish with the the statement about the um the fund packets. Sure. You heard me preach in in previous meetings previous year that

123GFO financial association recommends 16.67. You can see from the chart as of June 304, we're at 16.3 and that puts us 41st in the state of so as we look forward to the future budget and we continue to spend out reserves slide and get below that reserve slide down. I just want to make sure I'm clear all the time. I'm very conservative, but I don't think we should be spending out reserves. Now we go back questions. All right. Um, summer school we previous to receiving COVID funding, we used to charge a dollar amount. Yes. To attend summer school. Yes. High schools. Yes. Credit recovery. Yeah. Why are we doing that? My plan is to do that. Is to do that. Middle school and high school credit recovery. Okay. Would there would be um a fee

124assessed. Um I think it was something like two or$100 or $300. Okay. So yes, that's So that will that will come back that will come back for credit recovery in middle school and high school. Not I don't I don't want to apply that to elementary school but definitely high school and middle school. That's that was that that's good clarification. Um, and then I guess my other question is have we because we have many schools that have trailers and in listening to and and hearing about how bad Tomahawks trailers were, my curiosity is how are the trailer conditions for all of our other schools and should we be what is is increasing our staffing based upon some of the information that's in this package? should be done versus maybe shoring up the spaces for um our

125staff and students that are currently occupying trailers. That's a great question for Todd Heist. Well, I'm putting it out there because I am asking I mean like we we heard we heard and got feedback on a regular basis through the day and there's not a request to replace any at this point. We have discussed what the price of the units are at this point. Well, let me ask this question. Why are we waiting for somebody to request it? Why wouldn't we then go out and in inspect it and just say this is working, this isn't? Bas Okay. Just because just because it may it may be safe and you know the the school may still want to stay well aesthetically or whatever. Of course, our goal is not to replace modulars. It's to add on

126to the schools or to take care of those things. concerned about because we knew of soft spots that were occurring at the tomahawk with the tomahawk trailers. We knew of those soft spots. Do we have any other trailers that have sp soft spots that we just can't? It's not in the bond. It's not something that we we we can address right now. We're building and adding on, but can we do something to shore something up? Like is it better spent to do something like that versus adding additional administrative um staffing? um that is requested in that packet, not the ones that were presented tonight, but in the other packet. Yeah, sure. Great. Great. I think that's a great question. Um and so, first of all, we we do constantly assess the quality of our modulars.

127If there is an issue, if there's a soft spot, then a work order is put in, we'll assess it. And if it's getting to the point where it's beyond um you know it's it's reached its end of usable life then we're gonna have to we're gonna have to evaluate that for a for an expenditure. I'll give you another example. Like there's one school that we may have to move a module to from another school that's not using it. They had two. One, the one we were planning on was going to require significant um once it was moved was going to require some significant um addressing to make sure that you know it aesthetically and and workability was fine. Uh when we when we learned we could take the newest one because they weren't using either

128one of them, then we obviously take the newest one. Um, but I think what your question is is it actually brings up another good point and that is is that in the current budget, we don't necessarily have additional money set aside to move into capital improvements. Um, and our capital improvement, which we had talked about, you know, is around $16 million. Um, and that needs to cover all, you know, big budget requests for the big things that cost money across the district in addition to making we sure we can finish our bond projects. M and when we think about that we it would be it would be ideal what we need to be able to do to be good stewards I think is be able to continue to make sure we in our budget we

129are putting money into capital improvement so we're setting aside specific amount of money to say this is for capital improvement capital improvements currently we don't have that um so the capital improvement fund Mr. But is pay is money goes in there. Is there certain money from the levy or from the regular levy that goes into there or from state aid? No. No. So what happens basically I used a permanent improvement. I had a permanent improvement fund in the past and we actually got specific money allocated. So basically prior to co we never had leftover money at the end of the year and there nothing went in during co we were able to move at the time I think like over the five years like 20 some million we've spent some of that down to 16

130million right now that is the only way we've been able to put money aside is from the co basically so we're basically in that in that arena just specifically in that re arena we are reactive and not proactive correct because we've always spent everything we've come in because we're a growing district where formula we continue to grow continue to add staff and those weren't wasted. They were things that we had and and honestly if if as we spend that down on finishing bond projects that we know were going to cost more than what we had in the way of bond dollars. Um, one of the things that we're we're going to have to do at some point if we don't fit in the budget is in order to complete projects, we're going to have to

131hit our fund balance and move that money into capital improvements in order to complete those things. So, what I would like to be able to say is that I bring you a balanced budget that also includes, oh, by the way, money going into our capital improvement projects uh that is set aside for for those projects. So in all like something like flooring, something like renovations to to this facil, those are all things that are still capital projects that you know through the budget process say we're going to allocate this for these projects and it goes in there anyway. But um we need to be able to continue to be proactive. I agree a good example is turf fields. We have four turf fields. We have to put money aside every year otherwise you're going to

132have a very large expenditure in the budget in that year of complment. So perhaps um our next meeting or the next meeting, Mr. Tyson can give us a report on those and the shape that they're in or absolutely and maybe what their life expectancy is from from now and like when it it needs to be replaced or we need to add on whatever that looks like. And I guess my only other question is and I'm I'm going to have to rely on other people besides Ty because he's not here right now. Um, what does that look like? If I'm a teacher in a classroom and I and I'm walking across my classroom and I discover that there's a soft spot, what what are the steps that I do as a as a um teacher? How

133how do I how do I get that into a a request? Is that me that submits it to the to facilities or do I go to the principal? Go to the principal. I I'm I'm not sure. I mean, they have a process. I don't get the details. Yeah. So, if if I'm if I'm a teacher um or a custodian or something, I'm in my in my working in in my building or my classroom and I recognize that there's an issue in my classroom. Let's say it's a leak. Okay? Let's say it's a let's say it's a soft spot. Let's say it's the air's not working. I'm going to go and let my supervisor know, my principal or my assistant principal. And our high schools many times are they they have an assistant principal that's over

134facilities. You let them know and then they actually have access to the work order system. They put the work order in. Um, sometimes teachers have, sometimes depending on the school, the teachers have access to work order systems, but they'll put the work order in. It comes to maintenance, they triage the work orders based upon priority, meaning like this one's mission critical. If we don't get down to this site right now, we got to close the classroom then, you know, but uh, so smaller things sometimes those can be on the work order system for a little bit of time. But those types of things, that's how they get addressed. If if the work order is never submitted, then we don't know that that it needs addressed. If someone has submitted a work order and it has

135not been addressed um you know within you know uh within a a reasonable amount of time, then they should they should escalate that to their principal or even what I would say is to their executive director so that they can sort of intervene and work with Mr. Tyson to make sure it has been addressed. Do we have a tier system on on that sort of thing? Like like it you know if if I'm talking about you know the clock on the wall doesn't work anymore compared to a leaky roof. Okay. So the leaky roof is going to be a priority one that that's the first tier that needs to be addressed within hours ideally versus the clock on the wall that might need something addressed and that could that could take a couple weeks and

136that's not really going to be that's not a big big deal. I mean, is that is do we have a tiered system that that they go into a certain level of response so that I know as a principal um I should have heard something back from somebody within a week for the work order. Yeah. Should have I had to have Mr. Tyson report to you when he had a thing as to how that how that works internally. Just ask because I don't know from what I have known of the past and how that system works. Yes, there's a system of um importance for emergency state and if your clock's not working, it's probably the year out because there's and I'm giving very very obvious two to two, you know, one that's not important and one

137Yeah, I'm just to to to understand that's all power and like usually you bring it to the person's attention. We got what we're put in. A lot of times my custodian always put those things in. Yeah. Usually with maintenance or whoever shows up, they're going to go to that custodian. Where is it? What's happening? So they have to be in the know. So that's something that we've done at the past. I know at the elementary level. But let me give you a perfect example. The other day we had all the wind and the roof flew off the school and the teacher could see the blue sky. We ran. Right. So yeah, everybody was aware of the situation. Um Todd was on it. The guys were up there. I was fixed within a matter of hours.

138I I went out myself. Um, you know, Dr. Sax, everybody was there. So, everybody goes running. This is not and this is not a bash against the department. I'm just trying to make sure I understand and that our, you know, anything can fall through the cracks. I let something at my own job fall through the cracks. It was something a simple ask, but it fell through the cracks because of something else that was major. Right. Yes. So, that's why I was asking, is there a system in place that if we need to get a little what I would call a tickle Yeah. And in the past, I never get that tickle. I never really had a problem with it. Usually maintenance came right out. Okay. They took care of situation and it was it was

139timely. Um I I haven't heard that. And if a principal will have something that's an issue and it's not getting addressed, I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. Any other questions for Mr. Bars? Yes. Yes. Getting back to your thing. Yes, sir. Um we're ranked 41st. We're at 16.3. The Government Finance Officers Association rep represents 16 and 23. Yes, sir. Okay. What my concern is is here we're ranked 41st. Um Jefferson is 42nd and they're they're at 13.8. But when I look at the ranking of Berkeley County and say math, uh last year we were ranked 46 in math. So if I take some money away from this this reserve 700 and I put it into salaries and I can get more certified teachers, I'd rather be ranked 46 on this list and 41st on the math list.

140Investing more money into teachers to get to hire people, bus drivers and everything else. Exactly. And so well Pat what I would say to that if you do that you would be dead last and the state would probably be in here because pay raises or a raise like that to staff you can't take it away and if you don't have a fun resource for it you'll continue to deplete that you don't have anything. But if we if we continue to have a cushion and not spend it and not spend more of the cushion on the employees we're cannibalizing oursel. We're we're like I said earlier, we're growing in the 13%. Now, I I know the State Department has it in this has this three to 5%. I don't know I don't want to get near

141that. Uh not because they think that like the roof growing off something like that, but I I'm just I'm I just mentioned earlier about the principal association. But here we have this this well well respected group saying 16 and twothirds. But I'm sitting there trying to make sure that we have certified teachers and our students are benefiting from the time they're in that classroom. And if I have to make a tough choice and and push the envelope, I'd rather go down to trade place with Jefferson County at 13.8. I don't know what that that amount of money just as 2.5 would be, but I imagine 2.5 of 40ome million dollars would be quite would be quite a pay raise for employees. But I think doesn't go very far. You're probably talking 600 bucks a person.

142Yeah. But plus, like you said, if you were to use it for one time or Yeah. We're going to throw away no but but I but I am but you did that last year with the housing we did spend out reserve one time recommendation again this time and 1623 was 24 yeah I I see the fallacy my argument I hope you also see the dilemma that we're sitting here facing trying to educate our children in this community. It is a dilemma. It seems like a normal situation, right? We do put a lot of staff in the classroom. There were 265 staff into the board, but where we see we need to put it and and you and I want to share with the board you shared with me. We have 44 I think special eds.

143U Mr. Dwey 4 and some uh um autistic students and you shared with me the cost per student. I didn't I don't think it's on your handout, but it was $27,800. You were correct. Uh here if you want to see my papers, Mr. I see you smile there. He was responding to Ryan. Yeah. I'm just I'm just saying that we we have the most um autistic the greatest number of autistic students and we are spending just by the numbers they're not all across $27,800 per student and and the state is only paying 15 for that. Correct. Yeah. And so we're so when we talk about being overstaffed, it's the staff. We're we're special needs students and u and it's it's we can't we're exposed to liability if we don't do it. Correct. and and uh

144and so it consumes our excess living money but you can be doing other things because the state doesn't the state demand should provide service but doesn't give you the money and the feds do that as well. I agree 100%. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll just I what we're doing here is we don't have good and bad things on these lists. We have good and better things and we have to pay we have to identify the better things and say no to very good requests for our system. That's that's the dilemma we're facing. I welcome the challenge but I just want I just want people to know out there it's not because you had a bad idea. It's just we can't afford it. That was okay. Moving on. Any other questions? So, we're going to move on.

145You just Oh, go ahead. I was going to say he got something to say, doesn't he? Hello. You don't have anything to say? Okay. Sorry. I thought he had a look on his study. No, I was going to ask him what the next step is so that the board knows what the next step in the process of our budget process is. We'll continue as administrative team to review the list of the summary that I gave you guys. We won't get the numbers from the state until the end of April. So between now and April we'll vet present what our recommendation has been what we think we need to present to the board then we can have discussion list what the we don't have to prioritize this list tonight. No, but I would be I would

146be under the assumption at this point. Anything you choose is coming out of reserves. Anything on this anything on that list is coming out of reserve depending what a phase two looks like. Yes, ma'am. Yeah. Because currently, remember it's 1.1 1.1 1.3 million. 1.1 is my best guess today before the legislative budget is halfway through the session of what we'll have between our increased tax revenue and state of what we could possibly spend out of the general fund in order to have a balanced budget. Correct. Um and that's that's also pending in phase two uh budgets or phase two and phase one numbers around staffing and how that impacts the the bottom line as well. Of course you know 85% of our budget is 85 I'm not sure it's pretty close to drop with co

147about all the extra money but it's usually between 75 and 80 82%. Yeah. Is is in staffing. So there could be some there could be some movement there. If we think about 1.1, that's what we have to to allocate in order to bring up Alex's budget. Um, we've given you some things to think about. We've had open dialogue of what board member requests are, what some of the things I'm thinking are. Um, and so I think it would be very helpful for us to prioritize what we what we want to keep and where we're willing to go. Um, and if we want to do that here and now, we can. um you know or we could also schedule another another workshop where we can talk about these things to flesh them out which um I

148think there's some additional information y'all are wanting from me also and I would absolutely entertain another workshop just to to to go through this process to make sure we're all on the same page agree I I agree with that and then um in the midst of that while we're before we lean again for that workshop we could uh this and see what we feel like that we could eliminate Okay. So, how about Mr. Buts and I get together and we come up with maybe based upon how much work we have to do on our side, we can come up with some maybe some dates to propose to the board as to another workshop and we'll get that on the on the on the schedule. Is that good? Is that good? Branch here. Jing, right? Okay.

149Good evening, Dr. Saxs, President of our board. Um, tonight I'm going to be presenting the uh Do I have a clicker? Thank you very much. I have a human. So tonight I'm presenting the um data discipline data from the first semester and I know we're a little further into the second semester at this point. But um keeping those cut offs uh at the semester allows us to be able to compare um both first semester of this year, second semester of this year, as well as what we're looking at tonight, which is comparison between last year's first semester data. So I've aggregated the data in a couple different ways. Um so the first slide uh we have our level three and level four um offenses combined by school. And so you can't see it necessarily on

150the slide, but you should be able to see in your packet uh the school number at the bottom. And then um the bright yellow bar. I'm sorry. Just real quick. I think if you press control and then use your mouse, you can reduce the size of that picture. There's people online can see the full it's the bar underneath they see it you they see it here. Okay. On the Oh, they do. It's the bar on that TV with the um participants the share. I can't remove that from make sure public the public should be on. Okay. Thank you. So the bright yellow bar is last year's first seme semester data. Second bar is um this year's first semester data. And as you can see, um, you know, we saw an increase in the level three

151and level four offenses, uh, across the county, uh, and in most schools. Some some schools we saw a decrease, but the majority of those, um, we did see an increase. What is school number three or two? Sit down. That's north. Yeah, you see it. down. So if you go to the next slide, I wanted to give you a picture of uh battery fights and sexual misconduct that to present every category of discipline. um there it will be an unbearable amount of of data and slides we'll be looking at but these were the three areas that we were um dinged in last year during our our audit. So uh this is a combination of physical fights without injury, battery on a student andor employee and then sexual misconduct of claims that are falling into level three.

152And it looking at this slide, um it's a little more positive than the last uh because these specific areas of uh physical violence, we've seen a decrease overall and uh in the majority of our schools, what what do you think is is attributing to the decrease in these particular instances? Well, I think two things. um you know as we implement and I think this is also maybe a reason why we've seen some increase on you know some of the other slides but as we implement our matrix with fid fidelity um we're going to see some increases because people are coding things correctly and um sure you were we're dealing with those issues correctly. I think part of that will also decrease, you know, our referrals over time and has in part helped us over the

153course of the first semester. You know, we're not going to tolerate students putting their hands on one another um even if they're joking because then that turns into something, you know, like this. The other part of that um I would say with the sexual misconducts is that you know we learned from the experience last year and that we are coding things more appropriately. So um so that a smack on the rear end is not getting coded as sexual misconduct. Um you know that would play and Right. Right. Okay. What about the cell phone policy? Has that had any impact on the conduct of the students? I don't know that information um in particular. Uh that'll be a good question to bring to our discipline committee and to our principles. Um you know, I think that

154we are seeing cell phone violations and um you know those are being entered and and dealt with appropriately. you know the feedback that that I've gotten from principles informally is that it has been a good a good policy and it's appreciated. The other thing is we have to make sure that how we if we're monitoring how it's being enforced because sometimes the the leadership of the school sets the tone of the school and we we have to have a way of checking that. Yes. Go ahead. Okay. And then uh finally giving you an idea of um our suspensions uh per school. So this is OSS and ISS combined. And um so you can see that it's kind of a mixed bag. We have some schools that have increased this year, some that have decreased. Um,

155you know, again, a tribute part of that, you know, on both sides to having a discipline matrix in place that specifies, you know, first offense, second offense, third offense is what we're doing. Um, students are aware of that, principles are using it. And, uh, I think that, you know, we we had different schools that had different discipline matrices in the past and with different consequences. So, you know, last year we started that countywide matrix. Um, and a lot of our secondary schools, I think, did a really good job of implementing that in the beginning. Um, you know, some of our elementary schools don't deal with the issues that that the secondary do. And so it took them a little bit longer maybe to get on board, but um you know I I think that's why

156you might see an increase um like 30 302 well three so 302 um that's North Middle School. Okay. And um you know our new principal there went in there with the expectation of of setting high standards for discipline and enforcing those. Gotcha. So yeah, we have had conversations that it's okay for this to go up. It needs unfortunately it needs to be in order for us to be able to get to the other side of it. If it doesn't if it didn't go up or make some change then it was looked like not going to be done. Yeah. I I think Mr. Knuckle was uh he really done a good job out there, I believe. 503. Yeah, I was going to say that. So 503 is Musman High School. That's, you know, that's our largest

157school. Um and that's, you know, they're outgrowing their space and that. But again, I I work with them a great deal and I think that they're enforcing the rules and I I believe they're doing a good job. Now, they have seen a slight decrease in the number of suspensions. So, you know, I think with the addition of some restorative practices this year and some alternatives to suspension that we've added to the matrix um maybe helping out some of those situations. I know the principal has uh has worked with some some students um on a couple different things, but but I have the transition school update for March there. I guess there's just one for each board, but you'll see in there high school has a lot of transition referrals. It be nice if um that

158our school suspensions were separated so many days versus in school. Well, well, so it is. Um, it is, but I can't see it. I mean, I slide. I can't tell. Well, it's in You said it's in a different slide. Oh, it's in a different slide. Yeah. So, let's go on to the next slide. Um, and then go ahead and go to the next one. All right. So, I broke the OSS and ISS down by um by each school. So, it it's it's not a graph where you're going to be able to see comparisons between every but so um I'm going to show you the the next two slides just as an example and then um instead of going through every school specifically um I'll let you all ask questions. If there's anything you want to

159point out, we can we can jump to that slide. But just so you can read this um accordingly, we have the school name, how many administrators andor facilitators they have and then the number of special education classrooms. Um when we were reviewing this data with our discipline committee, uh the principles on the committee um thought that that's pertinent information. Uh and and I agree with that because you do see some you know depending on the type of special education classroom you may see um accelerated discipline data from there. Um and then you can see you're going to be looking at ISS OSS level 3es and fours batteries sexual misconducts which are all the data that that we went over in the bar graph. And then this allows you for a comparison between fall of 2024,

160the first semester, and then the first semester of this school year. And we've broken that down by um non-special ed students. And then the green is the special ed occurrences. If you'll look at um on this slide under fall 2025 non special ed um you'll see five in school suspensions and then in parenthesis that's the number of students that have received those five in school suspensions. and and that could be very relevant information because if you have a few students who are, you know, creating this large number on your bar graph, um you know, the majority of your students are doing what they're supposed to be doing and you're spending a lot of time on these students. So that's how you read this um this chart. And so if you'll go to the next slide

161that explains that that there were um days of out of school suspension, 13 you know for general ed students and then the green 14 out of school suspensions for 14 students. That's an example. So after that slide it I give you a breakdown of every school um with that data. So if you have any questions uh any schools in particular we can jump to those slides Dr. % is it how are principles evaluated if they have a high number I mean it's just how I mean I don't want to say are accountant scouts or account what do you what do you really mean Dr. Mr. Bury, I apologize. What? What? I'm not trying to I'm just I'm just trying to You've been in this business. If a school has a low number, does that mean

162the principles and the staff are controlling the issues, of course, you saw what North had there? Well, I think you have to be able to look at a couple different things. I don't think looking at one report um is gives you the full picture or the full story. I think you have to look at several different things. One, I think you have to look at discipline trends over time. Obviously, we're comparing one year to the next, but but you know, over the past several years or under different leadership, is it is it evolving? I think the other thing you have to be able to take a look at is your school culture survey which is feedback from your teachers and your staff members as to how safe do they feel the school is. How well

163do they does the staff feel the administration handles discipline? Is it appropriate? Is it is it timely? Um I think you also have to take a look at um you know uh anecdotal data which is you know when an executive director or a district off office individual or our district leadership team does a walkthrough in the school and we're seeing consistent issues or behaviors then that gives a full picture. uh when we look at like you know these types of reports especially over time we see a trend going in the wrong direction or something that we don't believe is acceptable obviously you know we we don't want to see significant number of out of school suspensions or in school suspensions for that matter because we want students in the classrooms we want uh behaviors to

164be um managed through high qu high quality uh or high level of efficacy of culture of learning in the school. So if those things become a trend when we think about the evaluations, those are things that are going to drive the the conversations between supervisor and evaluate uh around the reflection of of their practice. When they go and do the self self-reflective evaluation, how do they think they do in these different areas? The supervisor is then going to say, well, let's look at the data. You have this trend. um let's create a goal that we put some specific measurable steps in place to um reverse that trend or to improve in this area and then of course we measure at the end of the year have we have we've been successful very similar to how

165you evaluate me you know I set specific measurable goals to address district deficiencies district areas of concern the same exact process should be occurring in our schools and um I think that one of the things that we've tried to differently this year is I think that the the method by which we are evaluating our administrators is much more streamlined because now our executive directors of elementary or executive directors of high schools are directly evaluating their their their staff as opposed to the assistant superintendent doing all of that work. Um I think it creates more meaning. I think it also is the it's the boots on the ground that are in the schools on a consistent basis supporting our principles. Um and then of course um you know our principles evaluate their assistant principles. They want

166the same meaningful conversations. So that's what should be driving the evaluations. And I don't think that one report always tells the full story, but it definitely tells a piece of the story that we have to continue to I think flesh out as we continue to um analyze and um conduct our own needs assessments for ourselves as well as our schools in order to improve. I know there's a lot, but I hope that gives you a good indication of what we're trying to do. One thing that I'm hearing boots on the ground is that some of the schools seem to have a the student dynamics seems to vary. Um, you're getting children from the city in there who come with different background experiences and different values, values and and and your your assistant principles are track

167starts. They run from one end of the school to the other trying to break up fights and everything. Does that show up in this kind of stuff? not the data that I have for you this evening. um the data that I'm hoping to be able to present to you at the end of the school year that aligns with um policy 4373 and with our JPG will break that the data down by um by cell um so by ethnicity by low SCEs um special education so hopefully that data will be a little more meaningful in that area Um, you know, I I'm hoping that um the state will create a report because that's going to be a lot of a lot of compiling. If not, but um but I've been working with our tech department. They're

168they're ready to help me start rolling on that if um if not and and we'll have that for you at the end of the year. Are we one of the highest counties in the state with low socioeconomic I mean do we have a ranking in the state poverty we do yeah that's actually what drives our our our federal funding and our title one budget um and interestingly not only has West Virginia improved their poverty ranking so is Berkeley County our our poverty rate is actually improved. Um, when you say improved, does it mean we're It means that we have less poverty. We have we we we have less poverty than we did the last year and the year prior to that actually impacts our our budget by about $500,000 from just title one. That's before

169any kind of other um uh other federal program cuts or things like that. Yeah. I just I mean it's just thing. The rest of the state always looked at us like we were in the land of milk and honey and yet we had all these title one schoolish. So 5 million will decrease the decrease because of we we know that it will decrease because of our poverty level change in our ranking in the state. Uh because the state has to delegate those federal dollars they call rank and serve. Um so that means that you can't fund a district of lower poverty higher than a district of higher poverty. Um in addition, there are uh you know, we're obviously subject to congressional approval of the federal budget and um we anticipate there could be as much

170as a 20% cut to our federal program dollars from and this go this is this goes back actually prior to um the current administration. This was this is even this was discussed back in November um as to where Congress was, where Senate was, and then where the president's budget was. Um I've never seen a 20% cut. I mean, this in my exper my my history, I'm not saying it's not possible. Um I think 10% cut we've definitely seen. Uh but but I would say we'll we'll probably see something between a 10 and 20% cut in addition to our poverty level range and change here. Our budgets 300 million I think we get about 10% I mean Mr. Budman left but I think we get about 10% 12% somewhere like that. But that's including IDA and

171special special education. um not just um but I think even that even includes like Perkins for for career technical education. So our title one, title two and title three budget though, you know, is um it's that's what's going to really take a hit though. So you asking about nutrition [Music] some grants that we would hope that we could have counted on uh will have been eliminated and and again you don't know what is going to be in the budget package that will offset anything but that will definitely impact our our budget as it relates to food service. They're not going to offset anything. I'm just, you know, I'm trying to be optimistic, but I don't want to get false hope because if they pass the CR, it's an automatic budget cut. Um, people think last

172year's funding, but us froze our money. We're still spending more because our salaries people's salaries went up. Y So basically, you're losing money. And we know that cost of base is going up, too. So back to Mr. Francis. Other questions? I do have one other slide that I would like to show you. Actually, two other slides. Um, if you can forward to the no contact contract. Um, this is a response powers question. Um, the last time I I presented, are these um valuable tools for for principal? So, uh, I did a survey of all of our principles. Um, only the secondary principles have used no contact contracts. Um, so there are 213 and 17 violations. So out of those um 10 principles um eight principles I guess they're reported um seven of the eight believe

173that they are effective uh and one was was undecided. The behavior contracts are used sometimes at the uh elementary schools. So we had 141 behavior contracts with 26 violations. So, a behavior contract, uh, basically once you get a student who has either, you know, done something that's that's pretty bad, but we're we're not going to send them to transitional school or expel them at that point, or if they've had, you know, multiple discipline violations, we get to a point where our first step is is a behavior contract. And what that does is it brings the the parent in, the student in with the administrator. um they have a a contract for the student, the parent to sign, and it spells out, you know, the the next suspendable offense will be a 5-day suspension or um

174a 10-day suspension, whatever it may be, depending on the circumstances. But there's usually a, you know, five and then a 10day with a recommendation for transitional school. Um, so when a student is put on a behavior contract, if they don't get their act together, the end result will be a um transitional school referral. And the the good part about that is that you're not calling a parent and saying, "Hey, your child has reached this point and now we're sending them transitional school." It gives the parent the opportunity to be involved in um maintaining that child's discipline. Everybody's on the same page. they know what's going to happen the next time andor the time after that. And um so out of the schools who have implemented behavior contracts, 10 out of the 13 believe they are

175effective. Um two said that they are sometimes effective which makes sense because you do have violations. Um and there was one that that stated that they were not effective for them. Is it because of population? it like you know North Middle is definitely a lot different population than than let's say um Hedgesville Middle, right? So is it is it is it the population of students that are there that um because obviously North Middle has a higher um ISS um rate that we're seeing in the the report. So is is it is it population of students or is it implementation? I don't to be honest I don't think it's either. I I think that, you know, for the 26 violations, um, you know, I I was a principal and and we put students on behavior contracts

176and there are just students that are not going to get their act together. Well, their background may or may not play a part in that, but I'm just going based on the principal's feedback because you've got two principles that are saying that they're sometimes effective and one that's stating that they're not effective. So, is there something going on, you know, like so I guess I sit there and I go, okay, well, 13 print out of 13 principles, 10 out of 13 are saying they're it's not bad. They're good, right? Right. they're obviously doing something different or you've got a different type of population in the school that maybe has a little bit more parent involvement or there's there's a there's a good understanding of of what's going on. Is it restorative practice, you know, um

177understanding and then implementation that's maybe uh better implemented and done? I don't know. So that's why I'm asking what is it that two are saying sometimes and one is saying it's not. Well, I would need to to ask that specific question for me. I think it's it's always sometimes because you know 10 out of the 13 said that they are effective probably because they are effective the majority of the the time in their school. Okay. But not always. So um the one that that said it's not effective um was an elementary principal who had implemented one and that one was not effective. So of course that's not going to be effective things. Okay that gives clarity that gives clarity because if you only have done it one time and that one time I mean I

178get that. So yeah that gives some context. Well, that that's a lot of cont, right? Because if I'm only looking at these numbers, I'm sitting there going, you've got three principles saying it might not be working so well. Was this from fall fall 24 to date? This So, this is actually Yes. the entire school year up through about a week ago. Okay. Mr. Murphy, you um you're plotting a lot of things here. Have you looked at the schools? I know Miss Long has been pushing for in school suspension. She was expanded to I think we have three intermediate schools with two. We have four that I would love to see. Okay, you have four on there. Okay. Have you have you looked at the impact of adding an in school suspension u? So in in

179speaking to uh those two principles at the intermediate level where they have that um they value those those positions now and I think there are two reasons. The first reason is students were still coming up who would have gone to in school suspension but they're being you know sitting in a desk outside the principal's office or you know sitting in a conference room or whatever. So this provides them a structured space where these students um can be. It also reduces the out of school suspensions because you have an opportunity now to suspend a student, get them out of a classroom without um sending them home. So they still have an educator in the in the room that um can answer questions on assignments and make sure that you know they're on task. So I I

180do think that those two intermediate principles um do value those. I know as a high school and a middle school administrator, I couldn't imagine not having a school suspension. And my other question is looking at this list from preschool, we have students from intermediate schools going to transition school. And is that because they didn't behave at the the level that we would assume to trust the Lord? So those students um and I believe this this question was asked the last time I was up here. Um but those principles uh recommended those students due to the behavior that got them there and um those are all I believe they're all fifth graders and um they're all um 10 or 11 years old. So they're right there on the verge of being middle school age. And um

181I'll be honest with you, those students have been very successful at our transitional school. Yeah, Mr. Marquette says they I think that the rest of the kids can intimidate and so that's not something that we always do. Um you know, it it will depend on the circumstances and what the principal thinks is the best route to take with with those students. you know, whether the CARES Academy because typically when we send students to the CARES Academy, um it's, you know, 45 days, maybe 90 days, and then they come back to school. But that some of those fifth grade students who know what the consequences of those actions are going to be and still, you know, decided to do whatever that that may have been. Um, you know, we want to keep them out of school,

182you know, for the 365. And so that's when we would go with the transitional school. It's better than shipping off to $50,000 a year program. I think our transitional school is um I I don't know. It is a gem of our county. And to be honest with you, I think that they're very successful and um you we're blessed to have Mr. Marque to lead us there. So did you want to go over for consideration any followup questions? Yes. So last slide of this presentation. Um so these are things that um I will be taking back to our discipline committee for consideration. So first is that we want to make sure that there's consistency across the board um you know from our teachers for inputting um the referrals and our administrators and following the the county

183discipline matrix um you know considering those disparities which I I pointed out in in demographics whether it's special education um low SCES you know those types of things bring challenges uh to to schools that um I think we do need to consider interdisipline data and then continuing to build a positive school culture. So, you know, I'm a Justin's Renaissance guy. So, I'll work at Musman High School. So, I work at Mount Rage Middle. And so, you know, whatever route a principal wants to take with that, but making their school a place where students want to be and um and staff want to work. I've said it many times, but you know, I think that that positive school culture does have a positive effect on your discipline data. So then what we want to take a

184further look at um with our discipline committee is what preventative measures we can include, you know, whether it's in our matrix or in an appendix. Um continuing those restorative practices, which going back to your ISS uh question, Mr. Murphy. Um I know that one of our our uh intermediate schools uses that ISS as kind of a combo with the punitive and the restorative practices. So uh that's a good opportunity as well. Um making sure that we're communicating with our our parents and our our students that you know these are our discipline expectations. um you know and if if you don't meet those then here are the consequences that are going to be uh enforced and then making sure that we're ensuring a focus on fairness, equity and positive behavior supports across the district. So and

185that ties back into you know those preventative measures and restorative practices but you know what are we doing so that we don't have to write referrals you know before we get to that point. So, those are all things that that we'll consider uh in our committee and I'll continue to invite I know um we've had different representatives from the board who have attended so I'll continue to invite you all to that too. Do we do we um track um the ability to know if a they if a student has uh supports at home, meaning whether that's a you know grandparents, parents, uh aunts, uncles, whoever, you know, whatever guardian, you know, foster parents, do we do we track that? because we've we've talked a lot about um demographics from age to societal, you know, uh

186low income, uh race and stuff like that. Do we have anything that that looks at that family structure of supports that the student has at home? I don't believe that there that there's a report I can pull with that information. You know, it'd be curious to find out how many of our students who have who have maybe discipline issues are lacking or or you know that don't have some of those supports behind them that I mean that's that's just a curiosity question. Well, not not that I know the answer to that, but I I do realize that principles know a lot of that. Yes. Yeah. know. That's why I'm saying, do we do we track it because they know it. Cuz they know it. So, yeah, they can tell you right off the bat the

187dynamics of the home life. I'm just wondering if if we're giving that that fairness, the the equity piece that we're that we're talking about to those individuals that don't necessarily have the adequate supports at home that that need to be there. I think does that work? I do think that's taken into consideration. I believe so too. I'm just I'm just trying to you know I guess the problem would be if they don't know that that home thing. Agreed. I guess where I said where we we've talked before and we keep doing the same thing over and over and over again and we're expecting different results. I mean that's insanity. So do we have to flip it around a little bit? Just instead of looking at it this way, maybe we need to look at it

188this way kind of thing. Is there some other angle we need to take a look at? That's all. Yeah. And I could be wrong and that's totally fine. I'm just poisoning a question. I think actually schools do a lot more with that those type of situations than we actually even know about. They they know more about the child's home life. If there's two grandparents raising them, whether they're raised by another family member or mom's not home in the evenings and the child's by theirself. So, you know, it amazes me how much they know about the child's dialect. Mhm. And then how can we figure out come alongside that family and figure it out? That's where my brain goes. Yeah. Get in the pit with them. Yeah. No, that's a good point. I've written it down.

189Go ahead. No, just wrap it up. Well, well, just I read this report, the handover report and the uh do you did you see this? Yes, sir. Okay. The question about bullying feelings and safety results. Yeah. um just seemed like a serious concern and I the question I wrote down are the bullying programs and I don't expect you to answer this right now but I wrote down to myself are the bullying programs of Bayas and other things that we're doing working in comparison to the results of these surveys and like I said that's a question that I only expect an answer right But it's I think we need to look constantly be monitoring what we're investing in and what the impact is in the system. I do have pros and cons about [Music] yeah working

190on I think that um there are positive results out of our u bullying prevention program and you know some of that has to do with the schools and the teachers implementing those you know with fidelity. Um and but the second part that that I just I want to point out um that survey went out and and also we did a survey um for the bullying prevention program that was a little more that survey was very thorough but in terms of the the part yeah it's not as program yeah so um all of that took place I don't know if you all remember I remember um back at the beginning of the school year when um we were having the social media threats the um it seemed like um well it was about once or twice

191a week um you know I was communicating with law enforcement at 9 and 10 o'clock at night trying to track down whether these were substant threats or whatnot. So I do think that uh that's not data that you I can prove anything, but I do think that the the timeline with some of these with the surveys probably had a lot to do with students just not feeling safe in general about school because we've had all these these threats. So, it says here the surf from November to December 24th. Yeah. So, this was right after all that happened in in October. Um, and we did have one to kick off the school year, too. Um, a pretty big one there right at the very beginning of the school year. And then we had several there that

192lingers. I I'll say that that lingers. I mean, it's something you forget the next couple days. No. No. And when you think of you get when you when you see a question that asks you about how how safe do you feel, the first thing that I'm I'm going to tell you, the first thing I think about is during the times when when things got a little crazy because that word safety triggers memories. And if your most recent events that occurred that year had some traumatic impacts on in your mind, it's going to get brought up. So they could it could influence how they made choices. I don't want to discount what you're saying as far as are we mitigating bullying in our schools. And that's and you know, are we doing that with the programs?

193Are how effective are they? And I I get that. I'm just saying we we have to also be careful because that study, while it is good to have in hand, we can't garner a lot of other information other than our kids aren't feeling the greatest in certain ways. Dr. Branch, could you share a little bit about the grant um and the the pilot of of Stop it? So, they know that that's something that we're looking at and we have it in what, three schools this year? We have in four schools. Um so stop it is an app where um and it's kind of multiaceted. So uh the primary function is for reporting bullying, harassment or weapons or things like that that that make you feel unsafe at at school. Um, so it it goes straight

194to the the principal and anyone in their school that they've designated um to get those reports. It also comes to me um the executive directors of secondary and elementary and Dr. Alonso. So um so we get those and follow up to make sure that the principles have have addressed these issues. Um once the issue has been addressed and it's closed out, uh there's not a report of what actually happened, but the person that submitted it knows that it has been addressed, which causes a lot of angst sometimes because we can't share specific information about discipline with with parents on the other side. um but the so they don't always know that things have been done. So this gives the opportunity for them to at least know that it's been been addressed. But there are also

195some other resources on there um where students can talk to a counselor um virtually um u there's you know suicide hotline links and um you know various other links that provide resources for students who are dealing with um you know emotional issues uh issues at home you so it's uh something that Dr. Saxs worked um with stop it to get get that pilot in place. Um we have the four schools that are are doing that now. We'll gather feedback to see how effective they think that was. Um because we we do have our current procedures and you know in place but u we want to see if this is more effective and provides better uh resources for this is an app. Yeah. It's a downloadable app and so um actually I have Mr. Lang pull

196up a demonstration video so you can see it gives you a little more context but um if I'm a student I can go and I can say I'm a student at Martinbury High School and I heard overheard someone say this about another student which is harassing that student. I can do it and I can report it anonymously. Um, and once I've done that anonymously, not only does the an automatic message go to the principal or the assistant principles or the counselor so they're aware of it, but the district can also monitor it to make sure that time is not too much time has not lapsed to make sure those things have been addressed. The other thing is they can also upload a picture on social media and evidence. So, u Mr. lull of a video

197here. We'll just do a quick little uh video here to see if you can explain a little more about what stopping is. Okay. What four schools are these? So, it's Spring Mills Middle, um Mountain Ridge Intermediate, Jaredtown Elementary, and Inland Primary. I'm sorry. That's all right. I I put on you in the last minute. And it's not always easy to speak up when something's wrong or dangerous in your life or someone else's. Stop. It empowers you to help yourself and to help others. Stop. It gives you a voice to do what's right. To deter troublesome behaviors like bullying, cyber bullying, and hazing. Helping to make your school environment a safer and happier place to learn and grow. What is Stop it? Stop. It is a simple, fast, and powerful app giving you the power to

198make a difference today. You can report anything. You can report issues like bullying, hazing, violence, and inappropriate behavior on and offline. Virtually anything. Doing the right thing is as simple as one click on your phone. Sending your report in real time to people that care and are ready to help. Make no mistake, stop. It is 100% anonymous. Period. End of story. How does it work? Once downloaded, open the app and enter the access code provided by your school. Now, go make a difference. If you experience or are witness to something you would like to report, simply open the app, tap the report button where you can send a message, photo, screenshot, or video evidence to the people that can help. Hit send and feel great. Next, the people that can help will receive your alert.

199When necessary, someone can reach out to you with Stop Messenger, 100% anonymous two-way chat. In some cases, you may want to reach out for help when times are tough. When you need someone to listen and to help, you can use Stop it messenger. Let's start making a difference. Download the Stop it app. It's free. So there is another component which is some you know uh counseling type triage so that they can if there's an issue they're they're having emotional concerns or whatever they can also refer that straight to uh the school guidance counselor and so on and so forth as well. So, but this week we got a grant um for this and yeah on your iPad, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's on the It's on the iPad. How how do you stop abuse of abuse

200of the recording? Right. because it's all anonymous and so sometimes so so um I I have uh used stop it in the past um and usually when you put it out there at first you're going to have a little bit of an uptick of reports um and then it it sort of it does I'm not saying it fades off but what happens is that um you don't have as much of an uptick that you have to investigate and but the ones to do get are are usually very credible. Um, if there is a false report, um, then usually there's enough information that you can try to triangulate who made the false report and so on and so forth. Uh but um I have not seen or experienced in the last five or six years of

201being a user of Stop it um where it has been abused um in a in a habitual way. I'll say like the C send app um that is required by the state is anonymous as well. Um and and we have had some we had a pretty big one last year at Martin High School um that you know we were able to track down and prosecute that student. A lot of times you know I think if you think about what could be reported if it's if it's a a bullying or harassment usually they're going to upload some sort of evidence or you should talk to this person. Um, and if uh it's uh something that's like a school threat, again, they're going to be uploading something. If there's not enough information for the administrator to investigate

202who's who's targeted, what's going on, you know, obviously then, um, they're able to to flag that. Um, but like I said, I would not have experienced that. So, um, any other questions? We need to move on to the other part of this poll. Only thing I was going to say um was, you know, looking at Mountain Ridge Middle's information um on the slides. Props to the staff there for working diligently and implementing the matrix. I I am my heart breaks for level fours, but I mean that's a huge uptick from last year. Yeah. Yeah. made some changes sir and and I just I I I know we're going to see upticks when when we are implementing with fidelity to your point um the discipline matrix and I just wanted to say you know that was

203a school I wasn't necessarily expecting to see that uptick and I just wanted to say props to the staff for for for really working this and working it well. So we don't have the school. It's in the online version. I know, but we don't have a printed version. Not all of them. And then so the the final piece that I had tonight was um to present policy JG for your consideration. You won't be voting tonight. It will be presented at um the April 7th meeting. Um so this was put out for comment. There were no comments uh received. We took this to the uh discipline committee for review and um there was one suggestion for an edit which we we did make had check with um with our legal council on that and that was

204approved. So uh that had to do with um open forums. was about this point and um so our discipline committee has has reviewed that and and okay and this is pretty much um a copy of policy 4373. So it's our um safe and support of schools policy that includes the discipline and the different levels as well as some other things there. So, just wanted to offer the opportunity tonight for you to ask any questions along the lines of policy JG. No other questions. Thank you, Mr. Very. I get emails. Did you have a question? Not right now. That's why I said you might get an email. Yeah, absolutely. If you see anything, feel free to reach out. Can I have a motion to adj commend an article by charmers and impress Oh yeah.